Bill, I'm sorry I took this long to reply, I just didn't know how to answer your question.
Now that I took a couple of days to think about it, I was never given the chance to make mistakes growing up. I was always seen as the smart, straight-A's girl that seems to have her life together (even though there were times when I really didn't). My parents and family always had high standards for me and I had a lot of pressure to be the "perfect role model" for everyone else (having good grades, graduating high school, going to college, get a job, etc). I guess I didn't really have the chance to have emotions or expressing said emotions because then I was seen as weak or vulnerable. I can compare it to parents always wanting to be strong for their children and how the kids can never see mom/dad mad or sad, let alone crying. They have created a barrier where they can only show their emotions in certain occasions, and I think that's what happened to me. I was never shown that it was okay to be sad, or to fail here and there, that I can't be good at everything, and now I have to pretend that I know what I'm doing in life when I don't. So now that all these things have happened in my life, I have no way to reacting to them since I "can't be" torn down this easily.