Consequently, he will have most likely spent a lot of time around people who are the complete opposite. Unlike him, these people will have been active, anything but easy-going and able to assert themselves. He can either admire how another person is, or he can end up feeling a deep sense of frustration.
If the first instance, he will be getting a sense of what it would be like to express himself and, in the second, he will be aware of the fact that this is not taking place. Experiencing life in this way is going to mean that he won’t feel as though he has control over his life. A lack of power one way of looking at this experience would be to say that he lacks the oomph that is needed to stand his ground and to truly embrace life.
What this will show is that it is not possible for him to remember what took place during his early years. A vital piece of information for him to understand why he experiences life in this way, he will need to reconnect to what took place during his formative years. Through doing this, he will start to connect the dots, so to speak.
It won’t matter that this stage of his life is over and he is now an adult, as what took place will have left a big mark on his whole being. What this shows is that time alone won’t allow him to move on from what happened. A different experience at the same time, he might remember that this stage of his life was very hard and not want to dwell on it.
If he was to think about it, he might end up experiencing a number of uncomfortable feelings and his body might start to tighten up. Irrespective of whether he is unable to connect to what happened or can connect to some, if not all of what took place, his body will remember. This part of him will carry the pain that he experienced all those years ago.
A deeper look when he was a boy, he wouldn’t have lived in an environment where it was safe for him to grow and develop. Instead, this would have been somewhere where he often felt as though his life was going to come to an end. So, although he wouldn’t have been in a warzone, he had would have had a very similar experience.
The person who was supposed to provide him with the safety, security, encouragement and support that he needed would have regularly traumatised him. A constant battle fighting back (fight response) or running (flight response) away wouldn’t have been an option; the only thing he would have been able to do was to leave his body (dissociation). This would have been the only way for him to handle the pain that he was in and not be overwhelmed.
Due to how undeveloped he was, he would have just had to tolerate what was going on. Two parts these responses allowed him to survive but his whole being would still have been harmed. Ultimately, this was a time in his life when he needed a peaceful and loving environment so he could grow, not to have to fight to survive.
What took place would have caused him to lose touch with his feelings and, as a result of this, his body and it would have caused him to develop a very negative view of power or his masculine element. Self-rejection as his father used his strength in a very destructive way, he will see strength as something that is bad. The part of him that would allow him to change his life is then going to be kept at a distance.
Deep down, he will believe that if he embraces this part of him, he will be like the man who caused so much harm and he would also cause harm. His father provided him with a very negative model when it comes to power. A new inner model for him to change his life, he will need to get back into his body and to change the associations that he has formed around power and his masculine element.
The truth is that the masculine element is neutral; it all depends on how this element is expressed. It could be said that how a man, or a woman, expresses their masculinity will depend upon their level of consciousness. If they are in a good way, it will be used to serve, and if they are not, it will be used to cause harm.
This is something that can be provided by the assistance of a therapist or healer. It will be important for him to reflect on the fact that how he was treated had nothing to do with him or his value as a human being. It was simply a reflection of what was going on for his father, and there is the chance that his father was also abused in the same way by his father.