The answer depends greatly on what you are describing. When describing direction you would likely use reverse meaning backwards. "I was walking in reverse." When describing behaviors or ideologies, inverse and backwards can be synonyms. "His political views are the inverse of most people's." "He has some backwards political views." When describing an object being turned inside-out or flipped over you might say "I inverted it." However, in the case of clothing that can be worn either way it would be called "reversible." "Inverse" also has specific meanings in many fields like mathematics, science, photography. Google "inverted image" for example. In general, "inverse" usually means when all the individual qualities of something are opposite and "reverse" refers to direction or things going from the end/middle toward the beginning. I think confusion happens because "backwards" can be synonyms to either word depending on the topic.