#She mostly shows weakness around Daeran because of the nature of their relationship but she still dodges any of her major sources of anguish

[shiawasekai]

So Nela is, actually, horrible at receiving care and accepting help in an emotional sense. This is mostly due to Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms she develops through the length of the game that she struggles to unlearn once it's all over.

First, given some of the in-game lines (Targona's), my headcanon is that she got kidnapped when she was in her very late teens. She would spend enough time out of the metaphorical fridge in the following 78 years to age up to mid-20s, but she would have been unconscious and likely drugged or/and in extreme pain most if not all of that time. In many senses, she is still mentally a teenager in an adult's body.

One smart enough to start putting things together relatively early, who was put in a position of power and responsibility in which everyone relied and depended on her.

She subconsciously decided to shove it all in a corner and play the part of the unflappable hero to everyone, and the dependable friend to the companions. Her "Commander" persona, so to speak. But she is very much not unflappable, and it gets harder and harder to keep it up the more she learns about the truth of her situation through the game and the further the war advances.

She manages to keep the facade for the entire crusade, but cracks would absolutely start to show by the tail end of it.

However, once it's over, she still refuses to let her guard down. It has become a crutch that allows her to run from her issues and she has forgotten how to function without it. The fact she decided to remain in Drezen, although not a bad idea perse for her, has the unfortunate side-effect of making unlearning the bad habits all the more difficult.

It becomes obvious something is off with her to anyone who knows her, the cracks are now plain to see, but getting her to speak about it is another matter. And not for lack of trying.

The moment she does, she'll have to face everything (her grief and guilt over her lost home and family, her conflicting feelings about Areelu due to the successful experiment, the trauma of leading the crusade as someone who was mentally too young for that, the disconnect with her body due to the sudden age up AND the transformation itself...) and that terrifies her.