It can be very hard to get rid of early conditioning from a parent like your father. A parent can instill some very toxic thought patterns in a child.

It's very possible that your desire to punish this person for not appreciating all your effort stems from how that is what your father actually instilled in you. That is what he chose to do "punish" and he even hit you too. This tends to become a road block when it comes to "letting it go" after all, your father did not "let things go" if you did not measure up to what HE wanted from you.

The other challenge you desribe here is how your personal reward ability is OFF. You struggle to function without some presence PUSHING you like your father did. This sets a person up to become a codependent which leads to relationships that are unrewarding and toxic for you. Then your only feeling a sense of safe when you are working and doing, that too is learned behavior that comes from your father.

Without realizing it Lavieilamant you tend to gravitate to the familiar, it's what you know and the path you take because it's what you know. This is a path your father chose for you from a very early age, but it was NEVER a path of your own choice and NEVER healthy for you. Your father trained you to need to please others NOT yourself. He trained you to follow the needs of others too, again NOT for yourself.

Also, if you sit and think about it, this person NEVER really loved and cared about you, this is the same dynamic you experienced with your father. Your father did not know HOW to love a child, that NEVER means you were not worthy of love. Your father did not think about YOU either, instead he was only capable of thinking about what HE wanted from you. This is the familar to you that you need to finally realize so you don't keep ending up with the same personality your father had that was simply never healthy for you.

This is who your father was, you need to break away from him mentally and learn how to be a different person than your father is. Your father's presence is in your mind too much.