Dealing with Paranoia in Friendships

In my experience it’s really hard to tell if someone genuinely cares. And what you really have to be careful of is that narcissists are very good at making you feel just good enough and make you believe they care just enough to keep you around to manipulate you. It feeds their ego. Please pleas read the book The Four Agreements. It’s shed some light on how to unveil our blindfold to how people really are and how we can’t blame them. Also teaches you to love your self. So good. The book can seem repetitive but it’s designed to really solidify the dream you want to perceive and how you see the world.

I understand this completely. I had a best friend of 6 years that I purposefully chose to trust despite my gut telling me for years that she wasn't good for me, even though I didn't know what to listen to. she always told me she would talk me up to others, and some people did back that up so I fully believed she had good intentions. when it came to doing my makeup, nails, etc- she would VERY subtly find ways to make me look bad. she gave me the worst colored brown clumpy nails ever and upon the chance of doing my makeup made me look kind of like a clown. She always wanted to cut my hair so I never let her near my hair with scissors, I had this overwhelming feeling she would mess it up on purpose and im glad I listened to that. I thought there were lots of signs that she cared about me so I was very loyal, but after a year I (metaphorically) woke up to realize all of those signs actually were fake and she either didn't care at all or cared WAY too much 🥲 I'm not in the slightest saying this is your case at all, because I don't know any information. there's a chance your friend is 100% loyal to you and has no ill intent at all, as I still do get paranoid about my other best friend of 7 years and other longtime friends but they don't let me down. I think it's partly up to you to really pay close attention to how your friend treats you or how they talk about you, my ex bff once I realized it didn't want me to have boundaries and it came in the form of her gaslighting me, which I knew was wrong but at the time still excused her for. eventually she began copying a lot of my personality, and it was making me more and more uncomfortable as time went on, but my comfort never mattered to her. There were a lot of little tiny ways she subtly mistreated me or would boss me around or talk to me like I was a kid, even though I thought it was just joking because that's what I wanted to believe. I would say if you know for sure that your best friend doesn't do little stuff like that (it's the sickly sweet, honey-dipped-words type of friendships to look out for.), you're probably genuinely in the green! so sorry for the long winded message! I hope this helps even a little at least with some behaviors to look out for to help prove to yourself that ( i hope) isn't the case (-: and again, I still do feel this way with my other friends a LOT and kinda need reassurance every year so I definitely feel you, paranoia is absolutely horrible. I hope it improves, for me using straight up logic + facts that I know are real help a LOT when im spiraling into paranoia. Feel free to dm me if you have any more questions as far as paranoia goes!

Same