It is the beginning of a life long journey of exploration, growth, frustration, worry, excitement and joy. It can also be one of the hardest challenges you will ever face.

Many new fathers struggle with issues such as:

  • Anxiety or Panic
  • Depression
  • Anger
  • Stress
  • Decreased sex drive (or facing their partner’s decreased sex drive)
  • Relationship difficulties (lost intimacy, increased conflict or emotional distance)
  • Having difficulty connecting with infants or young children
  • Feeling lost, or excluded from the new baby experience
  • Feeling abandoned by their partner, who is now more focused on the baby
  • Strained interpersonal relationships with co-workers or family members
  • Struggling with changed expectations of acceptable behavior
  • Alcohol or substance use
  • Struggling with the burden of their own upbringing (past abuse, neglect, trauma, or strained relationships)

Becoming a Father is a Transformative Experience

You Don't Have to be Perfect

If you find yourself checking off on or more of the items on the above list, don’t worry. It just means you’re normal, and that you are sharing that same struggle with many other men.

Becoming the father you want to be does not require that you first “fix,” everything in you that doesn’t measure up. Luckily, we don’t need to be a perfect parent. We just need to be “good enough” so that we give them what they need to thrive, while not being so perfect that we don’t allow our children to develop resiliency by overcoming challenge.

Being the father you want to be is a choice you make day after day, hour after hour to enact the behaviors that reflect your values.

This is easily said, but difficult to do—and you’ll never do it perfectly.

I can help you:

  • Alleviate your anxiety.
  • Develop a practice of self-care and self-compassion.
  • Decrease outbursts of anger and learn to engage your anger as a positive force.
  • Take what you need from your upbringing, and leave in the past what you do not want.
  • Decide what kind of father you want to be, and enact the practice that will achieve that goal.
  • Reduce and manage your experience of stress.
  • Learn how to identify your own needs and develop the ability to communicate them to your partner.
  • Reengage with your relationship so that it continues to grow and flourish.