A True Story I Have To Share About A Little Girl, Her Father, and YOU.

Something happened to me this morning and it relates to you. As I sat having breakfast at a cafe, I witnessed exactly what causes so many of us, and so many of the women I serve, to go through their lives pushing intimacy away and protecting themselves from being hurt by disappointment. As I sat, I watched a Father with his daughter — maybe, 4 or 5 years old. As they were having breakfast together, she was doing what kids do; alternating between being very happy and excited, and being a bit troublesome, breaking boundaries. As the child continued to play with something on the table that her father had said not to, he leaned over and gave the child a small slap on her knee. No, it wasn’t hard. It wasn’t violent.

BUT — it carried a message.

It wasn’t just to get the child’s attention. It had another message that I could tell was born of frustration and loss of patience by the father. And that, from the child’s perspective, the child was startled and frightened. Guess what happened next?

Well, not long after that the little girl knocked her bowl onto the floor and it clattered loudly so everyone in the cafe turned to see. The child was upset and carrying the negative energy the father had put into her. The father stood up, flustered and took the child by the hand, dragging her out of the cafe as she began crying. Then it happened…

As she was crying, I could hear her saying something over-and-over again. She wanted to stay. She didn’t want to go. And his response was, “I don’t care.” And she’d say it again and he’d say it again, “I don’t care. I don’t care. I don’t care. I don’t care…” and this was only ONE little moment in this child’s life yet it is the EXACT deep fear of insufficiency, of lack of being cared about, lack of being cared for or loved, lack of mattering or being significant, or our feelings, our being sensitive, our being hurt MATTERING to anybody else. And these get so internalized that when I work with women in their 40’s, 50’s 60’s, and even into their 70’s, we find that they are having trouble finding a good enough man, or getting asked out, whatever the block is that they are experiencing over-and-over again in relationships, when we trace backwards the path lead to them protecting themselves from being hurt…. and underneath THAT protectiveness (whether it’s by being strong and independent, so they don’t feel vulnerable with men, or whether it’s by never truly allowing deep emotional intimacy by selecting emotionally-unavailable guys) we always get to layers of fear about NOT being accepted if they are authentically themself. The fear that if they are TRULY open and vulnerable, their partner or the men they meet WON’T CARE.

Did you hear that?

That same phrase the father used… Yes, when I use my tools to go back and find where a woman’s blocks began, where is the wound that must be released ((because until this is released you’ll keep putting it out into the world and attract men who don’t care, or who you don’t feel safe being yourself around because of your fear that they won’t care), anyways when I go BACK to find that wound so you can stop self-sabotaging by being too open or way too closed, the source of BOTH blocks I find in women is the voice that tells them “HE DOES NOT CARE.”

Where does that voice in our head come from? Here’s where! Check this out–

It’s from situations precisely like what I witnessed today, where the paternal voice & the maternal voice (very frequently it’s Mom who was ending these messages) tell you to not deserve, that your needs don’t matter, that you mustn’t express your needs because they aren’t important, in fact you shouldn’t really even HAVE needs! How crazy is that? But it’s true! Most of us have experienced it, but let me explain more how it affects you today with men and what to do about it.

When we have experiences like this, where the father figure is not emotionally available (by the way, being abandoned by a father who is not even around physically is even more powerful of an “I don’t care about you” message for a child!), it’s because that father didn’t even have the emotional capacity to deal with whatever he was trying to deal with — so he just wanted to check out, shut-off instead of facing emotional connection, love and intimacy himself. Those things SCARED HIM and he didn’t know how to handle it.  Even with his own wife and kids. So this feeling you carry today is NOT YOUR FAULT.

Are you really hearing this, because if not you’re going to stay stuck, my dear. So please, take this in to the depths of your heart

 It is NOT your fault.

You grew up having had SOME type of experience of “I don’t care” directed at you by someone who taught you to believe it was somehow about you, not them. Sometimes, like today, it’s a stunning example, of it being absolutely open and direct: “I don’t care. I don’t care…. I don’t care.” But sometimes it’s more subtle. It can be the way one of your parents made you feel disregarded, or when they were dismissive of something important to you, or something that was upsetting to you. It could be in a roll of their eyes, a disdainful tone, “Oh Lisa…” with that sigh that says “There you go again” without ACTUALLY saying it.  All the ways you still put up with when you try relationships that eventually turn bad and end up dismissive, or your needs coming last, you fearing their loss of interest, or both of you losing interest but staying too long because of the fear you couldn’t possibly attract a better man since you don’t feel anyone REALLY cares THAT much about you, deep down.

Or maybe it’s just the stony silence of your Dad not knowing how to show up and connect…

No matter how it looks, this sort of subconscious damage will stay with you for DECADES (it already has!) if you do not work to release it. If you don’t find a way to uncover it and see where it’s infecting your life today. Because it shows up in ways you cannot see and do not notice, like a saboteur working under the veil of darkness to blow up your joy and relationships. That’s what I thought of as I watched that little girl leaving the cafe, so let me return to that story for a moment…

That girl is someone who, were I doing what I do thirty-forty-fifty years from now she would need to work with me for her to release what is happening today. she doesn’t even know, and he (her father) doesn’t even know they damage being done now that will cause her to pull back in relationships. That will cause her to protect herself. That will cause her to go out on a few dates then start to feel anxious and unsafe because it’s getting real and intimate – and she doesn’t wanna get hurt, doesn’t wanna find out that somebody she is getting attached to “doesn’t care” about her the same way.  But know what’s sad?

She won’t connect those dots right away. She won’t add it up. Until maybe a lot of painful experiences have reinforced the belief, and by then, my dears, it’s even harder to get rid of and almost impossible to do on your own. So today, I wanted to share this experience with you because I got to witness in practice, and in action, the moments that create the very real blocks which keep your soulmate out of your life — where it BEGINS. You already know what it looks like when this wound is expressing itself later in life, when it’s keeping you isolated and alone, but I want to share it with you so you can understand something very important…

That wherever and however you’re being blocked from love and true intimacy, that there are beginnings, there are sources, that where there is smoke there is fire somewhere. And maybe you’ve worked with a therapist and God bless you if you have because you are doing SOMETHING, and hopefully that’s uncovered some of the sources of these wounds — but you still need to shift them and let go of them, you still need to recognize in real-time when and where you get triggered today, and you still to learn what to do about it NOW so these old wounds, these old echoing words of a parent who was in their own emotional-insufficiency don’t become your legacy, your life, your loss… so so you can live a life full of JOY rather than live from your parents’ fear that they gave you in that moment (or many moments). Here’s what that father today REALLY meant, inside his head, without knowing it:

“I care, but I don’t know how to handle you right now. I’m afraid I don’t know how to be a good enough father. It’s father’s day and I’m even more insecure about that because I feel deficient as a father, so I don’t know how to handle it and it’s making me uncomfortable and so I am afraid all these people will see that I am not a good father, I am afraid and now I can’t be patient and loving…. I don’t know HOW to care without feeling insufficient and not good enough.” That’s what was REALLY happening for him, but he wasn’t able to process that in real-time (see how important that is?) – or, maybe he wasn’t aware of it, maybe he hasn’t done his work to connect the dots to his wounds and he has no tools to use when it comes up. So if you haven’t done something to get coaching, or therapy or SOMETHING around YOUR wounds with men and love… something with practical tools and steps to use in real-time, then you need to do it now. Not just finding out that you are having an emotional or relationship problem with a guy and having no idea how to change it, but actually letting go of these kinds of subconscious fears that you picked up along the way without you even realizing or recognizing how and when it was happening to you!

If you don’t do this you’re going to stay a slave.

A slave to loneliness. A slave to feeling alone even when you’re with someone. A slave to feeling unsupported. Because you can still be closed up and closed off, even surrounded by people. So this Father’s Day, or WHENEVER you may be reading this, my invitation to you is to find that deep place in you that deserved to receive the full love and acceptance of the paternal and the maternal, of your mother AND father, and to get help uncovering it so you can heal it fill that cup fully. So that all your blocks will drop away effortlessly. And so that you can live in love and joy.

Much Love,

Tags: barry paul price, barry price, blessing, childhood, dad, dating, dating coach, dating mentor, disappointment, doubt, father, father's day, fear, good enough, hope, independent, inner child, life coach, little girl, loneliness, love, men, mentor, needs, past, pattern, personal needs, protect, relationships., self-esteem, self-express, self-love, soulmate, story, subconscious, the right man, vulnerability, work on myself, wound