That’s sort of a tricky question to be honest. I’d just like to clear up that in no way was it physical/verbal abuse or anything particularly close to it, and they aren’t particularly negative people at all, it’s just a tendency of theirs to constantly want to correct little things about my behavior in any way that parents as loving as they have always been should but so often and so bluntly that it comes off as slightly insulting when I’m trying to have an unrelated conversation. Related to the massive things that I’ve messed up recently like having to drop out of the one class I was trying to take over the summer, they’ve been really understanding that sometimes one can be so disorganized that it’s hard to manage trying to pull one’s life together and tackle a really hard class at the same time, so those aren’t really so much a concern with them as they are with me having trouble not ruminating on them. My parents haven’t really explicitly been treating me like I’m ‘goofy’, but that’s really just been more of a general consensus of most of the things I’ve been involved with like when I was on the rowing team last year (being the slowest rower that didn’t eventually quit and ultimately not making the team the following year despite being ridiculously close), and a ton of recurring jokes and nicknames about me from the summer camp that I’ve worked at for the last several years. I know this is something about myself that I should just try to embrace and enjoy who I am, but for some reason I just can’t stop being negative about the fact that this has been a recurring theme throughout most of the numerous things I’ve been involved with in my life. My parents have always told me that I’m the best and very capable, and that I put myself under too much pressure actually. It’s just most other people that communicate the other things.

I’m in Ann Arbor, MI so there’s quite a bit of pressure from multiple directions when it comes to the social scene sometimes, but you’re definitely right. I’m just very thrown off right now, because this was a person I’d called my best friend for years and looked forward to doing a lot together this summer and basically being bros for life, and when I now can’t deny that we’re drifting in different directions it stresses me out that my one friend that I had thought I could always count on no matter what isn’t necessarily that way. I think I have a way of using the feeling of being stressed out by this as an excuse to not study as hard as I know I should, and that resulted in me just failing a midterm for a class that I’m now dropping. I apologize for my confusing communications, it’s just that little mistakes I’ve made everywhere I go, academically and socially, just constantly seem to be stressing me out lately and when I talk about them without being calm then I can see how they’d come out as an incomprehensible splatter. I’d never thought of trying tai chi before and from the way it’s been described above it seems like it could definitely help me. Thank you all so much for the advice, it’s good to know that there are people out there that care and have relevant things to say.