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The strongest, and sometimes most regrettable, parenting reactions reflect more than the present moment.

Understanding their hidden fears and hopes helps fathers respond with greater wisdom and emotional freedom.

Rather than asking, "What's wrong with me?" fathers can begin asking, "What was happening inside me?"

As I wrote in my previous post, men tend to have a harder time experiencing and coming to terms with regret than women do, based on gender socialization.

Nevertheless, in my work with fathers over the years, I have been able to develop a series of exercises designed to help them to contemplate and make sense of their regrets, rather than defend against them. This, in turn, can help them to grow, heal, and feel a renewed sense of hope and purpose as a dad, even when day-to-day parenthood has come to its conclusion.

In this post and subsequent ones, I will share some of those exercises, and some examples of how fathers have used them to their psychological advantage.

What Was Happening Inside of Me?

Choose a parenting moment that you regret, but instead of condemning yourself or blaming yourself, spend some time thinking about the following questions:

What was I feeling in that moment?

Who or what was I afraid of?

Who or what was I trying to protect or rescue?

What was I hoping to accomplish by acting/sounding the way I did?

Did my regrettable response help, in any way at all, to accomplish that?

In what ways did this evoke memories of my own childhood or adolescence?

Whose voice was I using—my own, or someone else’s, perhaps someone from my childhood?

How would........

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