#我在Gate广场过新年 Daily Q&A Session on Private Messages: About Subjectivity.

Your current state
is actually quite common in environments where long-term evaluation and comparison occur.
Being able to describe yourself so clearly
indicates that you are genuinely understanding yourself.

Overly caring about evaluations and craving recognition
is not "pathological,"
but a self-protection mechanism formed in your past environment.

If, as a child, your value was often determined by external factors,
then as an adult, it’s natural to see being liked and seen
as sources of security.
Your current reactions
are actually ways your past self protected you,
but they are no longer suitable now.

Many times,
it may seem like issues of love or jealousy,
but deeper down,
it’s actually that your sense of self-worth relies more on external feedback.
When your self-evaluation system is mostly outside,
others’ attitude changes can easily cause huge fluctuations.

In fact, you have already entered the awareness stage,
which is where real change begins.
Rather than rushing into relationships,
it’s more important to gradually build a stable sense of self.
When someone still needs to prove their worthiness of love through relationships,
those relationships tend to become sources of pressure.

You can slowly practice building your internal evaluation system,
reducing complete dependence on external feedback.
Also remind yourself:
Being liked does not equal having value,
being ignored does not mean being unimportant,
being noticed by others does not mean you are being rejected.
When jealousy arises, there’s no need to suppress it,
it often just indicates that you also desire to be seen.

Perhaps the most important thing is—
Even if you do nothing,
it doesn’t make you unworthy of being loved.

Change is not something that happens all at once,
as long as you start shifting your attention
from “how others see me”
back to “my true feelings,”
you are already moving toward a more stable direction.