Those thoughts are just your feelings trying to bring their concerns to light. If someone you cared about came to you feeling this way, would you join in on their concerns, stirring the pot with what-ifs and all that? Or would you want to reassure them? Support them? Give them advice?

What if you gave support to those feelings you experience, not in a way that gives them credence, but treating them like someone vulnerable that doesn’t have the ability to reason that much for themselves? Like a young child or a pet. They don’t necessarily know that there’s nothing to worry about, they just react to things that scare them. Your feelings are the same way.

If you trust these people, being open to them may be another way to start that dialogue, but that can be a bit tough. I do recommend trying to start that kind of dialogue with yourself. You can first ask yourself, what’s so bad about being a “burden” to other people? Would the things you do be a burden to you if it came from someone else? Can you trust these friends to let you in the way you’ve let them in?

I definitely have the same problem, and no IDK how to deal with it.

Does anybody else deal with this?

All the time. Same cause.

It hasn’t changed in the ~25 years since I left high school.

I even get it in online communities, in discord servers, in places like this, where we’re all barely acquaintances and there are next to no stakes in people liking you. But at places like work it ruins my life.

If you want to read more on it, I think the medical term for it is “attachment disorders”, and you might also want to look up “insecure adult attachment styles”.

I never considered the possibility that they don’t actually hate me, so I stop hanging out with them. I got pretty good at burning bridges…

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.

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