A message from my dad really triggered me and I don't know if I'm overreacting.

[beja959]

I posted a picture on my Facebook story. The day I took the picture I was feeling in well. I have been going to the church a lot and I am meeting a cool group of accepting people. I had been lonely for a long time. I am also improving in different areas. Also that day I saw two old friends in a bar, they called me and we had a drink and conversation. So we took a picture and I posted it. This was the message my dad sent(we live in 2 different countries now):

Dad: "Who is that guy? Is it Sam? Where are you guys?"

Me: "No, It is David. We are at the Comet."

Dad: "Ah ok, when did you guys took that picture?"

Me:"It was yesterday."

Dad: "Ah ok, you appear young. With a young and cheerful face. I like it."

Me: "Ok thanks."

Dad: "Stay young and always cheerful. Positive is the best for life. kisses"

I got very bothered by this message. Moreover, it has been 2 weeks and a half since that message. It is still weighing on me.

1. Why he is going to flip it around and make it seem like he is giving me a recommendation to be positive? I posted a picture where I am happy, so why give me a recommendation? It is like he is above me telling me what I should do.
2. He said "Stay young, and stay cheerful. Positive is the best for life". Is that a critic or an order? It is as if I was willingly avoiding being positive before like it was a choice. I had many traumas; I had many abusers, no self-esteem.... I needed lots of help to start feeling better. It was not just like click a finger and be positive, that is it.
3. I remember a while back I was living with him. I was in a phase I was going through a lot! He used to say things like "You have no problems, you are fine, just be positive. You just need to stop being negative". However, he never asks me about my life or how am I doing. He just wanted to tell me about what to do based on his point of view ignoring how I felt, without even trying to know what was going on in my life.
4. Why is he making a big deal of me looking happy! Why does he have to point it out? That makes me self-conscious now and not natural about it. I feel self-conscious about posting pics because I feel like he is there ready to rate me my appearance and if I am being positive or looking young.
5. Once, when I was in a very difficult phase and depressed, he commented on my looks, like "Look how you look so done, you have no longer a salvation from that etc etc"... So now he is telling me I am looking great and just be positive, it doesn’t sound good to me anymore. It triggers me.
6. Im 32 years old. He says it as if I am not supposed to be young and cheerful. Maybe because I have been depressed for a long time. However, he could say something like: "I am proud of the work you are doing, I can sense you are feeling better by this picture. I see you are reaching your achievements. Good work" That would feel better.
7. He has no conversation with me. The only way he talks to me is by giving me recommendations, suggestions, telling me what I should do, criticizing my choices. He never says good job, or simply has a conversation for the sake of a conversation, it is always that. Recommendation and suggestion, and advice is a form of criticizing too right? He is saying I am not enough to guide my life or make my mistakes and find my path, it is like he wants to be on top of me always telling me what to do and then he gets overwhelmed and criticizes me.
8. He used to hurt me a lot with the way he talked to me and when I tried explaining to him that he is hurting me he would just simply say things like : I am too sensible, that he loves me so I am wrong, that he dont understand me because he treats me like a bestfriend, that I am behaving like my aunt which is super depressed, that I am misinterpreting him, that he do it out of love that I don’t get it. He never questioned himself, or said sorry. He always made me seem crazy for getting hurt for the way he used to relate to me and never wanted to change his way. It got to the point that I said I was loosing my time trying to explain him to respect me in 1000 different ways. I rather shut down conversation with him to zero than ever try to explain to him again. I lost to many time and moments arguing with him trying to get him to understand that he was hurting me.
9. I also kind of feel like he is trying to say "I told you so, just be positive, like I had told you long time ago." Why would he do that?
10. Also, he used to discourage me when I had a plan or goal and told him about it. He would say it wouldn't work, he said there was no way. Even when I still followed my plans and managed to win, he didn't even apologize, he didn't even recognize it and congratulate me. He would just keep doing the same thing.
11. He is probably just a failure, so he wants my life to be a failure too. He feels envy of me.
12. What is he talking about positive is the best for life? Is he positive? He is such a complainer and he is so negative all the time. He gets extremely nervous with anything. So he is talking about stuff that he doesn't know.

This has triggered me a really bad mood.

What do you think about it, since I am too involved I cant think clear.

Thank you

🫤

Totally resonates. My father is a bugger for it.
"Be happy" as a command. Were life that simple.
Gets on my tits and makes for a shallow relationship, as I cannot express how I feel much of the time. We are low contact as a result as I don't ring unless on top of things and I seldom am.
He firmly believes in positive thinking, won't ever accept anything else.
Control freak at worst, naïve at best.

Get therapy. Sounds like a boomer who simply is pants at communicating and was proud to see you smiling. That's it.

That is an extremely strange first thought to have.

In the kindest possible way, this level of obsessing isn’t healthy.

I also think the strangeness of the words used are partially due to the fact that there are translation issues/English not the first language - as you alluded to on a previous comment. I think you might have gotten different comments from PP if there wasn’t the language barrier.

At some point you have to decide how you’re going to let people affect you. Your dad basically said “you look happy, that’s good to see, long may it continue”. It’s very odd to view his comments as an order.

He may well be a poor parent but you’re playing your part in this too. You’re massively overthinking this and it feels as if you’re determined to make it an issue. You don’t need to include your dad in your social circle from now on but try to let this go.

I chose not to involve my parents in any discussion about how I feel about their parenting during my childhood or any change in my approach to my relationship with them. I did not think they would be likely to develop insight, I was concerned that one of my parents in particular would lash out and hurt me in response, and I also felt like it would hurt them very badly to say such things without achieving anything in terms of them suddenly being able to change who they are.

But there's a huge spectrum between say absolutely nothing at all and have a massive emotional confrontation where you accuse them of child abuse. It's such a personal question I just think you have to think carefully about what you hope to achieve, what their response is likely to be, and how you are likely to feel about their response. There is also something referred to as justify, argue, defend, explain (JADE) - and often people who are domineering or manipulative will drag you into this. Whereas actually, you don't need to JADE to have a boundary. It can just be.

You have had a big emotional response to your dad's recent text, so I guess think about how you will feel in response to what he would say / ask if you told him you were distancing yourself, and what having a discussion with him about it would achieve for you. You can also wait to see if he notices and questions you about the distance, or not. You don't have to make your decision on whether to speak to him about it or not, right away. Changing your relationship and programmed responses to your parents is a process that takes time so I don't think you need to be rash. And you can be forgiving of yourself whilst you work out the best approach for you.

Re passing on generational trauma it helped me to read a lot around the topic and to consciously parent in a way that the evidence suggests is good for children's emotional and relational development. Eg the book you wish your parents had read. I also think just having awareness and insight into toxic parent-child relationships is really important to break the cycle. Nevertheless it's still something that troubles me also.

I agree with @Plinkyplonkyplod that you don't need to announce that you are withdrawing a bit. That would only open a debate and as you say he sees himself as a victim, comments that make you feel guilty/responsible for the situation. I don't think that would do you much good at the moment, when you are trying to get over this.
Having said that I'm not a professional and as many have said, you probably would find therapy very helpful in finding a way to deal with your feelings and managing the situation.
I also think the idea of lowering expectations is helpful. We often see examples, or literature of perfect parenting, it can set expectations very high for people who might not be emotionally equipped to meet them.
Do you know if he had a difficult childhood? Or traumatic times during his life?
Perhaps this might account for some of his behaviour, and whilst you may not want to think about it immediately, it might help you understand how his behaviour is not really about you, but about him.
Re passing it on to children, I think that you are thoughtful, aware and are trying to work through this and are already very conscious of how it can affect people.

Op, I totally get it. He used to write off, minimize, discredit your feelings when you were unhappy or unwell. Now he can see you are well he is using that to effectively say "I told you it wasn't so bad, glad you are finally seeing sense"
It's an act of microaggression.

I get it.

Ps Just to clarify when I said
it can set expectations very high for people who might not be emotionally equipped to meet them.
I meant it can set our expectations from parents etc as very high, when the parent might not be emotionally equipped to meet those expectations.
Sorry for the confusion