How do I (20 NB) recover from a toxic friendship?

TLDR: i was in an unhealthy friendship for a year and a half where we both hurt and manipulated each other and I don’t know how to recover because I feel like I don’t have a right to be hurt.

I’ll first start off by saying that I have quiet bpd, and aspbergers. This isn’t an excuse for anything I’ve done but it’s relevant. So basically I was friends with someone (19 NB) for about a year and a half, and at one point I had romantic feelings towards them but that went away when I realised I couldn’t trust them. But like they became my favourite person, which in bpd terms basically means that I was obsessed with them, and social interactions with them would make or break my day depending on how well they went. They did not ask to be my FP and I greatly regret the role I forced them into. We also had extremely poor communication which lead to me overstepping social boundaries a lot, and then we hurt and manipulated each other in other ways. They gaslighted me, acted like I didn’t like them and then pushed me away, repeatedly lashed out at me, always assumed I was bringing up my various mental disorders as an excuse and didn’t care that i was just doing it to try and explain how my brain works and just generally not handling conflict well at all when I brought up things they did that bothered me. I had to leave all spaces they were in to get away from them, bc i knew I was unhealthily obsessed but I didn’t fully understand my bpd until afterwards. Basically though this has lead to our mutual friends (19-mid 20’s M/F/NB) completely siding with the friend I had a conflict with and none of them seem to care about my side at all. I have extremely low self esteem as it is, and I see all my self value in others. So when other people don’t validate my feelings like this, I’m feeling like I’m wrong to feel hurt and manipulated. I’m absolutely apologetic for all the things I did that hurt my friend, I’m glad they’re getting the support they need from the friend group. But the fact that nobody seems to feel like I have a right to be hurt is really screwing me up, and I think is leading to excessive self flagellation. I am in therapy, but that doesn’t seem to be enough rn because I’m really struggling.

Submitted October 05, 2019 at 12:04AM

TLDR: i was in an unhealthy friendship for a year and a half where we both hurt and manipulated each other and I don’t know how to recover because I feel like I don’t have a right to be hurt.I’ll first start off by saying that I have quiet bpd, and aspbergers. This isn’t an excuse for anything I’ve done but it’s relevant. So basically I was friends with someone (19 NB) for about a year and a half, and at one point I had romantic feelings towards them but that went away when I realised I couldn’t trust them. But like they became my favourite person, which in bpd terms basically means that I was obsessed with them, and social interactions with them would make or break my day depending on how well they went. They did not ask to be my FP and I greatly regret the role I forced them into. We also had extremely poor communication which lead to me overstepping social boundaries a lot, and then we hurt and manipulated each other in other ways. They gaslighted me, acted like I didn’t like them and then pushed me away, repeatedly lashed out at me, always assumed I was bringing up my various mental disorders as an excuse and didn’t care that i was just doing it to try and explain how my brain works and just generally not handling conflict well at all when I brought up things they did that bothered me. I had to leave all spaces they were in to get away from them, bc i knew I was unhealthily obsessed but I didn’t fully understand my bpd until afterwards. Basically though this has lead to our mutual friends (19-mid 20’s M/F/NB) completely siding with the friend I had a conflict with and none of them seem to care about my side at all. I have extremely low self esteem as it is, and I see all my self value in others. So when other people don’t validate my feelings like this, I’m feeling like I’m wrong to feel hurt and manipulated. I’m absolutely apologetic for all the things I did that hurt my friend, I’m glad they’re getting the support they need from the friend group. But the fact that nobody seems to feel like I have a right to be hurt is really screwing me up, and I think is leading to excessive self flagellation. I am in therapy, but that doesn’t seem to be enough rn because I’m really struggling.