u/aeroradical

I tried to google this and got a million articles on reactive abuse for some reason. I’m not talking about that.

I’ve (24F) just reached a point of clarity in my life where I finally understand my role in a lot of abusive or empty relationships/friendships. I didn’t realize this until recently, but I basically let people do whatever they wanted to me so that they’d be nice to me. Of course this was exploited heavily by my abusers— it hurts my stomach to admit, but I even remember abuse taking place and thinking to myself, “oh, well, at least they’ll have to be nice to me after this”. I was so desperate that I didn’t care at the time, as long as they were nice later.

This goes beyond though. I remember now that in ALL of my friendships that were ALL with men that they were only really nice to me because they thought I was attractive. They were only around me because they were my boyfriend’s friends, and beyond that, they wouldn’t have ever gone out of their way to speak to me. But they all wanted to fuck me to varying degrees and that’s the only reason they were nice. I let them leer at me and such, and I think I always knew that deep down that that was the only reason they enjoyed my company. I’m not friends with any of them anymore— I always had a pit in my stomach about my friendships anyway, and when I left my abusive partners they didn’t reach out after a while (even though they stopped being friends with my abusers after everything came out). I was confused about why for so long, even though I wanted it that way for my own reasons. But their reasons were a mystery to me— I think I’m starting to get it.

The reasons for my acceptance of objectification and such are tied to my trauma and I can provide more context if that’s needed, but it didn’t ever feel weird because all men and therefore all my friends treated me like that, I just knew it just felt bad at the time. I still accepted it though, like without any second thoughts. Now I’m looking back with clarity and I’m crushed by how alone I truly was and how much I dealt with just so people were nice to me. I don’t understand what to do with this information or even what it’s called. But there has to be someone else here who knows what I’m talking about, right? I’ve been basically crying all day over it. I’ve never felt shittier.

TLDR: My mom will buy me clothing then buy herself the same thing to wear a lot, and I don’t understand why she’s doing that.

My therapist has said my mom is a narcissist for a long time, but it never really clicked with me. I’m very recently out of the house (I’m 24F, moved out a year ago and about to move farther away again) and she tends to really lash out whenever I’m moving away. She was and is abusive at times, neglectful for most of my life. I can’t seem to understand how severe it is despite everyone in my life and my therapist reiterating how severe it was/is. Most of the time, though, I have a lot of empathy for her because I know she had a really rough childhood and has issues in her adult life as well.

Anyway, I was telling my therapist that my mom has this habit of buying me outfits and then immediately buying them for herself as well. This has never really bothered me and I always say it’s okay if she asks. She’ll also find brands I like and start buying clothing from there. When I was a child, she used to be REALLY obsessive over what I wore and dressed me from head to toe until I started throwing major fits about it. When I started dressing myself, especially in my teen years, she was constantly telling me how sloppy and messy I looked all the time. Which, to be fair, I was really suffering from an incredibly abusive relationship and struggled to take care of myself physically during that time (happened under her roof, that’s a whole different story though).

I don’t know how to word this section correctly because it makes me feel really awful. I’ve always, always been really skinny and tall, and my mom is not. She is incredibly unhappy with how she looks and is CONSTANTLY buying new clothes. I’ve gotten really fit recently, so I’m no longer just skinny but really toned, which has made a lot of people including my family take notice of all the work I’ve put in. Since then, she’s been buying outfits or clothing for me then immediately asking about her wearing the same thing. There’s almost always hidden motives for buying said clothes (for me to wear them around others and say she bought them for me, or for her to compete when other people buy me gifts) but I don’t know what to do. It makes me feel really bad for her because I know she’s hurting— other people in my life see right through the gifts. My therapist today brought up that it seems like she’s competing WITH me— but I don’t know, is her self-esteem too low to do that? I know she’ll compete with others THROUGH me, but for some reason I can’t see why she would compete with me. I can give more context if needed, but I’m new to this narcissism context and thought I would bring it up here. Thank you for reading— advice and insight would mean so much.

Hey all, I hope I’m not appropriating or misusing any OCD related terms, but I don’t know how else to put this. I’ve been in treatment for PTSD for about a year with a lot of success, but I’ve developed a habit that’s becoming absolutely crippling— I’m now constantly trying to prevent perceived disasters in my life and it’s causing really time consuming and debilitating habits. For example, I relock my doors over and over, I CONSTANTLY check that my gas stove is off (this one got really bad after there was a gas leak in my apartment building due to someone leaving their stove on), I make sure everything is unplugged before I leave my house, I’m extremely paranoid that I’m going to cause a massive fire whenever I smoke, I’m constantly convinced I left my car on or not in park or any multitude of things really, and that’s not even all of them. These anxieties are stressful and I’m losing several minutes of my day several times a day fulfilling habits of double checking these things, going back after already leaving, etc. It’s almost made me late to work a couple times now.

What’s weirding me out is that none of these things are necessarily related to the trauma that has caused my PTSD, in fact most of them are COMPLETELY unrelated. My therapist said that it could be my brain’s way of distracting me with fabricated anxieties so I don’t think about my trauma which makes a lot of sense! But it’s spiraling beyond that now, it’s starting to feel like it’s own separate issue. She also mentioned a subset of OCD caused by PTSD, but we haven’t had a chance to chat about that since our initial conversation and it’s gotten much worse since then.

Have any of you all experienced this? I feel like I’m really slipping here, and I’m so confused that all of these habits are about things totally unrelated to my issues. Anything is appreciated and thank you for reading.