abusive or just toxic?
just a disclaimer before this that there are mentions of self harm in this so if you're triggered by that please be aware. i highlighted the section involving self harm it in black so that if you'd like to read it you can highlight it with your mouse but if you would like to avoid it you easily can :)
i used to be friends with this girl, lets call her "anna". i'm not friends with her any more and i'm trying to figure out if this was abusive behavior or just toxic. she was extremely possessive. she would get mad at me when she wasn't the first person on my snapchat friends list and would become furious and guilt trip me if i even hinted at the fact that i had another person that was my "best friend". she knew i struggled greatly with social anxiety disorder, depression, low self esteem, and self harm. i used to really trust her and reached out to her when i wasn't okay. once she forced me to show her my self harm. as well as that, she used to regularly brag about her self harm and show me her wounds and speak proudly about her cutting. this was extremely triggering needless to say. there was also this one girl who was an older sister figure to the both of us, lets call her "jane" for the sake of the story. i trusted jane more than ANYBODY and anna knew this. anna would regularly say things to try and make me think jane didn't like me. she'd say things like "jane hugged me today when's the last time she hugged you?" and i'd be like "oh not for a while" and anna would say something like "oh well she hugs me ALL the time." it was petty small things like that. i was terrified to stand up for myself or end the friendship for the longest time bc i knew anna would and could turn jane against me. anna had SO much power over me that could ruin my life.she would also make fun of my panic attacks saying that "i don't listen when people are trying to tell me to breathe and that's why people have yelled at me during them" there are many more things she's done but the last thing i'll describe is how she would get angry at me for not wanting to share things with her towards the end of our friendship. one day i was late to class because i had, you guessed it, a massive panic attack. i didn't want to tell her why i was late because i knew she'd use it against me. she kept asking and i wouldnt tell her. in response, she told all of my friends that i was a horrible hypocrite because i wouldn't tell her why i was late and she "tells me everything".all of the things i described were on a regular basis, probably even daikly. there are countless other things that she'd done during our time as friends but i'm not ready to get into them. even just writing out these things is very anxiety inducing and makes me feel as if im in these situations yet again, but nonetheless, it feels good to share my story. can someone lmk if this was abusive or just toxic? thank you for reading!
Thank you for sharing that with us here.
I had a friend megan like this. She acted more like a spouse in that sense. I would get no me time no time for my spouses nothing. I cut her off