Is this weird or am I overthinking this

I need an objective take on a weird manager dynamic because I genuinely can’t tell if I’m overthinking or if something is actually off.

I’m 24F, work in tech, and have been at my company for a little over a year. For context, this is a startup and people are quite close and built circles around each other.

Although my manager has been here for years, he isn’t very close with anyone, except a few people at the top. And he’s somewhat always inconsistent.

When I got onboarded, he was overly critical, dismissive, and hard to approach. Then suddenly supportive. Then cold again.

I’ve kind of accepted that he’s just not a very social person.

There was also an incident at an office retreat involving inappropriate behavior from two of my male colleagues. I didn’t formally escalate it at first but I did confide in a few teammates. Later HR got involved and honestly handled it badly. They focused more on who I spoke to rather than what actually happened, and told me not to discuss it further.

Eventually I brought it up to my manager to explain a temporary dip in performance. He seemed concerned in that moment, and shortly after that I was promoted. And around this time I felt a slight shift in how he interacted with me.

He remembered random personal details I’d mentioned in passing, was softer in tone, and seemed so much more attentive than usual

I didn’t think much of it at the time.

After the promotion, things got weird again. I expected that he would have higher expectations of me and he’d be much harder to please.

But the past quarter I got feedback that honestly felt very negative and vague compared to before.
Things like, saying my work “doesn’t move anything forward”. He said there were seriously concerning issues around my productivity and consistency in quality of output, etc.

But none of this was backed by clear examples and it didn’t fully match what I was actually doing day to day.

In the previous few weeks, there were also times where he left me to figure things out on my own in leadership projects and later blamed me for things going south. That’s when I started pulling back a bit.

I think I was overly professional on one call and didn’t give any emotional reaction or personal details about my day, after which he texted me and asked if I was okay. And that he noticed stress on me.

By the end of our last catch-up where we kept discussing work, he kept asking me if there was anything else you I wanted to talk to him about multiple times. I did ask what he meant by that and he didn’t give an answer. He has become much more nicer and unblocked work faster, but idk what to think about it.

Now I’m confused about what this actually is.

I just want to understand what’s actually going on so I don’t misread it.

Am I overthinking this or does this sound like something beyond normal manager behavior?