My father still talks to me like capability cancels fragility

Dear Delyara, He is not unloving. He is just built from a different emotional century. When I try to speak about feeling overwhelmed, he shifts instantly into solutions and standards. Work harder. Don’t think too much. Everybody has pressure. You just keep going. There is no cruelty in it, but there is also no place to put the actual texture of what I’m trying to say. I think what hurts me is not that he doesn’t care. It’s that he still equates my visible functionality with inner strength. Because I can cope, he assumes I am not also carrying too much. Because I have kept the structure of my life standing, he thinks the internal weather must be manageable enough. Capability has hidden my tenderness from him for years. Maybe from me too.