Category Shame and Identity

Reality Checks, Shame and Identity, The Human Mind

When Your Identity Was Built Around Being Useful

I learned to feel valuable through usefulness, but usefulness did not teach me how to value myself. I started thinking about this because one sentence hit a little too hard: If I didn’t feel useful, I felt useless. Not bored.Not…

Jesica
April 29, 2026

Relationships and Attachment, Shame and Identity, The Human Mind

When Intimacy Changes the Connection: Chemistry, Capacity, and the Aftermath of Mixed Signals

Sometimes the most confusing connections are not the ones that start with red flags. They are the ones that start with consistency. Someone is interested. Present. Curious. They are not making wild promises, future-faking, or flooding you with attention they…

Jesica
April 23, 2026