It’s complicated, messy, and really hard to talk about.
But if just the thought of your dad makes your stomach churn with anxiety, you’re not alone.
Maybe it’s because he was never around.
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Or maybe he was a toxic source of anxiety or abuse in your home growing up.
Whatever the reason, you should know you are not alone in your feelings.
Its possible to feel hatred toward yourfather.
These feelings typically develop in childhood, depending on your fathers behavior and parenting style.
Hatred can be difficult to cope with and painful to live with.
Understanding your feelings and processing them can help you manage them in healthy ways.
Most children express some throw in ofdevelopmental rebellionduring their formative years.
While this is typically a normative process, parental reactions tend to vary from permissive to controlling.
Child Abuse
Children are dependent on their parents for survival.
For more mental health resources, see ourNational Helpline Database.
Family Violence
Children are perceptive and are acutely aware of relational dynamics among their primary caretakers.
Conflict in the relationship with their father in childhood createsdeep-rooted feelings of mistrust.
This can lead to hesitation in getting closer to others due to the anticipation of hurt associated withintimacy.
This limits their ability to build stable and close relationships.
Ultimately, they may struggle to connect with others,avoid intimacy, or be highly anxious in relationships.
Typically, there is a fallacy to this bang out of thinking as thesepartners rarely change.
doi:10.1177/10775595241301085
Nelson E.Toxic masculinity and the generative father in an age of narcissism.J Jungian Scholarly Studies.
