at least i´ve seen many many and had the same pattern my whole life until i got rid of it.
these are our so called "personal traps" everyone (or most people) has . they´re kind of specific but also there are many many patterns in how this trap is designed and still they´re kind of the same (darks are not that creative )
your case of abuse and the results of it are close to mine for example. even this "i have to help others rather than myself" i know very well. this is just for others to hold you in a cycle so you can´t clean up your own problems.
and darks like emotional vampires can use it suck from you.
sure the helping is great , this is what the world acutally needs. but you should ask your self if this helping was for the helping only or did it harm to you simply because you didn´t eat something or you were in your own problems and had no time or whatever.
rethink some cases in another perspective and you´ll see what i mean. i did that way too often and the people´s problems became bigger and bigger and suddenly i was there for everyone to solve their whole life until i broke this cycle.
and what i actually wanted
Karunya wrote: I think that I'm a "test volunteer" for the process of disarming this particular form of abuse.
the abuse is just the trigger to get you in the trap like this above or in a similar one. and those are, like i wrote before, rather a common thing.
i didn´t wanted to bring you negativity for sure not i just wanted to inform you (for the case you thought it as negative) i don´t even know that much about those traps by myself only what i read here and combining it with experiences and thoughts. maybe i´ve wrote everything wrong and your case is really special. then i´m happy that at least you get cleaned from it by now