Content warning: This article discusses abuse. If you asked me a long time ago which of my parents I thought I was most like, I would’ve said my mother. It was an easy answer: both of us have always been sweet, warm, easygoing people. However, as I get older, I realize the answer to that question isn’t so simple. For the longest time, I wanted to be nothing like my father — but the past few years have taught me I have a lot more in common with him than with my mother, especially when it comes to my mental health.
My father has always been an angry person. Growing up, I witnessed him mistreat the women in his life. He lost his temper very easily, was explosive, and did things that hurt the people closest to him, including me. As I got older, I started to resent my father for the things he did and the impact he left on the people around him.
This resentment and my complicated feelings for him are what led us to go no contact several times throughout my college years. There were times where me and my father wouldn’t talk for several months due to how badly he hurt me emotionally. It became a pattern: we’d get into a huge fight, and I’d block him. But several months later, I’d miss him, feel bad, unblock him, and talk things out.
I couldn’t wrap my head around why my father was the way he was. I couldn’t fathom why a person would behave the way he behaved, and how someone could do such hurtful things and not feel guilty or bad about it. I genuinely thought my father was an inherently bad person — that he was born that way, and that he was just evil for the hell of it.
I expected him to think I was crazy or unstable, but to my surprise, he said, “I understand. I go through the same things.”
My father and I eventually reconciled sometime when I was in college, and I even lived with him at some point when I was experiencing conflict with my mom. Things between us didn’t magically change overnight — it took time, a lot of healing and reflection, and hard conversations, but things did get better between us. As we talked more and more, we started being able to open up emotionally to one another. I slowly started to see my father in a different light, and eventually, he told me something that changed everything for me.
I remember everything so clearly: it happened at dinner one night, over burgers and beer and a bowl of truffle fries. He had asked me how I was doing, and at the time, I was struggling a lot with my borderline personality disorder. I was honest with him and told him everything — about my episodes, the extreme emotional highs and lows, and the dissociation. I expected him to think I was crazy or unstable, but to my surprise, he said, “I understand. I go through the same things.”
From there, my father opened up to me about what went on inside his head. It was something I was hearing for the first time, and weirdly enough? It was so close to what I was experiencing. He told me that, like me, he experienced a lot of big emotions that changed rapidly. “I go from hot to cold very quickly,” was the way he phrased it.
My father also told me he had a lot of difficulty regulating his emotions, and that, for him, finding a middle ground emotionally was hard. When I told him about the dissociation I was experiencing, he said that he experienced the floaty out-of-body feeling I had, too. I asked how long he felt that way; he had said it was since he was 11. Hearing this from him felt strange — I could’ve sworn I was talking to myself.
A part of me will always be angry with him for everything that he’s done, but another part of me understands that this is a man struggling with a lot more demons than I previously thought.
We had also started talking about his past relationships, and to my surprise, he had a guilty conscience when it came to the women he had mistreated. For the longest time, I thought that he was unaware of the fact that he hurt others or that he didn’t care about the impact he was making on those closest to him. But it turns out that all that time, he carried so much guilt and regret and knew what he did was wrong.
That’s when it hit me: my father wasn’t some inherently evil person who hurt the people around him just because he wanted to and didn’t care. He was just a man who struggled a lot with his mental health, a lot to the point where it affected various areas of his life — including and especially relationships. I thought back on his life: immigrating to the U.S. from Vietnam when he was eleven, having a Vietnam War veteran father who had PTSD, and all that he went through — things I knew and didn’t know. In a way, I realized his childhood was a lot like mine — and that he might’ve been struggling with borderline personality disorder in the same way that I was.
That’s not to say that his mental health issues excuse anything he did, because it doesn’t. Having mental health issues is never an excuse to do bad things and hurt people. Coming to this realization doesn’t mean I automatically forgave him and stopped resenting him, either: a part of me will always be angry with him for everything that he’s done, but another part of me understands that this is a man struggling with a lot more demons than I previously thought.
For most of my life, I believed I was the spitting image of my mother, but as I grew up, I realized that I’m more like my father. It’s not a good or bad thing; it’s just part of who I am. Whether it’s the giant emotions that overwhelm me or the way my brain works — there’s no denying that I am my father’s daughter.
If you or someone you know is seeking help for mental health concerns, visit the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) website, or call 1-800-950-NAMI(6264). For confidential treatment referrals, visit the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) website, or call the National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP(4357). In an emergency, contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK(8255) or call 911.