because when you grow up with emotionally immature or dysregulated parents, love becomes conditional on your usefulness. and so you do exactly that, you become useful, become good. you learn to co-regulate people who never learned to regulate themselves. and in doing so, you start abandoning yourself without even realising it.

because the more fluent you become in other people’s needs, the harder it becomes to locate your own. you lose sight of where you end and they begin. you start performing yourself in ways that earn connection but cost authenticity. and eventually, the self you’ve constructed becomes a mask that sticks. and what you believe is peace and... See more

let the silence last a little longer before you fill it. say “i don’t know” when you don’t. be okay with needing things. allow yourself to disagree.