"You're daddy is your protector. He's someone you can always run to when you need a hug," says Kami, 33. "But he was never there," she says of her own father. "Tired of the pain," she wrote him a letter to dissolve their relationship.
When she realized that there was more pain in knowing that her father was completely out of her life, Kami tried to make amends. But he didn't respond to her second letter. "No matter how many men I try to shove in there, I'm still yearning for that one person that I feel should have given it to me," she says. "I have gone so far to seek acceptance," she says, recognizing that three breast jobs she's had, totaling about $20,000, were not the answer.
She asks Dr. Phil: "How do I resolve the issues with my father when he's no longer a part of my life?"
Dr. Phil says that Kami is asking the wrong question if she's looking to find a way to get her father back. Instead, the question she should be asking is how she can find peace within herself, or how she can give herself what she wishes she were getting from her dad.
"Quit looking externally," he advises. "Happiness, peace, a sense of well-being and self-worth come from the inside out. It doesn't come from the outside in."
Though Kami says she's proud of who she is and what she's accomplished, there's a piece of her that wants the validation from her father.
"If that doesn't come, don't you need to be willing to give that to yourself?" asks Dr. Phil, elaborating on how to do just that.
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Sometimes we have to give ourselves what we wish we could get from somebody else. Sometimes we have to be our own best friend.
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You've got to forgive your dad for being who he is. Remember that the only person you control is you.
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Plastic surgery is not the answer. Neither is making amends with her father. What Kami needs to do, says Dr. Phil, is find her "authentic self" — what uniquely defines you from the rest of the world.
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Never in the history of the world has there been another you. Never ever in the history of the world will there ever be another you. Your mission needs to be to find out exactly, precisely who that is. You can't be your own best friend if you don't know who you are.
