“they pass through the well-known stages of a spree” (The Doctor’s Opinion, Big Book)
Here’s a pattern I played out for years into AA:
When they do something for me, I treat it as their payment of a debt towards me. I usually find something wrong with it, and am ungrateful, although I may express gratitude in order to secure the supply.
When they do not, I treat it as their neglect of their duty.
I expect others to do for me what I should do for myself, listen to my lengthy narratives, assess my situation, and then advise me what to do. I argue at various points but insist they continue.
I then go and do what I was intending to do, and things go wrong, except now it’s somehow everyone else’s fault.
If anyone rightly steps back, sets a boundary, withholds unhelpful helping, refuses to engage in the drama, or allows me to find my way out of the problem I found my way into, I view them as heartless.
I then play one off against another, to punish and to manipulate more service provision.
Only once everyone let me go did I rock-bottom, and only then did I really start to get well.