My mother can still make me feel immature simply by sounding disappointed

Dear Delyara, Not angry. Not cruel. Just disappointed. That tone does something old to me. I become more eager to explain, more ashamed of my own limits, more likely to minimise whatever I was trying to say in the first place. It is amazing how quickly adulthood can leave the room when a familiar parent-tone enters it. The hardest part is that she probably has no idea how physical it still feels in me. She is just speaking from her own habits, her own history. Meanwhile my nervous system is quietly revisiting old instructions about who gets to be right, who gets to be upset, and who is expected to recover fastest from being misunderstood. I get off the phone tired in a way the length of the call does not justify.