hey there, firstly thanks for taking time to read this lol, its really long but i really don’t know what to do becos i feel that i’m such a toxic friend/person/family member.
ever since young, i’ve been quite nice and helpful, and i think i’ve been a bit of a people-pleaser and a perfectionist. i’m in secondary school now as a sec 4, and from sec 1-2, i felt that my mental health & connections with friends/family members were going pretty well, i don’t think i was that much of a toxic person but from sec 3 onwards, i started getting more and more anxious about the type of person i was. i’d read online about “how to be a good friend/cultivate self-confidence?” etc online so that i could “improve myself”. instead, i think it was more because i was just insecure that i wasn’t good enough for others, that others may not want to be friends with me because of these various reasons. but MAINLY, i feel like i lost trust in my own values & my personality, because i was/still am scared of realising that my actions/beliefs are wrong, which could cause more conflict that i don’t want. this fear could have stemmed from previous experiences during childhood with other kids (me trying to ‘fit in’) or maybe i’m just less emotionally knowledgeable than others hahah.
id reach out to my parents because i always feel comfortable reaching out for advice on my worries and doubts; they always created a safe space for me and they’ve always been really kind. i really appreciated all of their love and advice but now, i think it was also not the best idea because they have their own life’s and jobs and worries going on, and i feel like ‘trauma-dumping’ my own worries on them just causes them to feel even more stressed and down with themselves, especially since it doesn’t look like i’m improving. i’m trying to tho!
ok so now as a sec 4, recently i think i’ve started to give my friends negative signals that have been making them ‘reconfirm’ my loyalty/goodness? as a friend. i was once anxious that i wasn’t being ‘honest’ enough with what i was saying to my friends, and i thought of telling one of my closer friends this thing, that “sometimes when friend A/B/C does some things that i feel are not right i might not have the courage to say it?”. in hind sight that was a BAD idea becos i actually don’t have anything against them, i was trying to express how i felt towards my anxieties but instead, i didn’t realise it was gonna cause my friends to lose trust in me, causing my friendships to decline (a bit dumb). there were also a few more instances of me not really being the most “socially/emotionally aware” and i think caused more people to question my intentions even more.
all of this was during prelims, so, me being the “clueless” person i am, dug deeper to discover why i was like this. why was i sacrificing all of my closest friendships? am i really that stupid/psychopathic? this even caused my parents and sibling to talk about various situations throughout my life where i’ve acted really “weirdly/abnormally?” while i wasn’t there. i overheard the convo a bit and i remember it vividly becos they talked about how “abnormal” i am, how i don’t have much “emotional intelligence”. my mom prob was getting sick of all my anxious talks and was prob also talking about how even as the “older sibling”, i’m actually not even the most “mature” or “smartest”. i felt a bit betrayed but they were right becos i knew that my actions were causing a lot of hurt
all of this has led to today. i feel like such a bad person and i’m really really sorry for hurting my family and friends. i’m trying to think of what i should do to solve all of this, and fix myself (not to be a narcissist), and keep being kind and not self-obsessed. i’ve thought about whether i should tell my friends the “truth”; that i’ve realised i’m just a terrible person, idk why i’m being so toxic towards all of my closest friends and making them think that they did something to upset me. im also thinking of saying that i’d like to change and will try and speak with a professional so i don’t cause even more hurt towards the people i love the most.
this was really long wow. i’m prob also being really dramatic and i realise that SO MANY OTHERS are having WAY WORSE problems than what i’m experiencing. it could just be normal teenage stuff/situations. i just really need to understand whether or not there’s actually something wrong with me, and what next steps i should take next?