Post The Teenager

The Teenager Now that you pushed away from your parents. Good. That's exactly what was supposed to happen. But now you're standing alone and it's... terrifying, isn't it? So your brain does the only logical thing, it looks around for a group to belong to. A tribe. A crowd. Anything that screams and says "you're one of us!" And suddenly everything is about what other people think. Your clothes,, body and opinions. Even your taste in music. All of it quietly calibrated to one invisible question: do they approve? (a post I made a year ago, highlighted in blue) Someone calls you a loser in front of people and it ruins your entire week.. You change your style because the group changed theirs. You befriend/date someone not because you like them but because having someone feels like proof of something.. This makes complete sense by the way. You left your parents, your original safe base, and the world felt suddenly cold and open. A group becomes the new warmth and norm. It's not actually a weakness, an ancient wiring so to say. Tribes kept humans alive for thousands of years in fact. The trap though... is that you start building your entire identity on land that isn't yours. Other people's opinions. Other people's validation. And people are inconsistent. They leave. They change. They disappear. The exit door here is the quietest realization: the safety you've been chasing in other people's eyes. It was inside you the whole time. You just never dared to look in there. 150 heart reactions and we will take a look in there together ) @acceptthyself