Hi, apologies for the long post, and appreciate any help.

I am currently at ~160 hours and doing PPL review for a while; failing to fix the below problems. I can't see what exactly I am doing wrong, and frankly, the instructor says he is finding it hard how to navigate me through, as most of the mistakes are to be self-observed and fixed.

1. Over controlling - Forcing the controls, instead of feeling easy to let go of them; constantly white-knuckling, leading to self-induced drag and bumps. Instructor thinks something might have happened that could've induced a sub-conscious fear and it appears "I might be holding on to the dear life"

2. Landings: Almost flat most of the times, not having full aft force for soft fields, and making power changes in short field with obstacle - after clearing the obstacle. Even a 200rpm decrease is considered to be chop and drop? I sometimes do get bounces too. A couple of flights ago, I had a pretty hard touchdown.

3. Steep turns - I was used to using trim (how it was taught in previous flight school), and using reference of Attitude indicator most of the time, which was fixed here in the new school, but I still end up losing around 200' occasionally, making it inconsistent.

4. Diversions - This is the biggest challenge per my instructor. I know the procedure but I am kind of slow in reacting, mostly because I get caught up in identifying my position, and direction in VNC and calculation of the heading. This used to be good when i was in my old school, and it got messed up over the time.

Most of the habits were built in previous flight school and I switched around 130hrs. A lot of things got way better but the above problems still persists.

Today my instructor said "Honestly, it almost seems like you are afraid that plane is gonna fall if you leave controls, and you keep constantly moving the controls". Obviously i respect the observation, but I am not afraid of flying, and I can see why it may appear that way. I just get stressed of unexpected bumps, specially the moment I head it's gusting (irrespective of number). Somewhere in the journey, my confidence got screwed up and I am struggling to catch-up with it. Instructors could see that I have enough knowledge, able to see what I am doing wrong, but not acting fast enough to correct them.

I come from a complete non-aviation background, spent a lot of my savings (and Canada isn't cheap for flying) and I am honestly losing motivation. I had to take a long break (4-5 weeks) a few months ago due to a personal situation, and before that I was almost ready to give the test.

Now these problems seems not improving as fast as they are supposed to, and I am not feeling great about myself, almost ashamed. Can't give up, but struggling to move forward. Any suggestions or thoughts about how to fix them?