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

remember that love isn’t meant to be an endless series of contortions.

and being easy to love,

should not be the price of being loved at all.

social pain activates the same regions of the brain as physical pain. the anterior cingulate cortex, the brain’s alarm system, doesn’t distinguish between a broken bone and a withdrawn gaze. so when you’ve learned that being too much risks disconnection, your brain finds ways to protect you. it trims the parts that threaten closeness, blunts down... See more