#and youll realize that it might have been! and thats the most horrible gut wrenching feeling ever

[scholarofgolb]

one thing low self esteem will do to you is that it will convince you that no one could possibly value their relationship with you or even on a lighter level like. thinking people don't care about anything you say and that your words don't have impact on people. and what that leads to is you being completely unaware when you hurt other peoples feelings and being unable to consider how something you view as innocuous or funny could be hurtful and mean to someone else. like even if you have a hard time understanding that you have value as a person you have to understand that you have a lot of control of the way you effect other people and no one is intrinsically aware of what is going on in your head. you've got to care about other people and think about what's going on for them and yes empathy is hard but empathy can be learned. and sometimes u gotta figure it out and teach it to yourself.

#big thing for me in my late teens was realizing all of this #it was like probably the most valuable thing i took out of adolescence #which i thought because i had social anxiety and was so concerned about other people hating me that i couldn't possibly be low empathy #but i was! and i had to deal with it! #stop asking other people 'are you mad at me' and start asking yourself 'how might they have interpreted that? could that have been hurtful? #and youll realize that it might have been! and thats the most horrible gut wrenching feeling ever #but there's this wonderful thing called apologizing and explaining yourself and reminding people that you love + value them #and if ur me that means sometimes youll apologize for something and ur friend will be like 'i dont even know what ur talking about LOL' #but it also means sometimes your friend will feel welcome to have productive conversations about how you make eachother feel #and thats really what helps form lasting relationships tbh