143: How to Fix Your Daddy Issues in 12 Minutes (With This Mental Exercise)

Hi and welcome back to Reclamation Radio. I am Dr. Kelly Brogan and today I am excited to share an extremely powerful practice that I learned from one of my Family Constellation practitioners, Elitza Velikovna. And I would say that this is applicable and useful for anybody who has a father, but specifically if you are somebody who has struggled with codependent relationship dynamics, feel trapped by anxious, avoidant nightmares in relational dynamics, or if you find yourself attracted repeatedly to men who are just not what you would call healthy for you, ultimately, right? Who you somehow know in your bones cannot possibly meet your needs, and yet you feel veritably obsessed, right? So these kinds of dynamics are something, I'm fascinated by this, are something that I unpack in The Reclaimed Woman and also in a lot of the episodes on this show. But suffice it to say that Eros is the force, it's the life force that brings us back, that literally magnetizes and attracts us to the wound that wants care, attention, integration, that wants to feel seen, right? And if that particular patterning came directly from an experience of being the daughter of your father, then it makes a whole lot of sense that you would somehow generate the conditions to close that loop with a man who is not your father, but your romantic partner. And you end up projecting all of this material from your dad onto this guy and trying to work it out with him, which in the Imago world is theoretically possible, you know, that you could resolve these incompatibilities and come into a mature adult dynamic that serves both of you informed by the respective sensitivities that you each have to each other's attachment issues, right? So it's theoretically possible to evolve this. However, wouldn't it be lovely to not even necessarily need to attract these kinds of dynamics any longer to actually segregate the experience of your father from the experience of your adult romantic partner. So if you've heard me talk about father woundology, you've heard me probably reduce it down to a simple concept, which is unsafety. It is the little girl feeling, experiencing life, her body, the world, the house, her family as unsafe. And if the father is the guardian, is the protector, is the one who sets the container, then any sort of deficiency in that realm is going to read as unsafety. And the amazing news is that we have the capacity to respond to that limitation, to that deficiency with our adult self right We can actually provide this safety for ourselves We can mature the introject of our father inside of us, which by the way, is often characterized by a lot of shadow material. So a lot of what we might judge in other men is very likely within us, okay? And of course, this is true for women as well, but I'm just focusing on this polarity for the moment. and that you can mature and integrate not only all the unsavory aspects of your father that are already in you in that interject, right? What Jung would refer to as the animus, but also mature the benefic aspects, right? And to come into alignment with wise action, with integrity of word, with follow through with the power of your choice in every moment, right? So you can relate to your emotional reactivity as a custodian instead of being some sort of narcotized guard who is like, you know, off duty while all of the reactive energies are, you know, running wild. so this little exercise invokes a lot of the principles and tenets of family constellations so if you're not super familiar with family constellation stay tuned i will help to familiarize you over time however there is the basic idea that you sense in your body so it's a somatic practice that you sense in your body, how either imagined figures or entities, or if you're doing this in a real life setting one on one with a practitioner or with little symbolic dolls or papers or whatever, or if you're in a group and there are other bodies, you're orienting towards how you feel in your body about these other things, how you're perceiving them, right? Does orienting towards them allow you to feel open or closed? Do you feel bigger than them or smaller than them? It's very simple things, right? Where do you find yourself looking? So if you have a parent or an aging loved one who is struggling with balance, joint stiffness, or simply getting around, you may have wondered what you can possibly do to support them. And I believe that I have found the solution for our parents. if you are in my generation. So Juvent's micro-impact platform is one of the most effective and science-backed ways to improve mobility because it delivers precise, low-magnitude vibrations through the soles of the feet, improve circulation, and help maintain stability. There's no sweating. There's no strain. You literally just stand on it for 10 minutes a day. I speak to the Juvent CEO, Rush Simonson in episode 114. And I learned that his own mother, who was in her 90s, went from bed bound to fully mobile with this simple daily routine. So if you want to be sure that somebody that you love stays healthy and independent, go to juvent.com forward slash Kelly Brogan and use the code Kelly300 for $300 off at checkout. you can bring this incredible science tool into their lives And I think it one of the most thoughtful and powerful investments that you can make in their well So again, it's juvent.com forward slash Kelly Brogan, and the code is Kelly300. So this is an exercise I'm going to take you through with some prompts that are called healing statements. So a big part of Family Constellation is basically the spells that we cast with words. And these words tend to be phrases that are very basic, very simple, orienting and systematizing. So they're putting in order these different aspects of the family constellation, including hierarchy. They're also in service of the belonging of every single, you know, part of your system, which includes perpetrators. So this is a simple exercise though, that just involves you, your dad, and either your current partner or a future partner. So let's get into it. Go ahead and imagine that your father is in front of you to your left and to your right is your partner or your potential partner. And just take a moment to see both of those men in your mind's eye. Now, sense how you feel looking at your father and how you feel looking at your partner. How does it feel to look back and forth between your dad and your partner? Does it feel okay to include them both? Does one of them feel bigger than the other or bigger or smaller than you? Do you feel like you want to eliminate your father from this scene? Even if they're next to each other, does your partner feel somehow farther away or somehow closer and just really get information from the inclusion of both your father and your partner with the acknowledgement that they are separate and that you have distance as yourself a separate person so now go ahead and look at your father and you can either speak along with me in your mind, or you can write these down and speak them out loud as you look in your mind's eye at your father. You are my father, and you are the only father for me. You are the right father for me, because only through you can I be here. I take you as you are, which means that I remove my conditions and need for you to be different. And then look at your partner and say, you are not my father. And I am not a little girl And you cannot replace my father You are a man And we are equals. I accept whatever limitations you come with. And they are yours to carry. And so this kind of practice is deceptively simple. because what it allows you to perceive on a body level is the possibility that there is energy held up, trapped, and otherwise captured in your dynamic with your father relative to your partner or this potential partner. Because if there's any kind of discomfort with his presence, there is unresolved dynamic energy that is very likely to result in your attracting somebody who has many of the characteristics that he embodies and engaging in the eggs from the hardware store dynamic of attempting to source love from the impossible place. However, when you put your father in front of you and acknowledge that he is the only one, he is the only father, everyone else is a false father. He is the only one. And he is the perfect one for you because he gave you life. Your life came through that man, right? And you are in many ways half that man. So when you can give him that place, take him as he is and also see your partner as co-existent and also having his place that is distinct. You know, Ellie often prompts that your partner is one of many, but your mom is the only mom and your dad is the only dad. And when we sometimes experience our partners as being the only one, the one, right? There may be some of that projection at play. which again is what it is. We have these karmic dynamics to evolve us, to catalyze an expansive reclamation of aspects of ourselves that might have, you know, been left outside of our sphere of self-possession otherwise. So it's not to say that there's anything inherently wrong with these karmic dynamics or that they're even worth avoiding because you're going to have the dynamics that are right for you in the stage of life that you're in. And this is the principle that underpins adult love, sovereign love. So I hope that that's a helpful perspective and a little bit of a taste of family constellation magic. you