[Kate*]

Same here. Mental illness runs strong on one side of my family, and my anxiety was blatantly obvious practically from birth. My parents never even suggested professional help as an option. I started meds at 29 and said to myself 'You mean I could've been this much better DECADES AGO?!" I felt the same way when I got my disability diagnosis.

My dad is the master of denial and somehow grew out of his own severe anxiety, so he just told to get over it. I'm 34 and he's still in denial about everything that makes me atypical.

Sometimes our parents genuinely don't know, and other times, their own denial ends up hurting us. People don't become perfect when they become parents, they're still human and that's my best guess about what happened with me and maybe with you too.