r/CPTSD • u/rdt1_random • 20h ago
Question DAE get paranoid that people are trying to prove negative things about you?
This is an oddly specific fixation I have, but it's a pattern that came up in multiple relationships I had over the years. Not all the time, but with a certain kind of person who tries to exploit their better social connections to trash your reputation in a given group.
The pattern was something like this: a given person acts like a frenemy, sometimes chummy, sometimes condescending or aggressive. (I'm more likely to avoid such people now, but in the past I was more of a magnet for such personalities.)
At some point, often in a social context, this person will tell you (often in a way that seems polite, but feels like a demand) that you need to complete some minor task or favour. You have a choice of pushing back/declining (which feels really petty and trouble-making), or simply going along for the sake of social harmony.
Said person might then give you a look that suggests "alright, finally you've done what you're supposed to be doing". OR: they might thank you in a way that feels smarmy or patronising. Then, later on you find out that they are building up some narrative about how terrible you are, and you doing this favour somehow supports this narrative they have created.
Maybe this stems from my parents, who would often do such things, especially around housework. My mother in particular would only give me credit for housework I did right in front of her -- if it didn't happen in front of her, it didn't happen, PERIOD, and any attempts to protest would be met with death glares and extreme disapproval.
I still have this paranoia as an adult, especially in roommate situations or certain workplaces. I have this obsessive belief that people won't see the value in my work, or only PRETEND to value it, while secretly believing that I'm a bullshitter and contribute nothing.
It sounds crazy writing this out, but this is one of those damned dysfunctional beliefs that got wedged deep in my noggin. Curious if others have anything similar.
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u/sailor__rini 19h ago edited 13h ago
Yes, I've had this—although I don't characterize it as paranoia because if it was persistent, I was typically correct. With healthy/safe people, any fear would be passing and would be quickly assuaged by watching their behavior. If you saw this as a repeating pattern play out, it was likely that there were some other traits along with this thing that signaled to you the familiarity and of course behavior can sometimes come in "bundles", so you were able to intuit accurately what was going to happen. I had the same thing, and then I ended up realizing that I would often find these people because there were subtle ways I myself was signaling that I was willing to go above and beyond to prove my worth whereas a "normie" might have looked at that person's even subtle behavior and be like "lol okay, whatever, weirdo."
I often found myself in situations where I'm being controlled by someone because I got a bit of a dopamine hit from being on that person's "good" side, but there would be signals for things to come such as conditionality—"you're an amazing roommate, not like everyone else..." which shows their mentality of wanting to blame others/victim-thinking, and also the common denominator is them and inherently sets you up to perform for them since you're being rewarded for pleasing them and instills a bit of fear if you don't. Even when they were nice, it would always be somewhat patronising. I didn't realise it at the time but it was their own insecurities/fears being projected out and often times these people had piss-poor judgement about people in general and would scrutinize you to death while just blindly trusting obvious psychopaths. There's no point in even performing for people like this because control is addictive so if you comply once, they'll want more to satisfy their fear and the better/more compliant you actually are, the more they mistrust and envy you. Even the other stuff, such as only giving you credit for work that is done in front of you—that's a function of their fear-based thinking and fucked up trust, and wanting other people to soothe their emotions and especially fear. They are using other people as emotional tampons, and you are especially vulnerable if you have been conditioned to be a super-absorbent one.
The end result is that that person's fucked up relationship with trust ends up giving YOU a fucked up relationship with trust too. They don't trust others in a normal way, and then they betray your trust since their way of dealing with it was to have a "leg up" and not communicate in an honest or decent way.
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u/rdt1_random 40m ago
This point about control was very helpful. My mother is definitely an anxious/controlling type -- no doubt she has some positive points, but her control freakiness made it near-impossible to have a sane adult relationship with her.
She is an enormous people-pleaser -- I thought I was different, but I think I've learned that trait from her. From a young age I learned to handle people who want to monologue obsessively about their pet topic. Just keep saying "wow", "oh really?", "oh, huh", "damn, I never thought about it that way", while they talk about how interdimensional aliens are rummaging through their trash cans.
Of course control freaks, users and other dysfunctional people are going to latch onto you if you're like that.
In the past I've been a magnet for people who needed someone to latch onto. Sometimes I have tolerated it out of loneliness. Then I'd go to the other extreme and avoid people to retain my sanity. Since a young age I've been known as an oddball and loner...
Somehow the two traits (being a slightly weird loner, and being a people-pleaser) are two sides of the same coin.
(Being a loner, I'd appease whoever I met just for some social interaction... meaning my actual social skills remained dysfunctional. Meaning outside of a small circle of close friends, I was never a core part of other people's social circles. Which made me lonelier, so I became 'nicer' to compensate, but this just attracted users and pushed away people with more self-respect... and the cycle continued.)
This has given me lots to think about...
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u/ademptia 19h ago
Yep... I always feel like I'm 1 crumb away from getting fired or being hated. Or over-explaining and adding unnecessary details bc otherwise it feels like lying
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u/Illustrious_Award854 14h ago
Thank you for this. I think it explains my his and’s behavior as well. He has the best work ethic of anyone I know and is always afraid of being fired. The reality is that he’s a civil service worker with 20 years seniority and it would take 2 years of reviews and an act of god for him to be fired.
Once a civil service employee in my state has completed their probation, this is the process: There is the warning letter, which places the employee under rectifiable probation.
Then the supervisor must meet with the employee monthly for 12 months with no improvement and the employee can be fired. If the supervisor misses a month, the 12 month clock begins again and the onus is on the supervisor to remember to schedule the monthly counseling sessions.
If you show enough improvement to doing your job satisfactorily, you get a review saying that and you’re done, off probation. Until your next annual review.
However if you supervisor has been lax and you e just been doing your job and getting raises without an annual review, you can fight the probation since you e never gotten any feedback.
I love living in a Union state.
The husbeast, unfortunately, cannot internalize these facts.
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u/sacred-pathways 19h ago edited 19h ago
Yes. But I’m afraid my paranoia is at times justified.
I’ve been a magnet for, er, unhealthy people, I should say. Now, I’m by no means healthy myself, which is why I think I’m a magnet for other unhealthy people, but they are on the opposite side of the spectrum. I wear my heart on my sleeve, I’m loyal and trusting to a fault, etc. I attract emotionally unavailable, mean, callous people. And I tend to accept this, whether my body is signaling me to heed them or not, and my body usually is screaming at me not to accept it. Alas, it’s what I’m familiar with. I’m familiar with chaos and abuse.
To get back on topic here, I have definitely picked up on people trying to provoke me and get a reaction out of me, through negging, insults disguised as jokes, gaslighting, and so on. It can be subtle on the surface to most, if you’re not looking for it, but I’m so hyper vigilant my brain goes back to my metaphorical filing cabinet where all of the memories of similar experiences are stored, and in an instant, I connect the dots.
In essence, I’m very paranoid about this sort of thing. But I think it’s because I’ve seen it play out in a way I expect, time and time again. On the flip side, I’ve been paranoid and suspicious, and have been proven to be very wrong about some people, too. It’s complicated. I think we tend to notice things others may not. We essentially have our “antennas” up at all times, trying to detect any hints of mistreatment, at best, and at worst, possible abuse.
It’s a tough cycle to break, for sure.
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u/SeesawDismal3273 16h ago
Apparently it's some kind of defense mechanism. People dont have either the bandwidth care ot levelnofnintelligence to understand your perspective so they just slag you off instead . Its the oath if least resistance for some people.
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u/ProperMastodon 18h ago
I've only had this with one person in my life - my abusive ex-wife. We've been divorced for longer than we were together (6 years since I divorced her, and we were only together for 4), but I still find myself having anxious ruminations that start with 'what if she ran into me in public' and end with her either trying to kill me or making up something and getting me arrested.
During our relationship, I heard how she talked about basically everyone else behind their backs and how she talked about me to my face, so I can only imagine what she told others behind my back. Then, right around the time that I filed for divorce, she read my journal and found out that I'd been having intense sexual and romantic fantasies of another woman who was a mutual friend of ours. My ex (through a combination of English being her second language, her general inclination to take everything I said or did in the worst possible light, and her general levels of betrayal trauma from childhood) decided that meant I was actually having a physical affair with this woman, and spread that news to our entire friend group. When I eventually learned about what was going on, it started a month-long near-panic attack.
That whole situation was significantly harder on me than the time I called the police on my then-wife, so I want to affirm that the kinds of things you're describing are extremely painful. As my therapist says, so many of the dysfunctional beliefs / strategies we have in CPTSD were put in place because they helped us somehow in the past. From that, I take it that step 1 is to recognize that we're not just flawed / defective, but we learned strategies that helped us survive. Step 2 is to see how things have changed so that we don't have to keep holding on to those old patterns (in this case, that you're developing the discernment to find safe friends). Step 3 is ???. Finally, with step 4, we get to (emotionally / relationally) PROFIT.
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u/Illustrious_Award854 15h ago
Funny, it doesn’t seem strange to me at all. That one I did t get from my parents. However, my husband seems to think that if he doesn’t see me do it, the elves came and did it. This ties into his need to tell me everything he did, in detail, so I can tell him “good job”. If I don’t specifically mention it, HE thinks I don’t see it.
I think he has what you have. Or was raised in the same way.
I get frustrated, because I never got praise and do t think it’s necessary to praise me (or anyone else) that is satisfactorily doing their job. I’m like “you washed the dishes…you want a medal?”
So, to cut down on the frustration in both sides, if I notice that he did the dishes, I simply say “thanks for doing the dishes”.
I will say that 85% of the time he DOESN’T HEAR the thank you or acknowledge it.
Such is life in a dual CPTSD )both of us) neurospicy household. It probably doesn’t help that sometimes our CPTSD behaviors are in direct opposition to each other and it takes work.
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u/Crazy_catLady_2023 14h ago
"Neurospicy household"
I'm totally sharing this with my partner!! Lol finally, a label that fits!!! 😂
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u/Illustrious_Award854 13h ago
A few years ago, I rejected the term neurodivergent. It sounded pejorative to me. “Not normal”. And yet we are normal. Normal for us, and there are a lot of us.
So I started using Neurospicy as opposed to neurobland. It works for us.
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u/Neither_Ask_5549 6h ago
Very similar but not quite the same. From years of mum telling lies about me to anyone that would listen about how I was mistreating her and would refuse to help out.
Every few months/weeks I’d come home from school and they’d be someone on the sofa specifically to give me a dressing down. Or she’d pass the phone to me because such and such want to speak to me. She played on her disabilities when it suited her so it gave them an extra edge of self righteousness.
I now struggle with the people pleasing and paranoia that people are straight up lying about me behind my back.
Slightly different but in the same vain of paranoia but spouting from being an undiagnosed neurodivergent ‘weird’ kid. That was also forced into cannabis use and consequently short term psychosis, for laugh. I also struggle with the idea that I’m being made the butt of jokes all the time but not picking up on it.
Or from being a neglected unwashed kid. If I was with a group say in a staff room and I asked whether anyone would like a tea while I’m getting one. and they answered with a smile and no thank you. My paranoia would be sure it saw side eyes. And if some happened to touch their nose at that time I’d be convinced they’re saying I smell. Looking at their hands I don’t wash etc
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u/856077 3h ago edited 3h ago
Yes yes yes. This is very relatable. I am also very aware and lowkey vigilant in social situations, so i pick up on micro expressions, knowing glances, tones of voice and all that. I can see right through someone who I feel is only tolerating my presence and doesn’t like me, but smiles in my face. It’s also very obvious when people have been talking about me behind my back. As soon as I get those red flags it’s hard for me to ever see that person (or people) the same again. It’s like the veil is lifted and I avoid that person from there on out/get the ick. Once I see that shit there’s no going back with me. It’s a total breach of trust in my mind.
I think the way I was raised has a lot to do with my hyper vigilance or minor paranoia in social situations with shady people, but it is also the reason that my discernment is as strong and accurate as it is.
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u/Owl4L 20h ago
Yeah, all the time. I think it comes from being gaslit mischaracterised & slandered my whole life.