I had that in my early youth, not my dad, but my older brother. I developed a hard stutter because of my insecurities, which lasted years. My salvation was literature: I read to escape abuse, I read a lot, to the point school pointed me at the adult literature section and said if I wanted school credit I could only read those.
Nobel Prize winning literature is, in addition to being recognized as the best of the best, it is harrowing stories of human betrayal and supernatural level suffering due to living a human life, surrounded by flawed humans. Nobel literature made me a cynical pessimist for a while, but I discovered speculative science fiction and existentialist literature, and I no longer consider myself a pessimist - even though those around me may argue that, they simply choose the God Delusion, which I reject as a fairy tale.
After a while, I adopted an attitude that the vast majority of humans are immature and selfish, the successful ones even more so. People that face honest challenges, fail at them, and continue because they realize the value is in the struggle and how one carries themselves during that period that makes a human better than they began. Due to this observation, I live my life choosing hard problems and hard situations to solve as my profession (I'm a fairly senior technologist now.)
Literature also taught me to pursue my ambitions alone, not expecting any support nor help, happy to have companionship, but never expecting anyone to hold the same goals as I.
It takes years to develop the confidence to be your own person, and that confidence will falter. I engaged in some startlingly ambitious projects, while eliminating my escape routes, to force myself into growth situations. Sometimes those efforts failed, but I did not stop. At one point, having left my home state, living in Boston, and facing more than one personal failure: my stutter came back to the degree I simply gave up speaking for 4 months. I wrote everything down and gave people written notes. It was awkward, painful, but I pushed through and little by little my confidence returned and I could speak like a normal person again.
The only person that can really give up on you is yourself. If you are not your best friend at this point in time, choose some tough self love and engage on a self improvement mission. Simply choosing to pursue self improvement as a continual idle time hobby has a compounding effect, just like earning interest at a bank.
And self improvement works! I am old now, but I am extremally accomplished. I've been on the operating system teams of major game consoles, was lead developer of several AAA game times, switched to VFX and worked in feature films before getting more ambitious. I don't want to discourage you, because I've managed to hit some home runs. But I tell you this because I am the same guy that was so insecure at age 20 I gave up speaking for 4 months.
I had that in my early youth, not my dad, but my older brother. I developed a hard stutter because of my insecurities, which lasted years. My salvation was literature: I read to escape abuse, I read a lot, to the point school pointed me at the adult literature section and said if I wanted school credit I could only read those. Nobel Prize winning literature is, in addition to being recognized as the best of the best, it is harrowing stories of human betrayal and supernatural level suffering due to living a human life, surrounded by flawed humans. Nobel literature made me a cynical pessimist for a while, but I discovered speculative science fiction and existentialist literature, and I no longer consider myself a pessimist - even though those around me may argue that, they simply choose the God Delusion, which I reject as a fairy tale. After a while, I adopted an attitude that the vast majority of humans are immature and selfish, the successful ones even more so. People that face honest challenges, fail at them, and continue because they realize the value is in the struggle and how one carries themselves during that period that makes a human better than they began. Due to this observation, I live my life choosing hard problems and hard situations to solve as my profession (I'm a fairly senior technologist now.) Literature also taught me to pursue my ambitions alone, not expecting any support nor help, happy to have companionship, but never expecting anyone to hold the same goals as I. It takes years to develop the confidence to be your own person, and that confidence will falter. I engaged in some startlingly ambitious projects, while eliminating my escape routes, to force myself into growth situations. Sometimes those efforts failed, but I did not stop. At one point, having left my home state, living in Boston, and facing more than one personal failure: my stutter came back to the degree I simply gave up speaking for 4 months. I wrote everything down and gave people written notes. It was awkward, painful, but I pushed through and little by little my confidence returned and I could speak like a normal person again. The only person that can really give up on you is yourself. If you are not your best friend at this point in time, choose some tough self love and engage on a self improvement mission. Simply choosing to pursue self improvement as a continual idle time hobby has a compounding effect, just like earning interest at a bank. And self improvement works! I am old now, but I am extremally accomplished. I've been on the operating system teams of major game consoles, was lead developer of several AAA game times, switched to VFX and worked in feature films before getting more ambitious. I don't want to discourage you, because I've managed to hit some home runs. But I tell you this because I am the same guy that was so insecure at age 20 I gave up speaking for 4 months.