This is for when a character prone to shutting people out, rejecting them, or eventually accepting then proceeding to abandon them anyway, either has an imaginary version of everyone else in their mind as being the ones who did it to them (basically mistaking this for an All of the Other Reindeer scenario), or pretends to.

Sympathetic versions of this might overlap with Never Be Hurt Again, if their tendency to shut others out is rooted in previous rejections or disappointments. Less sympathetic versions of this might overlap with Never My Fault, with the character often having some form of victim complex or only wanting to hang out with other people on their terms. Either category could be used as An Aesop about never assuming the worst of people.

Can be a form of Psychological Projection or Self-Fulfilling Prophecy. It may involve a Self-Serving Memory. See also Poor Communication Kills.

Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Multiple characters from Neon Genesis Evangelion, but especially Shinji, who claims nobody wants him both before and after being swarmed by adoring fangirls he barely reacts to and is never shown thinking about again, and Asuka, who in episode 9 stomps on her classmates' love letters yet spends much of episode 22 screaming over perceived rejection from guys who were either too old for her or were afraid holding her would end even worse for them.
• Heart Catch Pretty Cure episode 16 features a drama club leader who, despite her bossy tone and closed-minded reactions to others' ideas, still gets invited to fashion club meetings and decides not to join them, but then proceeds to non-ironically mope about how they "abandoned" her.
• SSSS.GRIDMAN: Akane Shinjo has little use for people, and when the transforming kaiju she created (named Anti) repeatedly fails she begins abusing him and cursing him for his uselessness at his given task i.e. killing Gridman. When Anti switches sides thanks to Rikka's kindness to him, Akane accuses him of abandoning her. This is partially explained by Akane's belief that as Anti's creator, she is literally his God and so expects his loyalty no matter how badly she treats him.

Films — Animation

• Toy Story 3: Lotso, Big Baby, and Chuckles used to belong to a girl named Daisy, who lost them during a road trip. After making a trek all the way back to her house, Lotso found that she had replaced him with another Lotso-Huggin' Bear doll. Feeling betrayed, Lotso snapped and convinced his friends that Daisy intentionally replaced them all and never really loved them. Woody calls him out on this.
  Woody: Wait! What about Daisy?
  Lotso: [beat] I don't know what you're talkin' about.
  Woody: Daisy? You used to do everything together, remember?
  Lotso: Yeah... then, she threw us out.
  Woody: No! She lost you.
  Lotso: She replaced us!
  Woody: She replaced YOU! And if you couldn't have her, then no one could!
• Meet the Robinsons: Bowler Hat Guy claims that "all of the other kids hated [him]", but the flashback to this supposed hatred and mistreatment shows other kids complimenting him and asking to hang out while he ignored them.
• A subtle version occurs in The Incredibles. When Mr. Incredible (a.k.a. Bob Parr) dismisses Buddy Pine, he remarks "Fly home, Buddy — I work alone." Later, when Buddy, who has grown up to become the villainous Syndrome, recalls the event, he does get the words right, but completely changes the details to make Mr. Incredible seem like far more of a monster than he actually was. The scene took place in a bank; Bob had the villainous Bomb Voyage in his grasp; and his tone, though dismissive, sounded more like he was distracted than actually malicious. But in Buddy's Self-Serving Memory, he and Bob are standing all alone in a darkened room; Bomb Voyage is nowhere to be seen; and Bob glares directly at him while delivering the line in the cruelest way imaginable. It emphasizes how Buddy refuses to admit he did anything wrong: yes, Bob could have been nicer, but Buddy was a child and had no business trying to fight adult villains — to say nothing of how his presence allowed Bomb Voyage to plant a bomb on his cape and indirectly led to the ban on Supers after the resulting disaster.

Films — Live-Action

• High Fidelity: Rob remembers his breakup with his high-school girlfriend Penny as her pushing him away for trying to feel her up, and then her having sex with another guy three dates into their relationship. What actually happened, as she points out to his face when he brings it up on their date, is that he broke up with her over her wanting to wait to have sex until after they turned 18, and that what happened with the other guy was barely consensual and turned her off sex altogether until after college.
  Penny: And now you want to talk about rejection? Well, fuck you, Rob! [storms out of the restaurant]
• Duck Soup: Played for Laughs, of course. Firefly imagines Ambassador Trentino rejecting his handshake and is so worked up about it that when Trentino arrives, he slaps him before he's even said a word.

Literature

• Marco Inaros from The Expanse forbade his ex-girlfriend from seeing their infant son Filip ever again, then raised Filip to believe his mother was a spiteful coward who abandoned him and her fellow Belters to sleep with those "imperialist Inners" (read: did not like being tricked by Marco into writing a code that would make spaceships explode inexplicably during flight).

Live-Action TV

• This proves to be a big problem for Hannah in 13 Reasons Why. Hannah craves love and acceptance from her classmates but due to getting bullied and her own insecurities, she tends to push away her friends, often mistaking their behavior for insults or rejections even if they were trying to be sincere or non-malicious. Her tendency to lash out at her friends drives them away and leaves her without support, worsening her downward spiral into depression. One of the most prominent examples is when she breaks down and rejects her crush Clay after they kiss, due to the fact her classmates have spread nasty rumors about her sex life and she's scared of what everyone will think if they get together. Hannah demands that Clay leave but when he does, she mentally asks "Why did you leave?" because what she really wanted was for him to stay and comfort her. Clay only realizes this after she has committed suicide.
• In season three of Angel, Wesley becomes alienated from the other characters after, due to a prophecy preying on his mind, he abducts Angel's baby son Connor, making it possible for one of Angel's most dangerous enemies, Daniel Holtz, to take the baby and slash Wesley's throat. A few episodes later, when Gunn challenges him over his decline in morals and affability and asks him what happened to him, his response is "I had my throat cut and all my friends abandoned me", which is a slight understatement of how much his own actions had to do with it.

Puppet Shows

• In an early Sesame Street Muppet sketch, Ernie is on his way to borrow Herbert Birdsfoot's vacuum cleaner. On arriving, Ernie muses that he might be interrupting Herbert's bath. Ernie then imagines Herbert getting angry with him, and telling everyone else never to lend Ernie anything again. When Herbert answers the door, Ernie tells him he can keep his vacuum cleaner.

Theatre

• In the Mrs. Hawking series, the titular character does this repeatedly (to the point of it being a Fatal Flaw). She's convinced that everyone she ever comes to care about will hurt or betray her in some way, so when they inevitably do make a mistake, she acts as though it was a personal attack and refuses to accept any sort of apology, saying that they clearly hate her (despite repeated efforts to prove otherwise). This attitude ultimately creates a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy, because the people who do genuinely love her eventually get tired of her stubbornness and give up on trying to reach out.

Video Games

• Spider-Man (PS4): As his Sanity Slippage continues, Doctor Otto Octavius begins claiming everyone is against him. He even begins rejecting the advice of his trusted lab assistant Peter Parker. By the end of the game, he directly accuses Peter of betraying him. In a twist, however, Otto isn't completely wrong: Because of Peter's Chronic Hero Syndrome, he's constantly showing up late (if at all) to their lab, forcing Otto to do experiments on his own without Peter there to focus on safety.

Western Animation

• Moondancer, from My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, is a more sympathetic example. While name-dropped in the pilot episode, she isn't shown on-screen until "Amending Fences", which she spends much of trying to pretend she doesn't want friends, only to fly off the handle when reminded of the time Twilight Sparkle moved to a different town without saying goodbye. It's implied that a desire to Never Be Hurt Again is what drove the façade.
• The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy: Nergal Jr. writes in his diary about how alone he is and how he wishes somebody would reach out to him, only for his thoughts to be interrupted by a classmate shyly asking him to walk home with her after school. Nergal Jr. immediately rejects her, yelling, "Can't you see I'm trying to write my dark thoughts!"
• Ready Jet Go!: The kids don't hate Mitchell, they just don't like that he wants to expose Jet's alien identity. But they still offer Mitchell chances to hang out with/help them, which he keeps rejecting. At the same time, Mitchell thinks no-one wants to be his friend and is quite lonely. This makes him a quite tragic character, ruining his own chances at friendship. Luckily, Mitchell does actually become friends with Jet, Sean, Sydney, and Mindy towards the end of the show.
• She-Ra and the Princesses of Power: Catra often pushes people away, refusing to join Adora in the Rebellion and treating Scorpia terribly until she deserts. This causes her to suffer and she gradually becomes a paranoid wreck, angry at everyone for leaving her alone. In the fourth season finale, Double Trouble plainly lays it out that Catra's the only one at fault for her position, albeit via a massively cruel Shapeshifter Guilt Trip.
  Double Trouble: People have hurt you, haven't they? They didn't believe in you. They didn't trust you. Didn't need you. Left you. But, did you ever stop to think maybe they're not the problem? It's you. You drive them away, Wildcat.
• The Simpsons: In "Bart vs. Thanksgiving", when Bart returns home after running away, he holds back at the last minute from entering the house after having an Imagine Spot of his family rejecting his apologies and blaming him for everything that's gone wrong in their lives. Eventually, after hiding out on the roof, he talks to Lisa and realizes his family will still happily accept him.
• Star Trek: Lower Decks: Ensign Mariner has this problem.
  • After treating Boimler like crap for much of the first season (albeit, what she thought was a Vitriolic Best Buds friendship), she gets pissed when he accepts a transfer to the U.S.S. Titan, calling him a "backstabbing little weasel" and threatening him with bodily harm. She's still mad at him come season two, but after he gets transferred back to the Cerritos they talk things out and make up.
  • This also applies to Mariner's Sitcom Arch-Nemesis, Jennifer the Andorian. Mariner has a crush on her, which manifests in one-sided Belligerent Sexual Tension, which causes Jen to dislike her, which leads to Mariner disliking her back.
• Amphibia: According to King Andrias, he had two friends, a pink frog and a green toad, who betrayed him by stealing the Calamity Box and causing Newtopia to fall from grace. But once we learn that Andrias planned to use the box to be a Multiversal Conqueror, we're left with the implication that they took the box out of worry for the maniac their friend was becoming.
• The Fairly OddParents: In "Hassle in the Castle", Timmy meets some of Cosmo and Wanda's worst godkids, including a girl named Mary Ann who says they "deserted" her when she took their wands. When Cosmo and Wanda appear, they reveal that she'd abused their magic and caused World War I.