Their emotional immaturity is not about you.

It’s not a reflection of your worth.

Hi there,

I wish I’d learned earlier that the way someone treats you is not a reflection of your worth — it’s a reflection of their emotional capacity. People are doing the best they can with the awareness and emotional resources they have, and this applies to partners, dates, parents, friends, and strangers.

It’s a truth that can liberate us from years of shame, confusion, and pain. But it’s not always easy to remember, especially when the person we loved didn’t love us back in the way we hoped — or worse, when they were unkind to us.

When someone we deeply care for withdraws, betrays, avoids, or discards us, it activates painful templates inside us. We don’t just feel pain in the present — we feel the echoes of the past. A father who never saw us. A mother who dismissed our feelings. A caregiver who only gave love when we were “good” or useful.

And because the nervous system is wired for pattern recognition, we unconsciously fill in the blanks: “It must mean I did something wrong.”

Here’s the truth: Most of us carry the assumption that when someone walks away, rejects us, or fails to love us in the way we hoped, it must mean something about us. This assumption is rarely examined, and it becomes an invisible belief system. We rarely pause to consider how much of our pain is not just about what happened, but about the story we’ve told ourselves about what happened.

We unquestioningly believe: “They didn’t choose me, so I must not be good enough.” “They left, so I must be unlovable.” “They lied, so I must not be worthy of honesty or safety.”

These are not facts. They are interpretations. And every interpretation invites a choice: we can mindlessly accept it as the truth — or we can question it.

And in the questioning, we begin to heal, deep in our bodies. We rewrite our stories.

Let’s get into it.