Dear Paradoxy,

My mom was infuriated by me “not caring” and started lecturing me that I should be more caring and stuff and how she always cared about me whenever I looked upset. BULLSHIT. Forgive my language but she probably asked once or twice or thrice at most, and that too after I started Med. Nobody cared during all those years that I suffered. Nobody noticed the pain I was going through when I found out about my ex cheating on me, and now she tries to say she always noticed whenever I was unhappy and that she cared about how I felt?

So your mother is gaslighting you too: telling you that she would always ask how you are and would notice if something is troubling you. Whereas you know it’s not true, and besides, if you were honest with her (or your father), they would use it against you and start criticizing you:

if I open my mouth once, they will force me to open up about my issues and then go right back to criticizing me and etc.

I know about that, btw, because my own mother used to do that: if I would complain about something, being emotionally vulnerable with her, she would use it against me and start blaming and criticizing me. So after a while I learned to never share my troubles with her, because there will be a backlash. I never felt I could confide in her.

So anyway, your mother was never too caring or empathic, quite the contrary, but now she is claiming that she was. Which is gaslighting. And she is blaming you for not showing more compassion for your father, when you know how that went in the past:

me caring for him might actually end up biting me back in the form of more criticism or something.

When you interact with your parents, you are in a self-protective mode, because whenever you open up, it might cause trouble and you might get blamed. You behave like that because you are forced to: years of experience with them have taught you to express your troubles only minimally, or else you’ll get in an even bigger trouble. Also, your father taught you that when you have an issue, to suck it up and be a man. So he wasn’t really welcoming vulnerability. On the contrary.

And so now, when he is supposedly weak, you are expected to show care and concern? When you were punished, or perhaps even ridiculed, for expressing care and concern in the past.

So yeah… this is how our parents shape us: first they condition us to live in a self-protective mode, not daring to express our true self. And when that self-protective persona proves to be faulty and inadequate, they blame us for it.

I am sorry for the way I am…..

You were shaped to be that way… by your parents’ conditioning. I hope you can start seeing that?