A source of my social anxiety, my fault?🌿

I moved across country to a safe place where I am praying they do not know where I am. I am recovering from burnout, I am reprogramming from perspecticide and reoccurring psychological abuse I had felt unable to escape from. I am learning to find stability and be confident in knowing what I know again. I still feel a deep sense of terror that the person who tried to erase me will find me, they kept coming back and apologizing for how they harmed me and every time I forgave them, even when I was advised to continue to ignore them. I am scared and I do not know how to move on from the abuse and interact with people again without panicking and shutting down.

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this is my story;

(for purposes of anonymity all pronouns here are they/them and emojis are names)

I met 🧿 when my friend 🌱 introduced them as their new partner. I had a close and joyful friendship with 🌱 and I wanted to support them. 🧿 told us they had nowhere to go, I had space for them to crash for a little while so I welcomed them into my home. The situation turned bad, part of what I have been working on within myself is recovering knowing what I know after being gaslit and fighting perspecicide/psychological abuse from 🧿. They stayed off and on in their relationship with 🌱, I noticed 🌱 becoming unmotivated and depressed, I am sorry to 🌱 that I was unable to see what 🧿 was doing to them, to both of us, I am so sorry. 🧿 was living with me off and on, would show up to move back in whenever they needed it and I always welcomed them despite feeling my boundaries being pushed, I did not want to have them suffer homelessness. They would do awful things to me, continuously push me to drink alcohol when I was trying to become sober and try and get me drunk, and I would break off ties, I tried several times, I would tell them I wish you well; I can not continue this friendship for my heath please leave me alone, every time they found a way to contact me again, even going as far as to show up at my work and my home uninvited, and give a tearful apology and claim they had changed. I kept forgiving them, they have trauma and so do I and I felt “treat others how you want to be treated” fit here and I wanted to show mercy to a struggling person. I am hurt because of the level of manipulation from 🧿 has left my memory distorted, I have been unable to know my reality. There were times after I broke off the relationship for the FINAL time that I believed I could hear 🧿 talking/screaming/crying outside my window, sometimes with other people. I stopped going outside out of fear they might try to get me back. I experienced 🧿 manipulating me into saying things I did not mean or were not true, I feel like a liar, I feel scared that I could be so easily manipulated without knowing what was going on, I thought I was strong and I do not know how I could keep falling for the mess over and over and over. I feel like the abuse I endured is my fault, I believe 🧿 has tried to get other people to hate me, showing people out of context messages where I do not believe I was honest or I was fawning as a trauma response so they would not harm me further or they would not be sad, I felt responsible for their emotions. 🧿 has tried to tell me that I was the one in the wrong, I was bad, and I was doing exactly what they/or other abusers had done when I really thought I was not and have been told by my therapists and psychiatrist that I was not, they told friends of mine I was hurtful and they believed them, I lost those friends, I deleted all of my socials because I feel 🧿 had spies looking for anything to get me. I have been walking on eggshells, I feel I do not know how to exist. I feel 🧿 has worked with others to attempt cursing me, I live in fear of the memories and possibly that 🧿 will find me and drain me. 🧿 hurt my partner and I was too wrapped up in 🧿’s mess to listen to my partner and break ties, 🧿 made me promise I would never leave them because when my partner joined my life they were afraid of getting abandoned. 🧿 would tell my partner all the time how they wished they were together with me and they wanted to have sex with me. 🧿 would tell 🌱 all the time the same thing despite the stress it caused 🌱, I was not interested in 🧿 in that way but it was something they constantly pushed. I feel week and I do not know if I will be able to feel safe around people anymore, I feel anxious every day that 🧿 is continuing to spread false lies about me. I do not have the ability to even defend myself due to the biological stress from perspecticide I endured from 🧿. How do I get the ability to know what I know again? How do I remove 🧿’s influence over me?

I am scared and I do not know how to move on. How do I stop blaming myself, is it my fault? Am I bad because I allowed 🧿 to use me in ways that hurt others? I could not see what they were doing and I feel played, I feel miserable and ashamed with myself because of 🧿, I cry because I know my actions under their influence were not good, I feel like I was setting myself on fire to keep them warm. I am scared of this happening again with other people, I do not know how to get people to stop hurting me like this, how do I get them to stop preying on me? I have tried to isolate, I have tried to learn how to be not nice, I have tried to be a different person, I have tried constantly stating my boundaries, ghosting harmful people committed to misunderstanding me, it does not work.

I was fragile before 🧿 in my friendships due to having no stable or healthy relationships growing up. I felt I had a close friend for a while and then it turned out it was not what I thought, I feel I hurt that friend with my ignorance on what friendships were supposed to be and with my immaturity. I am sorry for hurting them. I have actively worked since that time to do and be a better person and heal.

In my life I have not had the ability to build stable friendships. Both my parents were military, we moved and I changed schools every couple of years, I feel I was always in fight or flight, I was constantly bullied, I have always had problems trusting people and knowing what to do in social situations as someone who has endured multiple reoccurring traumas and as someone who is autistic.

I feel like people are out to screw me over. How do I learn to be social without people hurting me? How can I deal with my social anxiety and learn to make friends for real?

Thank you for reading

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