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felipeforte@lemmygrad.ml

My bullying trauma is making me believe my friends hate me (lemmygrad.ml)

submitted 6 months ago by KrupskayaPraxis@lemmygrad.ml to c/comradeship@lemmygrad.ml

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I became friends with a couple of people and I meet with them often. They like me as well but my brain tries to convince me they hate me. I was severly bullied, ostracized and neglected by my peers at school from elementary school to college and it caused me to have a hard time trusting anyone and gave me terrible self esteem. But I didn't know that it would be this bad. It sucks having the time of your life and returning home just trying to shut off your brain because you don't want to deal with the intrusive thoughts. But it doesn't work, the next day the thoughts come back and make me feel terrible. I almost don't want to announce that I'm coming for our next meeting because somehow I feel like a burden, even though I was literally personally invited by one of my friends.

Does anybody else deal with this? How do you deal with it?

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[–] amemorablename@lemmygrad.ml 4 points 6 months ago

I can feel that kind of way sometimes, though I don't think all that intensely in my case. This is one of those things where I could probably do with taking my own advice, but my thought would be: bring it up to them (preferably in person, so you can make it clear what's going on). And by bring it up, I don't mean tell them how you think they feel. I mean more like saying, "Hey, due to past bullying, sometimes I end up feeling insecure about our relationship in spite of you inviting me along and all."

It could be that affirming words mean more to you than for some people as well. In which case, you could consider taking it a step further, "I consider you a friend and if you consider me one too, having it affirmed in words sometimes would mean a lot to me. I think it would help ground me."

Whether insecure or not, it may help to remember that people express affection in different ways and value it in different ways, so working toward a consciousness of that in a relationship (if not there already) may help for getting your needs met and ensuring you both feel valued. I recall someone online who expressed that they tend to swap insults with others when they're most comfortable. Would never have occurred to me because for me, even friendly insults is never something I'm really comfortable with. The point here just being that people can have all sorts of ideas of what a secure relationship or bond looks like. Doesn't mean you have to accommodate someone whose idea of it is very different from yours. The idea is just to make it conscious and out in the open, where possible and safe to do so, so that it loses some of that trauma-induced reactive power over you.

Basically, we all need love and affection, and the trauma response may get in the way of taking implicit expressions of affection at face value, so you may need explicit expressions of affection more than some others do. But either way, it's normal to want communication lines to be clear and needs to be met.