How many of you guys have permanent anger towards your father? I'm interested in hearing other's thoughts on this, as it is something that I went through myself earlier in my life.

I'm not talking about having an odd disagreement with him and showing anger. I'm talking about strong, deep-seated anger due mostly to disappointments - disappointment about your father not meeting his obligations, not paying you attention, not giving credit where credit was due, not showing any love, not caring, rejecting you as a son, not prepared to teach you, calling you names or abusing you. Anger that fills you with bitterness, that lurks in the background and erupts as violence or aggression when you are pushed, anger that causes you to abuse your own children in the same way that your father did to you or effects your behaviour in some way. 

I'm not implying that just because you have anger towards your father that you will exhibit or feel all of these things, but these are some of the sorts of things that cause and are the result of father anger.

As for my experience - well, some boys become more aggressive when they have anger towards their father, others withdraw and become a loner. I was of the latter inclination for much of my childhood years - due in part to my need to try and understand it, and in part to taking my emotions away from the problem. I think a lot of that was also due to depression and feelings of helplessness that I wasn't able to do anything about the situation.

During my childhood, my father was a bully, a juvenile, a mild alcoholic, an emotional retard - in short, it was as if he had never matured into an adult. He escaped into drink, took his frustrations out by means of physical and verbal abuse on me and my sister (although the physical abuse was not nearly as bad as for some), and arguments with and humiliation of my mum. All this time, I had a thirst for a male mentor/role-model, and I knew it would not be my father. I think the fact that I didn't find an adequate role-model caused my anger towards my father - believing that it was his responsibility and he was shirking it.

As I got older, I understood the problem better, and tried to make contact with him on a father-son level, but I don't think he understood, and he eventually rejected me in a belief of betrayal (when my mum moved out, and I chose to go with her). Despite this, I didn't give up on him, and tried to make contact with him a few times until his death a few years later. I think the anger I had toward him had become compassion at that stage, as I felt sorry for him that he could be so blind as to what I saw was important in life.

A few years after his death, after a particularly connecting but non-related ritual, my emotions on the subject decided to surface, and I discovered that I still had a lot of anger towards him (anyone experienced a release of emotion after a ritual?). It took a few months of working through it before I felt that I had released the anger I had felt towards him. If I had just angrily pushed the emotions back where they had been hiding, I probably would have become more like him, and that was something that I had chosen many years ago not to be.

It took courage to let those emotions bubble up to the surface, creating a tempest of emotions and the tears flowed! But if you are prepared to ride the wave without trying to control it, it will not overwhelm you or dump you into despair - instead, at the end of the wave of surfacing emotion, you will feel lighter, refreshed, happier and more content with your situation and your connections with your father. You don't agree with me? Then please email me your opinions.

Wyrmwood