Dear Liquidsnake:

You don’t have to blame your father/ parents. You don’t have to leave him/ your family. What you have-to-do, for your mental health, I believe, is to see reality as it is. That is all, at this point: just see it as-it-is.

Isn’t it reality as-it-is that your father strictness with you: allowing you no mistakes has hurt you and is still hurting you? Isn’t it true that this strictness of his has distressed you throughout your life? And isn’t it so that his expectations of you, expectations of perfection (zero mistakes) have been and still are unreasonable, impossible to fulfill?

If zero mistakes is impossible to fulfill, then your father has set you up for failure, a life of impossible satisfaction.

Don’t blame your father, fine. But take this understanding deep inside you: that your father was and is wrong- that his thinking is not congruent with truth and reality (zero mistake living is impossible for any and every human being including himself).

So people, especially in a very traditional society, will side with your father and you may be the only one seeing the truth, that he was and still is wrong. And so, be it. You need to know the truth.

(A very traditional society seems to be one where the individual is sacrificed again and again for the sake of public opinion- it is a disaster for the individual, what a shame).

anita