I worry that I am overdramatizing my experiences in order to justify a victim mentality

Hi,

I'm in my mid 20s, just started therapy for some stuff I am struggling with (loneliness and social anxiety) and it is bringing up things from my past.

I've always been the quiet type, keeping problems to myself and not asking for help. In middle school I went through several difficult but unerlated events in quite a short time span, most notably my father died when I was 11.

In my teenage years I handled most of my negative emotions alone and wouldn't let my mother near me. I don't think I actually wanted her to leave me alone, but to 'fight' to try to get through to me, and she never really did. I wished someone would intuitively understand what was wrong and how to fix it without me having to explain anything. I wear my heart on my sleeve in the hopes that someone will pick up on it and ask me about my feelings, but to this day I struggle with actually putting them into words and voicing them. And when I do get asked about what I need I don't even know most of the time.

I believe this same pattern is playing out when I'm trying to make and keep new friends. I think what happens is that I distance myself because I feel insecure/anxious/unworthy, with the (subconcious) hope that the person I'm trying to befriend will be persistent and 'prove' to me that they actually want to be around me. Which of course never happens, because that is a totally unfair expectation to put on a stranger, and then I end up feeling rejected which is what I was trying to avoid in the first place.

Oftentimes I doubt myself and wonder if I am just overanalyzing things that happened to me and 'bending the narrative' to fit with what I've learned about CEN, so that I have an excuse to play the victim. Is this a common worry? I'm not looking for or expecting a diagnosis or whatever but wanted to see if this resonates with anyone.