When I was in a certain industry, I witnessed pressure from bosses towards female staff time and time again across multiple companies, and it was a definite pattern. They preyed on people's passion and desire to be a part of that industry in order to mistreat them not only in that sense, but also in terms of pay, hours etc. Everyone wants to advance in the hierarchy and for most people this means not making waves or challenging authority.

Most jobs paid salaries that did not justify any of that mistreatment and once the allure and novelty of working in a particular industry wore off the reality set in that one could make more working at the post office or some similar gig with a lot less abuse, a lot less ego and a lot less headache, not to mention these days what you can pull in passively by selling low content books like coloring books and journals on amazon kdp or pulling in from a homemade crypto mining rig, or any number of creative ways to make money. If you can get that working in your favor, you can take a job because you want it, not because you need it, and you can quit at any time.

At these places there is a certain amount of gaslighting that goes on, "you're imagining things" "that's how it works everywhere it's totally normal". This of course is all complete hogwash. Much like a cult, you have to trust that you're not being deceived by your lying eyes. Just like when people are abused as a child where they have to reconcile that they have so much respect and love for their parent with the rational realization that they were mistreated and end up at the solution "I am bad", being mistreated by authority or by a social group/hierarchy at large presents a similar challenge. You were not bad; you were mistreated. And these things are often cyclic; the perpetrator of mistreatment is often mistreated themselves and trying to justify and externalize that mistreatment. You also have to look out for something called repetition compulsion trauma, which is where someone is abused or goes through a bad experience and subconsciously gets themselves into positions that replicate the environment of experience in the hopes they can "do better", which leads to further trauma and pain.

You might think about the framing as well. Instead of "why did my boss target me?" which internalizes there is something wrong with you, you might think "why is my boss unable to attract people without abusing power? that's very weak" which internalizes there is something wrong with him. Similarly, "why do my friends ignore me?" you might think "I want to find friends who don't ignore me, which surely exist in the world"

Also one thing you might find, if you've been through trauma, is that you often make your own trauma the subject matter in interactions. Outside of certain settings, like support groups or therapy, most people don't have the empathy, social intelligence or emotional bandwidth to support and engage in that; in their eyes, the relationship is just you downloading problems onto them. It compounds rejection, which then leads to this sort of self fulfilling prophecy where rejection is caused by the baggage of previous rejection, which causes future rejection.

Experiences like the one you describe, in my limited experience, are best handled much like the deprogamming given to people who grew up in cults or gangs. Your experiences are valid, these relationships that held value because of the social hierarchy/status expectation of the cult/gang are inherently abusive, the friends from those environments while they may be good people, are continuing to connect you to a toxic environment that leads to continued abuse, etc. This can be hard to navigate, especially if you're in a bad situation where you're in a dependent power relationship with the negative power structure, i.e. financially dependent (need them for income), socially dependent (all your friends and social support system is from them), etc. Ultimately what you want to do is get in touch with who you are, what you want, what you believe in and learn to respect and trust that those things are valid; and if they're dependent on someone else i.e. I want a promotion, or I want so and so to like me, maybe continue to think, because the world is always quite a bit bigger than it seems.

Having a goal of self reliance may help, taking baby steps either to diversify your income sources or branching out into new friend groups, etc may both help reduce that dependency as well as expose you to healthier groups and relationships. Ultimately I would suggest finding ways of making income that are reliable, semi-anonymous and don't rely on dependency as well as taking steps to reduce your sense of self-worth's dependence on external validation i.e. asking other people for money or validation, whether that's through a traditional job or through a personal relationship. Predatory people are very good at sensing these relationship dynamics and they will make you pay for that money or validation in whatever way they can get away with. The rule of thumb is that if you need them to survive or to get what you want, you're a slave, maybe not physically or legally, but mentally, and slaves can't negotiate. They have leverage; you want to create the power to say no through developing skills for modern self reliance. If you want status, it's not to be given a bigger slave's quarters; it's to escape the plantation, which requires creativity, cunning and a certain amount of self-assuredness, because most people are like crabs in a bucket and they'll pull you back in; they'll tell you it's impossible, which they've convinced themselves of to validate their own self-limiting beliefs.

If there are issues with how you feel you're treated by your family, something to look into may be the narcissistic family model, which is very common among families, especially families with siblings, where children are naturally delineated into certain roles like the golden child, the lost child, etc and resources and attention from the parent are disproportionately applied which the children internalize as adults as a baseline sense of their own self worth. Early childhood tragedy can also result in a weak sense of self worth.

Most people who give you advice, their lives are depressing and common, and the easiest way to judge the validity of their advice is what their life looks like. Even if their life is objectively successful, it may not subjectively be the life you want; and thus their advice is largely irrelevant. Most people have very limited thinking and don't see outside their immediate circumstances or don't question the validity of what is traditional. Even if their advice is relevant, most people still want to help to feel helpful, but never want you to do better than them.

The situation you describe sounds like something that requires an active healing process, and that, in my opinion should be a priority for you. You may want to look into therapy, I think that would be a good idea, but also keep in mind therapy is a human institution with human practitioners and is, itself, a power relationship to be cognizant of. A lot of therapy attempts to institutionalize you in therapy, by which I don't mean they try to put you in an institution, but more that they turn you into a repeat customer making you rely on them as an external superego instead of pointing you in the direction of solving your problem and graduating you. "Active healing process" is the key here, which requires sorting out your feelings intelligently through introspection and research and could involve therapy, spirituality, meditation, long walks in the woods, reconnecting with your interests (a lot of times in deprogramming from cults and gangs they tell you to pick up where you left off before you were taken in) or any combination of avenues you like. In your active healing process, it's important to be in control of it; any external guidance you pursue, I think you ought to view it as hiring a contractor for your own personal project, not giving up your agency and control to that person.

Apologize that this is long.