Given there is no real “you” there to love, you can all too easily become a shell of a person whom others can discard.

As unhealthy as the other person may be, toxic ties are usually the result of two unhealthy habits on your part. Number one, failing to speak your truth. And number two, failing to set appropriate boundaries.

We’ll need to start showing up instead in ways that inspire others to mirror back to us the truth of our value and our power.

We waste time looking for the perfect lover, instead of creating the perfect love.

Also make one or more plans that create possibilities for you to meet new people

Yet what I’ve seen countless times over the years is that it’s nearly impossible to create radical lasting change by ourselves, in isolation. We need a relational field in which to grow our capacity to love and be loved. Love doesn’t flourish by writing about it in our journals, and healing doesn’t happen just by reading a book. It happens in the

The traumas we internalized were either acute, such as the death of a parent, or developmental, such as being raised by a depressed or immature parent who constantly pulled on you to be the caregiver in your relationship, or what we therapists call the “parentified child.”

“Possible Self”—the “you” that you are inside of that future fulfilled.

Luckily, however, you can. You are a maker of miracles. You possess the power to declare a future that is very different from your past, and begin leaning in to discover who you will need to become in order to manifest, then sustain, that experience.