Healing the Inner Child: How Your Past Shapes the Father You Become

Every father carries a story. Some of it is love and laughter. Some of it is pain that never got the chance to heal.

In this raw and life-changing episode of 15 Minutes with Dad, host Lirec Williams opens up an honest conversation about how your childhood experiences shape the father you become. Through powerful storytelling and evidence-based insights, this episode challenges men to look inward—not to find guilt, but to find freedom.

Drawing wisdom from Dr. Gabor Maté’s The Myth of Normal, Dr. Bessel van der Kolk’s The Body Keeps the Score, and modern research on mental health in men, Lirec unpacks why emotional pain doesn’t disappear with time—it transforms into anger, silence, and disconnection if left unhealed.

You’ll learn how healing the inner child is the foundation for modern fatherhood, emotional intelligence, and breaking generational trauma. This isn’t about blame—it’s about awareness, courage, and building a legacy of presence over perfection.

🎯 In This Episode, You’ll Discover:

• How your childhood experiences silently shape your reactions and parenting style
• Why emotional suppression leads to burnout, anger, and disconnection in men
• The mental health crisis fathers are facing today—and how to get help
• 5 practical steps to begin your healing journey and reconnect with your children
• How compassion, self-awareness, and brotherhood can rebuild your sense of identity and purpose

💡 Powerful Takeaway:
Healing doesn’t make you weak—it makes you whole. The moment you start facing your past with honesty, you begin leading your children with heart.

📲 Visit 15minuteswithdad.com
for mental health resources, community tools, and growth challenges to support your healing journey.

🎧 Listen now—and take the first step toward becoming the healed, present, and peaceful father your family deserves.

Chapters

• 2:05 Opening: A Hard Truth For Men
• 2:51 The Cost Of Emotional Silence
• 3:28 Trauma, Triggers, And The Nervous System
• 5:41 Redefining Strength And Masculinity
• 7:17 Meeting The Inner Boy, Protector, Healer
• 9:39 Step One: Acknowledge And Name The Pain
• 12:11 Step Two: Self‑Forgiveness With Grace
• 14:34 Step Three: Seek Real Help And Train Emotionally
• 16:30 Step Four: Build Emotional Rituals At Home

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 1:14

Hey brother, listen. This one's for you. If you're listening right now, I want you to take a deep breath. Because what we're about to talk about, it's not easy, but it's necessary. Today we're walking into something most men spend their whole lives avoiding. Healing the inner child. Before you click away and think this is about being soft, let me tell you the truth. You can't lead your family, your kids, or your purpose if you're still fighting the ghost from your childhood. Now, I'm not here as a therapist, I'm here as a father. A man who's been broken, rebuilt, and still learning to love himself while trying to lead his family well. So let's get into it. Statistically, more than 60% of men say they've never had an emotionally safe space growing up. Not at home, not at school, not anywhere. And when you add in all these socioeconomic barriers inside of that, the cultural barriers inside of that, the number can be even larger. And here's what happens when you grow up with that kind of silence. As a man or as a father, you learn to perform, you learn to protect, and you learn to pretend you're okay when you're not. So books like The Body Keeps the Score by Dr. Bezel van der Koek talk about how our childhood experiences live in our nervous system long after we've become adults. You might not even realize it, but the anger you feel when your kid doesn't listen, the shutdown you go into when your partner starts to talk about her emotions, those reactions aren't really about now. They're echoes of a boy who never got to feel safe enough to speak up. And brother, I've been there. I know what it's like to think if I just work harder, if I just provide more, they'll see I love them. But deep down, that boy in you is still waiting for someone to say, I see you. You matter, you're enough. And let's be real for a minute. Men are struggling badly. According to the CDC here in the United States, men die by suicide nearly four times more often than women. Depression, substance abuse, and emotional burnout are higher than ever. And yet we're told to man up. But what if manning up means something different now? What if it means sitting with your pain instead of running from it? What if it means getting therapy, talking to another dad, or journaling instead of numbing out with a drink or a screen or some drugs? What if healing your childhood is actually the most masculine thing you could ever do? Because here's the truth: your kids don't need a perfect father. Your wife doesn't need a perfect spouse, they need a healthy one. They don't need you to always be strong, they need you to always be real. So there's a quote from Dr. Gabor Mate, author of The Myth of Normal, that changed my life. He said, trauma isn't what happens to you, it's what happens inside of you because of what happened to you. Think about that. If you grow, if you grew up in a home where love had conditions, where discipline was fear, where silence meant survival, you learn to protect yourself by shutting down emotionally. And now, maybe the same shutdowns is what's standing between you and your children, or you and your spouse. You might say, I don't want to yell like my dad did. But when your son spills milk or your daughter talks back, something in you just snaps. That's not who you are. It's what's in you that's unhealed. Now it's time to meet that boy inside you. The one who didn't get to cry. The one who didn't get hugged after failing. The one who still needs compassion and needs your compassion now. So where do we start? I'll give you something practical. Five steps. I like to always leave you with five things you can do. But here's a simple five-step process I've used in my own life. The first thing is you have to acknowledge that boy inside of you. You can't fix what you won't face. Write down one memory that still hurts. Say it out loud. Don't judge it, just acknowledge it. So while we're talking about this inner boy, this inner child you have, there's also an either inner protector and an inner healer that sits with that young boy. And every time you react to your current state of life, you're either going to bring, you're either the first person gonna come out is either your protector, your inner protector, or your inner healer. Now, just because they're called the inner protector and the inner healer doesn't mean that it's always a positive thing. Because sometimes when you want to do something and you choose not to because you feel like you can't or you're incapable, that can be your inner protector telling you, hey, we've been here before. It ain't gonna work out the way you think it's gonna work out, don't try it. Right? That inner healer usually takes a backseat. But when you feel, when you write down this memory that hurts you, close your eyes and imagine this boy sitting along this wall that he wants to go through. And on the other side, your healer is reaching out to you to pull you through this wall to your breakthrough. Find ways in your life where you can activate that inner healer. The inner protector has good intentions, but in most times when we have not healed our childhood trauma, it prevents us from living the life that we want to live. Number two, forgive the version of you that didn't know better. You were doing your best you could with what you had. So grace starts with you. At any stage in your life, you've made mistakes. You've probably did something that you feel will traumatize your kids, or they may or may not remember, but for you, you have not forgiven that version of you. I think about my life through the various relationships that I've had where I've learned love and I've learned what love wasn't, and I learned how I did a terrible job at different stages of my life. But also I know that there, those were versions of me trying to be okay, trying to pretend, trying to protect. And I didn't have the tools or the information to truly be that version that I thought I was at that version that I wanted, that I'm wanting to be now. I didn't have the tools to even think that this is possible back then. But I imagined myself that I was good, just like you are. I thought that I've been good, I've lasted this long, life is great, people respect me. That's all I need. But there's more. Because as people change and things grow, things change, you have to as well. Now, this next one is really coming from my heart. I want you to seek real help. Seek real help. Therapy isn't weakness, it's like training. Just like the gym but builds your body, therapy builds your emotional strength. That emotional strength is how you find happiness in your life. Most people think that their peace is when they block something out of their life, they think they're okay. No, that is not the case. You being able to block people or get rid of things that hurt you or scares you is not always the answer. In most cases, that means your resiliency really isn't there. That means that you don't really have the capability or the emotional strength to navigate hard things or difficult things in your life. And you choose to just, man, I'm just gonna get rid of it. And it's gonna keep on popping up. The type of people, the type of situations, the type of things, it's gonna keep on popping up until you're emotionally strong enough to navigate it. Number four. Create emotional rituals with your kids and your spouse. Take 10 minutes a day to ask about their feelings, not about their grades. That's how you build emotional safety. Ask them, instead of asking them how was your day today, you can phrase it like what was a high and a low in your day today? One high, one low, and and it will give you something that they were excited about that day. And they're low, something that they wish would have gone better that day. But allows them to navigate their day conscientious. Number five, build a community, build community around you. Healing in isolation never works. You need brothers who hold you accountable, remind you of your worth when you forget. You need people to join you throughout your healing. I know that through this recent change in my life, I reached out to people that I've never reached out to before, but I know that they care about me. And I reached out to them and said, Hey, sometimes I may call you for no reason. Because I'm gonna be going through some things and I need to just be able to talk. Like, are you open for that? Like, do you have the bandwidth to for me to call you and just you know go through, navigate these feelings with you? And they all said yes. And I used them and I felt like I grieved differently than I did the last time I had to deal with the loss of life grief. I grieved differently because I depended, I relied on them and they held me accountable. They reminded me of who I am and the person that I want to become. It was great, it was beautiful. Brother, I want to talk to the part of you that feels tired, the part of you that thinks no one would understand. You've been carrying weight for years, financial weight, emotional weight, generational weight, but you don't have to keep carrying it alone. You can put it down, you can rest, you can heal because the boy inside you deserves peace, and your kids and your spouse deserves the healed version of you. So here is your challenge this week. Talk to someone, a counselor, a friend, me if you have to. You can reach out to me at 15 minutes with dad at gmail.com or lyric at 15 minutes with dad.com, either one. But take one small step towards healing because your healing isn't selfish, it's leadership, and your children will thank you for it one day. This is what healing fatherhood looks like. Healing the man you are looks like. This is 15 minutes with dad. I'm Lyric Williams, and if no one has told you this lately, I am proud of you for showing up.