As a girl, I miss nourishing my female friendships.

I’m a girl who’s in my mid-twenties (25F) Growing up I was super friendly, talkative, conversational, empathetic, craving to see my female friends, supportive, loving, and caring towards everybody.. but mostly towards my best girl friends. I recently (about 3 years ago) went through deep emotional pain regarding a situation with my older sister (31 F) involving betrayal and mental abuse, which made me incredibly depressed and made me question everything I knew. We were very very close since we grew up with extremely difficult parents, so we always had each others back. I’m learning how to heal from it by the day, and I’ve been very isolated for a few years now, but now, I question other people’s motives and intentions whenever I meet them. I struggle to initiate genuine interest in any female friendships, even though I get approached a lot and they seem to want to be friendly and get to know me. I am usually very uninterested, and I keep it pretty superficial and short. I get so scared to get close, it’s like I’m afraid of saying the wrong thing, or being judged for just being myself. I’m struggling to just be normal, and not make everything so personal. I take offense easily, and I find that I’m very picky with any girls I become friends with, and I make sure I feel 100% safe around them before I can even consider having trusted, genuine texting conversations for a start. I realized it makes people stay away from me cus they think I’m stuck up or can’t be bothered to care about their personal lives. I’m too absorbed in everything in my head that I just can’t seem to be present and actually build meaningful relationships. This happens with men too, and I would say I’ve been avoiding both equally lately, and I vet both just as equally. I don’t want to be this way anymore. I want to be happy to hang out again, but I’m just struggling with trusting people. I have 5 amazing friends who know me very well, and for who I am, and who I was before I experienced betrayal. It took a lot of self introspection and transformation to change and be a better person and focus on myself afterwards, and I just want to share my new self with them. But I even struggle to reach out and follow through plans with them. I feel anxious, like I have to perform, like they won’t like my real thoughts and ideas, or the tone I used, etc. I used to people please immensely. I used to be very careful not to hurt anyone’s feelings. I learned to stop that. I struggled with rejection and to be honest I still do, but I can handle it better now, it’s just the other persons reaction that makes me anxious. I just want to connect deeply with others again and just experience relationship “magic” again….

TL;DR;: This post is about struggling to maintain female friendships since I’ve experienced a toxic relationship with my sister. How can I get back to myself and be my bubbly, supportive, and caring personality again?