This is deeply sad, so trigger warning, but it’s an important premise for the topic:

I spent the majority of my life wholeheartedly believing that no one loves me or cares about me. This is because of emotional abuse as a child (from a friend, not from my family), repeated trauma from unintentional abandonment, and from being a domestic violence victim (now survivor) in my 20s.

I truly, 100% believed this was a fact until I was in my late 30’s, and I’m now in my early 40’s.

So, thinking people might actually like me, care about me, or even love me is very new, and I have worked so incredibly hard to get myself there. I was depressed my whole life, and sometimes suicidal, and I attempted suicide more than once in my 20s. I am not those things now because I put in the years of consistent, practical, spiritual and science-based self healing work. This is how I know, and I am direct evidence, that reframing your habits of thinking is the key to healing your mental health.

Here is how I did it:

1. Pay attention to and log the thoughts you have that cause you pain. Catch them in real time, put them down in writing if you can.
2. Take those thoughts and rewrite them completely. Either mentally or literally write the new thoughts.
3. Rinse and repeat.

That’s literally it!

This sounds really simple but what you are doing is rewiring your brain’s muscle memory and building new synapses while simultaneously no longer feeding the old synapses. You’re taking the muscle memory of one thought and rewiring it to another thought that eventually replaces the first thought automatically if you do this frequently and for a long time.

So for example:

“no one loves me” –> “that was always a lie, people do love me. my mom and my kids love me.”

“no one cares about me” -> “my family, friends, and coworkers care about me.”

“I am poor” –> “I am building my financial portfolio”

“bad things happen to me –> “bad things happen to everyone and I am not alone”

“people don’t like me” –> “some people like me and some don’t. It’s ok if someone doesn’t like me. I like myself”

etc

It took me some years to get to the point of being able to see and believe my replacement thoughts automatically and subconsciously, but I did get there. And you can too.

Trick 2 – reframe how you interpret others

Building on my previous point that other people’s behavior has nothing to do with you, and that people tend to internalize others’ behavior as being a negative about them – for good mental health we need to reframe how we interpret their behavior. So what we do here is take our interpretation and reframe it to remove ourselves from the picture. For example:

“He doesn’t care about me” –> “He doesn’t care. He does not care about others.”

“He cheats bc I’m not good enough” –> “He cheats. He is a cheater.”

“They left me” –> “They left” (it’s not about me)

“They yelled at me” –> “They yell.”

“They ghosted me” –> “They ghost people instead of communicating effectively”

“They talk trash about me” –> “They talk trash. They’re a trash talker”

Does this make sense? It’s about them, not you. So make your interpretation about them and who they are, and not about you. Remove yourself from the equation, and do it every time.

And for me: “He doesn’t love me” –> “He doesn’t love.”

Trick 3 – be scientific about it

It’s really difficult for me to interpret people’s behavior and emotions accurately, especially when it comes to being loved, because of trauma and neurodivergence. So I looked up the indicators of love and saw that my recent boyfriend hit almost none of these. Here are the indicators of love:

• Consistent emotional support
• Active listening
• Respect for boundaries
• Shared life
• Warm body language
• Unprompted check-ins

Knowing these indicators helps me to identify love from manipulation. My recent ex most certainly did not love me, yet he spent 3.5 years telling me he does, and that is because he was manipulating me, not loving me. Moving forward, I will be looking for these indicators and nothing else to know if someone loves me.

This spills over into other things. Want to know if someone is attracted? Check their pupils for dilation, see if they mirror your body language and words, see if they turn their legs or feet towards you, see if they blush when you compliment them. These are all biological indicators of attraction.

Or lying. People tend to have biological indicators of lying as well. They nod when they say no or shake their head when they say yes, they repeat the question when you ask it, they purse their lips, they even smile and laugh when lying.

Be scientific about it, believe their body and not their words. Believe their actions and not their promises. And believe that they act that way because something is wrong with them, not because something is wrong with you. Then tell yourself that repeatedly and often until you genuinely believe it.

Being scientific about it also empowers you and removes you from the scenario a bit so you can have more of an outside perspective rather than one based on your fears and insecurities and trauma. It enables you to be analytical and activates the parts of your brain that use reason (the prefrontal cortex), while deactivating the part of your brain that fires off alarms and puts you in fight/flight/freeze (the amygdala).

Trick 4 – nurture yourself

To feel okay when you are not okay, you need these ingredients:

• validation
• acceptance
• nurturing and goodness directed towards you

So first step here is to validate your own feelings. Tell yourself things like “of course you feel this way” and “it’s okay to make mistakes”.

Next accept and sit with the bad feelings. Think of it like a physical injury that hurts right now but will heal over time. All you have to do is let it hurt and let it play out. Don’t run, don’t avoid, don’t distract, don’t do any of that. Let your feelings exist. To do this you may need to name the feeling i.e. “I am really sad right now” and then go ahead and follow up with “its totally understandable to feel sad right now” and “I will let myself be sad until it passes”. and from there move into nurturing.

Do the nice things for yourself that you would do for others. Buy yourself gifts, take bubble baths, get some tea and go sit by the ocean, wrap yourself in a blanket, give yourself a hug. Eat healthy foods, take yourself to the gym, go on fun missions, make art, do yoga, touch grass, pet dogs, go for walks, or go ahead and bed rot if you need to. Whatever you need, give it to yourself. You deserve nice things. Never ever deny yourself of nice things.

This also means using words to nurture yourself, like positive affirmations. For example:

I like myself, I like ABC about me

I think I am pretty and so do others

It’s okay for me to make mistakes

I am blessed in XYZ ways

I am so lucky that _______

I deserve nice things

etc etc

And if you find yourself thinking or saying mean things to yourself, go back to the first trick and start there.

Trick 5 – Fill your world with good experiences

This one is pretty strait forward and is similar to the previous one but this is really about adding more goodness to your pool of experience, which then dilutes, and eventually replaces, the bad experiences. So go do the fun thing you want to do. Go to the spa, go on the trips, go see the friends, go out to dinner, take the classes, look at the beautiful landscape, etc. The most effective one for me is giving myself a massage. This is free and it is readily available to me at any time, and it feels nice. So next time you feel bad just rub your shoulders or your feet or head or all of the above to dilute the bad feelings by adding good ones. Things may not be perfect but there is still goodness readily available to you.

It’s much harder to feel bad when theres something in the here and now making you feel good.

All of this does take effort, but these processes have really changed my life for the better in significant ways, and I hope they can change yours for the better too.

My kid: Mehhhhhh *droops*

Me (immediately resorting to bribery here): Ok what if I get you a treat for helping? A new dragon?

Kid: meh

Me: Some Littlest Pet Shoppes?

Kid: meh

Me: Some new clothes from Hot Topic?

Kid: meh

Me: Pinkberry?

Kid: If I were to help all day I would want all of those things.

Me: Okay. Little business woman here, optimizing opportunities. How about I give you a $100 budget and you can buy whatever you want.

Kid: Ehhh, I don’t think that would be enough. That would get me like 1 dragon and 2 Littlest Pet Shoppes only. I just want to get all of those things without a budget.

Me: Okay, wow, tough negotiator. But you know you have cornered the market, and are in high demand. I agree to your terms.

Kid: Sorry mom…

Me: no no, that’s okay – we’re just negotiating a contract.

Never been more proud to get hustled …

There are way too many Israeli guys in LA, and they are way too hot, and they are freakin crazy – which means they’re also hella fun, and I am so, so, so cooked fam. I’m too impulsive for this, nobody better give me rosé, I’m already planning the wedding. And I should not be allowed on dating apps.

edit 8/10/26: yuuuuuuuup. Week-long boyfriends. Dudes are such a roller coaster. Fun to ride but you’ll end up motion sick.

edit: 8/11/26: haha ok, maybe more than a week (>.>)

8/21/26: Yep. yup. yuppers. I’m in trouble. Currently swimming in oxytocin hardcore. feck. send help.

This is a message to divorced ladies: 

Hey, I don’t want your shitty ex husbands either.

Your exes are all over the apps trying *everything* to get laid, and they are complaining about you in the process. You this, you that and ofc they are always the victim. Of course you’re always “crazy”, right. Some of them are even still freaking married to you or in the middle of break ups with you, talking about wishing it worked out while simultaneously refusing to do anything differently.

Apparently you haven’t been putting out for years. Poor them! I don’t know why that’s surfacing as a trend for me right now, but if you didn’t want to sleep with them for years, there’s a reason. So I sure af don’t want to be sleeping w them either. Try as they might to use apps for drop shipping women like free, “cleaner” escorts.

They really do tell on themselves too. I’ve heard about some of those reasons and sis – I agree with you. And while I’ve never been married, I’m freshly single and I have my own long term/serious exes so I know the shitty ex jam all too well. I am telling your exes to do the things you’re asking and I don’t think they appreciate that. But they do keep trying to drop ship me until either they get sex (nope) or an immovable rejection.

Don’t worry, they won’t see this bc they are shitty guys. They are not interested in my thoughts, opinions, personality or talent.

*insert guys only want one thing meme*

So yeah. No thanks on yalls exes and also hard pass on a few of my own. I stand firmly in the girls girl camp.

(And my future hubs only wants Lego)

Since we are all the main character of our own lives, we tend to internalize people’s behavior and make it a commentary about us and our value. But they are the main character of their world, and their story is not about you. You’re a character that comes in and out of that story, but you aren’t the plot.

Children tend to self blame and self abandon when they are treated poorly, and may even grow up with some subconscious beliefs that they carry into adulthood and into relationships. For example a child being neglected or abused may conclude they are not being taken care of or protected because they are not lovable, or deserving of care and safety. When the truth is that the caretaker doesn’t have the facility take care of them. So they grow up carrying those feelings and acting upon them, being depressed because of them, taking risks because of them, making assumptions about life and relationships because of them. As a result of this (completely natural way that every child copes), a lot of us may need to unlearn these deep-seated beliefs because they can plague us internally. Those beliefs are the launching point of your own downward spiral that ends in rock bottom. 

Internalizing negative self beliefs is a survival mechanism. It stems from childhood when the caretaker is the sole means of survival for the child, so the child blames themselves on a subconscious level to shield themselves from the threat of being unsafe with their caretaker and therefore unable to survive. It’s not that my parents are neglectful – it’s that I am unworthy of nurturing. I am still able to survive because my parents are safe, it’s just that I don’t qualify for their love. Make sense?

This happens to grown ups too. For example being cheated on, of course, makes you feel like you aren’t good enough, valued, or cared about. Self blame gives us hope that maybe we can stay, and don’t have to endure the grief of loss. Maybe if we just work on ourself and make ourself more deserving they will love us more and treat us right. It gives us a chance at a feeling of safety in a scenario where we definitely aren’t safe. because our own value is something we have command over, something we can act on, whereas someone else’s moral compass and integrity is not. It feels like it’s a commentary on us, we make it a commentary on us, and often they claim it’s a commentary on us, but it is never is. It’s not even a commentary on the relationship. It’s a commentary on who the cheater is, on who they choose to be. (because yes, it’s a choice). You aren’t safe with them because they aren’t safe. It’s not because of you.

The first step to unlearning all that headfuckery is to make a habit of framing other people’s behavior as always being about them and only about them. They are acting of their own accord. They are acting out on their own issues, their own fears, their own dysfunction, their own malice, their own ignorance: them, them, all them.

That man that lied and cheated? He did so not because you weren’t good enough to love, but because he feels like he is not good enough (hint: he isn’t). Instead of self-improving and becoming someone he deems as worthwhile, he avoids the pain of inadequacy by filling his self worth void with surface level, easy access validation and attention from as many women as he can.

Or sometimes people legitimately are malicious and just simply enjoy feeling powerful by hurting others. Know this: A good person treats everyone right regardless of who it is in front of them.

And it never works out for cheaters because that void never stays full, and they are basically addicts who have to dopamine chase and use people like a drug to feel okay. It’s totally not a you issue. It’s totally all them.

The parent that always calls you a “crybaby” when you get upset? That is because THEY lack empathy, which is one of the main qualities that makes someone safe and kind. They put you down because they themselves have no ability to relate or sympathize, and therefore have no real love available to give. It has nothing to do with you, and everything to do with what they lack inside themselves. Trying to validate your feelings and comfort you would require them to face and overcome their own internal deficit, which again, was a coping mechanism they learned in childhood to survive. Expressing feelings was dangerous or met with harshness, so their feelings must be bad. Turn them off, no bad feelings allowed. If you have bad feelings you are just a weak “crybaby”. Or maybe they are legitimately a sociopath, which is a neurological misconfiguration that either they were born with or developed during childhood trauma, and it’s something that can only be addressed in a clinical setting.

Think of them as a random crazy homeless guy on the street that yells profanities at anyone walking past. The yelling is not happening because of the individual people that are passing by, it’s happening because the yeller is fundamentally broken and needs repair. That is the only reason that people mistreat other people. 

The bully at school? The teacher or boss that harshly criticizes your work? The “friend” that trash talks you behind your back? The predator that targets you for crimes or abuse? The sibling that never calls you back? The date that ghosted you? Every single one of them are operating based on their own issues, and you just happen to be there.

I’ll say it again. You just happen to be there. It is not about you.

They have issues, and how they act is about their issues. Their fears, their past pains, their dysfunction. It literally has nothing to do with you. You are a bystander. You got splashed by the mud but you are not the reason the mud exists, they are. They are not just splashing the mud, they are the whole mud. It’s 100% them.

Emotional healing and well being is only possible when you accept this as an undeniable fact, and approach the world from this perspective. Life is a lot easier when you don’t let other people’s burdens become your burden too.

Any time someone acts like trash to you, look at them and think “wow they really have issues, I feel bad for them” and then skip along on your merry way.

Because it is their issue and not yours. It’s their dysfunction and not yours. Their actions and their words are not a statement on you. They are a statement on them. Everything they say and do and think and feel is a reflection of their inner world. Again, you just happen to be there. It’s all them, and none of it is you.

And you can’t fix them. You can not fix people. Even therapists can not fix people. Therapists hold your hand while you process your emotions and experiences, and offer tools for coping and healing, but ultimately everyone has to use the tools they have available to fix themselves. And it’s a long process, fixing yourself, so let them embark on it without you. They may never be able to. Most of the time they don’t even want to. People like this tend to deny accountability and blame their victims, because they are not able to hold a space for their own pain. So they deflect onto and gaslight the people who are closest to them to avoid feeling their pain.

It’s okay to feel bad or hurt by their behavior, but don’t make it about your worth. Because it isn’t.

Consider yourself a witness to their pain and their struggles. Wish them well and move along. They are toxic. You aren’t, so keep it moving. Let them wallow in their own personal hell without you. Their internal shit is not your burden to carry. Don’t pick it up and carry it. Watch the hurt just melt away when you operate from the understanding that it’s a them problem, not a you problem.

Write their name on a little paper boat and send it sailing down the river. Burn it to ash and blow it away in the wind. Whatever you need to do to release yourself from carrying the weight of their problems. You get to send them on their way and go skip off into the sunset and be free of their bs. So do that.

Boy byeee!

Note: Today I am celebrating being free after a year of processing betrayal. Leaving his ass: 10/10 would recommend

like the night is dark.

lonely like its all my fault.

I’m a bottomless pit when it comes to love.

I’ll never be fit when it comes to love.

lonely

like 3 spikes through my heart.

lonely with no end and no start

I’m repeating my days when it comes to love

I’m a tangled maze when it comes to love

lonely

like theres no one to tell

lonely like I’ve lived through hell

I’m broken and leaking when it comes to love

yet still hoping and seeking when it comes to love

lonely

like the sky is vast

lonely and haunted by the past

feelings blind me when it comes to love

I’m always left behind when it comes to love

lonely

like a bird with no wings

lonely like a whale that can’t sing

I never feel seen when it comes to love

I’ll never believe when it comes to love

lonely

like the days are long

lonely like all hope is gone

I only ever perish when it comes to love

I’ll never be cherished when it comes to love

lonely 

as time slips through my fingers

lonely and the heartache lingers

I’m an endless void when it comes to love

I’m the least wanted choice when it comes to love

lonely

like I lost the game

lonely and this doesn’t change

I’ll never find a home when it comes to love

I’m forever alone when it comes to love

am beloved and beholden

I need to feel like I’m embraced

and cherished and golden

A princess, a queen, a top priority

all the things daddy never did for me

make me important in your world

this pathetic neglected girl

desperate for a taste of love

a taste of life and all the things thereof

like a thirsty desert dweller

like a foggy fortune teller

a blinded heart, but I cant unsee

a need so deep no one can ever meet

I lose you more

my fight or flight keeps showing you the door

my shattered heart bleeding out on the floor

I want to cling to you, I feel so needy

is there anything to cling to? no way to make it even?

you were already gone before I knew you were leaving

you brand me as wrong and won’t listen or believe me

your glossy eyes stare as if I’m not even speaking 

you twist your knife, I can’t stop leaking

feels a lot like I’m not healing, I’m breaking

its so hard to lose you, on repeat repeating

I never truly had you in the first place. Did I ?

0 mph seems to be the fastest pace you fly

all the times you seemed sincere while lying straight to my face, why ?

all the times you said you loved me then went and loved on her and her and her instead

the way you put me last is permanently burned in my head

now you sleep while I sob and you laugh while I’m in pain

how you so quickly sacrifice me for your own short-term gain 

how I never feel seen and you never try repair

how we started being mean and you stranded me there

how the loss of you just thoroughly defeats me

how your slow fade eats and eats and eats at me

I take a mental beating daily, with curdled cream

stinking up my hopes and dreams

every day

I lose you more

in whole new ways we have yet to explore

you were always one foot way out the door

the empty promises, the unfulfilled “more”

they haunt me as you turn to ghost

your mirage of riches that left me broke

I weep at the grave of us, I choke

every night

every day

as I lose you more

petals drooping low

with a scent thats gone sour

and nowhere else to grow

I’m a crumbled tower

jumbled on the floor

I’m the wind that lost her power

and doesn’t blow anymore

I’m a queen without a crown

a throne or a gown

I’m a forgotten memory

an abandoned town

I’m a boat trapped out at sea

a ghost who can’t release

prisoner who can not plea

visionary who can not see

I’m a stingless bee

theres nothing more to me

just a shadow of a dream 

that never came to be

tell me you feel the same

I think of you every day

all I want is you

all I need is here

sitting in front of me

making life how it’s supposed to be

all I need is here

all I know is now

not looking to the past

the future is yet to pass

all I know is now.

all I want is you

tell me you feel the same

I think of you every day

all I want is you.

All I see is us

hope that you see it too

want to spend all my time with you

all I see is us

All I feel is true

so are my feelings for you

don’t crack me into two

I’ll spill all over you

all I feel is true

all I want is you

tell me you feel the same

I think of you every day

all I want is you