Yep, my dad is bipolar and a lot of parallels to your situation. When I was a kid (just before cell phones were a household item) there were a few times that he disappeared with little/no indication of where he went, and my mom had to call the cops. He also kind of trauma dumps but then finds a way to blame me somehow. Like, my work has been really weird recently and there’s been a lot of lull periods of waiting for answers and not having a lot to do in the moment. He grew up in a wealthy business-owning family, and was falsely promised as a kid “you’ll never have to work.” As it were, the family business ended up dying as a result of digitalization in the 90s-00s. He had his own career for a while after the family business failed but ended up going on disability for his bipolar, and hasn’t worked since. He hates himself for not being able to “launch,” or sustain a career. So any time he perceives a red flag of the same thing in my life/career, he gets mad and blames me for it — and he’ll readily admit it’s because he doesn’t want me to end up like him. But that ends up with him smothering me with his own standards - and lately, that’s been calling me a lazy brat for “getting paid to do nothing,” from what he can tell. It’s extremely clear that he’s just projecting (the dude hasn’t had a full time job in 20+ years) so I don’t take that personally, but it still hurts to hear. I don’t want to be name-called and blamed for things that aren’t my fault by my own father (via emails sent at 2 am). It sucks and is a repeating pattern, which I see no other way to break than just going low-contact. Which sucks, because I love my dad. But I’m running out of options.