The poster Divine1966 here shared a really helpful term: the unhealthy familiar. We are attracted to the familiar, to what we are used to. If the familiar is unhealthy, then we are attracted, drawn to something unhealthy.

So with you (I'm sorry that I did not realize that you are a teenager), I am wondering if you have had a lot of experience, both recently and in childhood, with people ignoring you, putting you down, and so that has become familiar to you--so familiar that it exerts a sort of perverse gravity on you and attracts you to more of it. How well does that resonate with your experience growing up and recently?

Often when people have difficulty expressing what they want it is because, in the past, especially in childhood, expressing what they wanted was viewed as a negative and they were criticized or punished for it. That is exactly what happened to me, and for many years, until i went to therapy, I had extreme difficulty asking for what I wanted. For example, I used to have trouble even asking people to pass me food at dinner. I usually couldn't manage it and I would take whatever was being passed around and never ask for anything that I myself wanted.

What do you think? How well does that line of thinking fit with your experience?