Dear Addy,

Well, it’s not the best weekend for me because I tested positive for covid today, and am having a pretty massive headache. But it’s a little better now than a few hours ago, and thankfully, I am able to reply 🙂

Let me be frank: it seems to me that you’re in a bit of a Protector mode again, since you’re now trying to diminish the bad that happened in your childhood (your father harshly criticizing you for even small “imperfections”, getting furious and yelling at you, easily losing patience with you). Here is what you said earlier about it:

My father is a civil engineer and perfectionist and he gets angry if things aren’t going as he wants it to be. And in my teenage I used to help him even though I didn’t really wanted it but in my head I was like no let me help.. But whenever I do something wrong, or get anxious to find tool or take some more time to find.. He’d get furious and scold me

Once while working he told me find something and I couldn’t find it and he give me like a “dead eye” and I got really frustrated and I screamed at him and ran into my room and like “I ain’t no living here no more” but my mom stopped me tried so solve this matter.

What you’re mentioning now (in your latest post) is only that he was comparing you to other boys in your village, and that all parents were doing that. But that’s not the only thing he was doing, was he? It was his anger and rage at you that was truly damaging to your psyche, and then in addition, there was comparison and criticism if you haven’t performed as well as others. This kind of treatment for sure left a mark on you, even if you claim it hasn’t.

Anita already talked about it (not sure if on this thread or elsewhere) that in childhood our psyche is like a sponge and soaks in both the good and the bad conditioning. That’s why the first 7 years of our life are called formative years. So even if you think that some things that happened to you weren’t a big deal – from an adult’s perspective – they were a pretty big deal for you as a child. And it left a mark on you, your self-confidence, your relationships etc.

So please Addy, don’t try to minimize what happened to you. Your father unfortunately wasn’t a loving and kind father, but a strict, judgmental and angry father. Perhaps he was sometimes nice to you, but only on those occasions when you did everything “perfectly”. Otherwise he wasn’t pleasant at all, as it seems to me.

You are also finding excuses for your mother. But she did tell you to stay silent and not confront your father, hasn’t she? When he criticized you, when he was extremely harsh with you, you were supposed to endure it silently and “turn the other cheek”. Because in your culture, the father needs to be respected, even if he is a bully.

Your mother didn’t want conflict indeed, but on what terms? Well, the terms were that you suppress your protest and your justified anger (and your natural self-defense mechanism), and keep silent. This is how you’ve learned not to set boundaries, to never say directly and openly if something bothers you. To never complain. To not act in your best interest (because sometimes it is in our interest to protect ourselves). Your mother taught you that.

She pleaded at your reason, telling you that you should be more mature than your father:

My mom to me is like “one of you have be the understanding one, Now you decide”

She presented it (enduring abuse) as a virtue. And you obeyed. You decided to be the “understanding one”, who will take the abuse silently. And so you accepted – due to your mother’s programming – that you cannot protect yourself from your father’s anger, that he has the right to disrespect you whenever he pleases, and you should just swallow it. This is how she disabled you from setting healthy boundaries.

I am not saying that you should be angry at either your father or mother, and go to attack them and tell them all your grievances. No, that’s not what I am saying. But what I am saying is that you need to first accept that certain abuse and false, harmful conditioning happened in your childhood. Even if your parents didn’t know better – even if they didn’t do anything outside of your culture – still, they have harmed you. Their parenting left a mark on you, left certain wounds in your psyche, which you need to heal. If you want to have a happy and fulfilling life.

Admitting that the damage happened – even if your parents didn’t do it on purpose – is the first step to healing.