**Tl;dr**

My dad believes that my mum's decision to send me to an all-boys, Catholic high school – that none of my friends from primary school, and nobody else I knew, attended – 30 minutes away from where I grew up and went to primary school caused my anxiety.

He said he noticed a distinct difference in me in grade 7 (last year of primary school) and grade 8 (first year of high school) and all but said the environment, the lack of friends, the distance, etc. were to blame. I don't really have an opinion on whether this is true or not. Surely I am not the only person who has gone through this.

My objective in managing my anxiety is to move forward and deal with the problems I am facing now. I can't go back in time to change something like my school.

His comments might not have irked me so much if what he was saying came purely from a place of concern, but it didn't sound like it was coming from a caring place, rather a place of admonishment for my mum and that he knew what was best for me.

I have a strained relationship with my dad (context below, if you're interested). Am I being unreasonable? Is he right? Is part of solving my issue acknowledging what caused it? Should I have told him that he was at the centre of particular things that could also have contributed to messing me up in my childhood/tween/teenage years?

I am a bit lost. If you have any other resources where I could talk to someone about the whole thing, I'd happily accept them. I thought of r/relationship_advice but I'm not sure if the long-winded prose that basically details my whole life and how my dad fits into it is exactly what they want.

**Context**

I've always had a somewhat strained relationship with my dad. I've been seeing him less since I came of age and wasn't bound by court orders to see him 5 nights a fortnight any more. I'm thankful I see him less because things are just never easy with him.

Anyway, I was at his place yesterday for his birthday – and of course we talk 'shop' on his birthday, because he seems incapable of not bringing up drama any time I see him – and I was trying to explain to him that my experience with antidepressants has been that they can make you tired, and because I felt he was also depressed (and struggling to sleep) and it wouldn't be the worst thing if he had to go on them.

Side note: he doesn't like antidepressants (which is why it took my a year to tell him I'd gone on them) because his sister died after going on medication and he's sceptical about the causation there.

He dismissed my suggestion, which is fine because I'm used to it, but it caused him to dive into the 'instigating incident' (I had a panic attack at work) that caused me to go onto antidepressants.

He's said before he doesn't want me on antidepressants, and he said it again. He said it was negligent of my mum (whom I live with) to not involve him in this treatment, which then led onto him spitting the dummy and saying what I explained in the tl;dr about my schooling. It's put me on edge because I feel like he doesn't respect my agency, but at the same time, I don't know if he's right or not.

Regarding the things 'he was at the centre of particular things that could also have contributed to messing me up in my childhood/tween/teenage years': he met a woman who had two daughters (roughly 1 and 2 years younger than me) when I was about 11, they moved across the country by the time I was 13 to live with us. The environment was toxic for a number of years, primarily due to the older daughter who had a vindictive and malicious streak. By the time I was 15, I had a half-sister, whom was taken out of the state by her mother when she and my dad broke up. It was a hard period for me and probably the biggest and most notable stressor that comes to mind as happening in my life.

My counsellor recently resigned (from the profession) so I am now in the process of finding a new one, but it's taking a lot longer than I'd hoped and I really needed to get some words out. I don't mind if nobody reads this, but truly any advice would be welcome.