We propose a novel model to explain the physical process of the thermally induced core laser leakage (TICLL) effect in a high power co-pumped ytterbium doped fiber (YDF) amplifier. This model considers the thermally induced mode bending loss decrease and the thermally induced mode instability (TMI) in the coiled YDF, and is further used to reproduce the TICLL effect in the high power co-pumped step-index $20/400$ fiber amplifier. Besides, the TICLL effect in the co-pumping scheme and counter-pumping scheme is compared. The result proves that the TICLL effect is caused by the combined effect of the thermally induced mode bending loss decrease and the TMI, and could be mitigated by adopting the counter-pumping scheme. To our best knowledge, this is the first theoretical explanation of the TICLL effect in high power fiber amplifier.