Dad? Naw, I'm so over him...

As I've said before I am a psychotherapist who does drug and alcohol treatment. The who and the where are not important to this blog right now. As I do this job, trying to get kids and adults to move toward sobriety, it's become crystal clear to me what a psychologist, a theologian and some good friends have hammered into me these last 30 years that "father is more important than you and I will ever know, Steve". An example of the importance of father drove this point home the other day. Below is a note taken from a number of clients that have a particularly bad addiction. I've rolled information from these clients up into one person for anonymity sake. The stories are virtually the same and the reaction to being told about father and belonging are exactly the same. The long term outcomes vary somewhat as they do when dealing with the human psyche but the truth still lies deep in what happened the other day.
…once again J was concerned with the therapist’s opinion and seemed very concerned that the therapist didn’t believe J was clean and sober. The therapist commented on clients concern. There seemed to be some power struggle over whether the therapist believed the client. After finally understanding there was this struggle the therapist stepped out of the struggle by commenting on the client’s process, by stating that the client was very concerned about how important people in his life perceived him. The therapist interpreted that J felt like (s)he was very disappointing to mother and always felt guilty for it. The therapist also interpreted that it sounded like J’s father was not emotionally involved with the client nor had father ever been involved. Client confirmed this by stating that the father was never in J’s life. J dismissed father’s involvement because father had never been involved and J “…just never cared”. The therapist took J to task on father having no impact on J’s life and stated J had been greatly impacted by the lack of father. This therapist told J not to dismiss the lack of father quite so quickly. The client further discounted father’s lack of physical and emotional presence in life until the therapist interrupted and said it’s the father that causes the child to feel belonging. “You have never felt like you belonged, J”. The client immediately broke down weeping.

The idea of belonging is, I believe, innate in each of us. We are social creatures who need to belong somewhere. God created us this way. He says, “…It is not good for man to be alone….” It was the beginning of communion with one another, the beginning of belonging. The Father God gave this to us in the beginning and it is our father’s that give this to us with their voice and presence from before we are born.

On subsequent visits I was able to talk more about father and finding father. There we were disagreements about being able to trust men and father substitutes. There is a deep residing anxiety that is because of a lack of father in these clients’ lives. There is the constant fear of disappointing mother and God. I find this permeates fatherless men and women. There is boundless needless guilt, shame, fear and approval seeking behavior. I have worked with these clients for a while and there is more work to be done. ”…the need for father is more important than you and I will ever know Steve…”