Hello!
I was bullied quite a bit as a child.
Growing up I was rejected for all sorts of things - my personality being too intense, my inability to 'compete', my lack of emotional regulation, my lack of capacity to care about what my peers thought was important to name just a few.
I grew up getting the message from pretty much every direction that I was flawed in some way - not only did my caregivers not accept/approve of/understand me - school and social situations were even WORSE because there just seemed to be absolutely NOTHING normal about me.
With all of this, I came into adulthood feeling like a total freak. Like I was never going to find friends, like I was socially awkward in a way that couldn't be fixed, like I was broken and like no one would ever be interested in having a relationship with me.
Learning to value myself, learning to come out of a MASSIVE tendency to lean into people pleasing and service to try to earn love, learning to see myself not as broken but unique and worthy of being loved was a long journey - and one that I'm still on.
Learning to see myself as worthy of friendships is again, something I'm still working on - but hopefully I can offer some guidance and support along the path to anyone out there who's feeling like they're fundamentally incapable of being loved for who they are.
Learning from a young age that you don't fit in is really hard, and learning to love ourselves and then to have the confidence to 'put ourselves out there' again in adulthood is even harder.
Let's see if we can navigate these waters together today.
<3
