Father's Day is a reminder that I need to understand my emotions to be a great dad

"It's not your fault." I heard that a lot after my dad took his own life. It was hard to believe though. He died the day after Father's Day, and I was his only child.

That gave me a ready-made excuse to make it all about me. Was I such a bad son that it had driven him to end his life? What if I had done more, been better.

Each year that meant that Father's Day and the anniversary of his death came in a package. It brought those feelings of how it was my fault back to the forefront.

Father's day felt like a hole in my life for what I was missing.

Fast forward many years (and therapy sessions) and now I am a dad. But I still carry that same trauma from my childhood, even if I am much more at peace with losing my dad.

It means Father's Day is a very complex holiday. My amazing wife encourages me to feel the sadness of losing my dad, but to also make sure I am able to enjoy my family that is here. Feel the love of my kids and not pass along the sadness that the day has brought me over the years.

The interesting thing about becoming a dad is how it caused me to revisit a lot about my own life. The perspective it gave me on my dad was particularly surprising and helpful.

Of course, over the years I have learned a lot about depression and suicide. These sicknesses have also been studied and understood much more. Fortunately, the medication and treatments have also improved.

For me, the mindset of treating it like any other disease helps a lot to dissipate the feeling that it was a choice he made. It is an illness, like cancer, and it took his life.

When I became a dad, there was a whole new revelation though. For the first time, I realized that it was an illness he couldn't fight anymore. I saw just how agonizing that must have been.  The reason was that I now understood what he was leaving behind when I looked at my newborn son.

I think some people might have reacted with anger. "How could he do this to me."

I had spent decades understanding myself though. Building empathy and honing my ability to recognize what other people might be going through.

That made my revelation look like this: "He must have been so sick to leave this behind." Because I couldn't imagine anything in the world that would have taken me away from my son.

His brain was telling him that we would be better off without him. Telling him this wasn't worth staying for. Crazy doesn't begin to describe how that sounds to me - I would give every penny I had to avoid missing out on the lives of my kids.

That gave me a whole new level of acceptance.

You have to understand yourself to avoid passing on your problems

I desperately hope that people don't identify with my personal story. I wouldn't wish the pain I went through on anybody.

It does highlight a very important lesson that has come up over and over again for me - that you have to deal with your own shit to avoid passing it down the line.

This is an extreme example, but there are so many others just like it in my life. If I weren't able to sort through all the feelings around my dad and Father's day, then I would mope around or even worse, lash out on that day each year.  My kids would get a warped view of that day.  If they became parents, they would not have any experience around how to enjoy it either. All they would have seen was a dad who treated a day that was supposed to be special for him like a negative.

As parents, we will inevitably pass some of our own phobias, neuroses, and quirks along. We are human, so are our kids. We will also pass along many positive elements as well.

That doesn't mean that we shouldn't break the cycle where we can. Especially for the big stuff. Anxious parents have anxious kids. Part of it is genetics, of course. Another part is definitely the exposure and patterns that we grow up around.  Calm parents have calm kids too.

It can be really difficult to break some of these habits. We know now that dads who can express emotions, validate feelings, and show empathy will have a huge positive impact on the resilience and mental health of their kids. But many of us didn't see that from our own dads. We have to learn it ourselves first, then be prepared to pass it along.

I have been working on this for many years. I am hopeful that I have made progress in my ability to be a positive role model for emotional well being for my kids. I know one place where it is always a struggle though - Father's Day.