Lifting the Father’s Shadow

About the Event

The role of “father” — or second parent — is not dependent on gender. Any person who steps into a child’s life as a primary provider, protector, or play-partner embodies this archetypal role. In childhood, this role carries three essential functions: protection, provision, and play. When these are present, children develop confidence, a sense of safety, and the inner permission to explore and delight in the world. When they are missing or distorted, the impact travels with us into adulthood, shaping the way we relate to ourselves, others, and life itself.

The Broken Father Field is a term that describes what happens when a father uses his negative ideas about his child or children to stabilize his own nervous system, keeping himself safe from his unhealed trauma, shame, or overwhelm. Instead of receiving protection, provision, and play, the child becomes responsible for the parent’s emotional balance — often because the child has internalized the father’s unconscious contracts to use the child, such as “I, the father, will believe my kid is weak and incompetent in order not to feel my own shame.” These broken fields can entangle our internal play circuitry with fear, rage, compulsive seeking, or avoidance, leaving us without the inner experience of vitality and supportive strength that a father is meant to bring.

In this course, we will explore the neuroscience of fathering, including the remarkable differences in how children’s brains respond to paternal play, presence, and engagement. We will work with Sarah Peyton’s healing modalities of unconscious contracts, time travel, and resonance to unwind the father’s trauma from our own, releasing what was never ours to carry. Together, we will:

• Identify the patterns of the Broken Father Field and how they show up in our work, relationships, and inner world
• Release unconscious contracts that we inherited from our fathers’ wounds and the ways they saw us
• Time-travel into our fathers’ histories to create compassionate separation between their suffering and our own identities
• Meet the father’s critical inner voice and understand how its echoes have shaped our self-concept
• Restore the essential functions of protection, provision, and play within our adult selves

This course will support both clients and practitioners in recognizing how the Broken Father Field appears in relational and helping contexts. Participants will develop greater clarity around when others are responding to them through these broken patterns and will gain tools to remain grounded, warm, and self-connected in the face of these dynamics.

The work we do together will be deep, spacious, and transformative. Expect to come away with a renewed sense of inner support, a clearer relationship with the paternal line, and a more embodied experience of safety, resource, and joyful play. Together, we will begin restoring what the essential father role makes possible: steadiness, aliveness, and the unwavering sense that we are worth protecting and providing for.

Cost and How to Register

*PLEASE NOTE:

• Your tuition payment is non-refundable (but it is transferable).
• The course will be recorded for those who want to learn asynchronously for some or all sessions.
• This work is not therapy and is not a substitute for therapy. If you have a sense that you would be destabilized by yourself or others speaking about difficult events, then this event may not be for you. While we hope that the processes and information that we share can be of use in your journey, we do not have the resources to support extreme psychological difficulties.

If you have questions or need support, please email help@sarahpeyton.com

About Sarah

Sarah Peyton, Certified Trainer of Nonviolent Communication and neuroscience educator, integrates brain science and the use of resonant language to heal personal and collective trauma with exquisite gentleness.

Sarah is a sought-after expert who brings neuroscience expertise together with depth work, self-compassion, and the transformative potential of language. She works with audiences internationally to create a compassionate understanding of the effects of relational trauma on the brain, and teaches people how words change and heal us.

Sarah teaches and lectures internationally and is the author of four books on relational neuroscience and self-compassion: Your Resonant Self: Guided Meditations and Exercises to Engage Your Brain’s Capacity for Healing, the companion Your Resonant Self Workbook: From Self-sabotage to Self-care, and Affirmations for Turbulent Times: Resonant Words to Soothe Body and Mind, and The Antiracist Heart: A Self-Compassion and Activism Handbook, co-authored alongside Roxy Manning, PhD.