How can I feel okay regardless of how others behave?

Previously from Part 1:

I couldn’t stop wondering, What had I done to cause her to ghost me? What should I have done instead? What can I do to make her like me again? ……

But these were the wrong questions. 

The right questions: How can I feel okay regardless of how others behave?

I didn’t know it at the time, but I was severely emotionally insecure. 

When I worked with a counselor on the issue, it came out that I literally believed the only way I was going to feel loved was if this particular girl liked me back.

This is emotional insecurity: fear of emotional scarcity. 

What came out of my unconscious was, “I won’t be able to feel loved unless she loves me.” 

This explains why I freaked out when I didn’t hear back from her.

It also explains why I was so concerned about “What did I do wrong?” and “What can I do to make her like me again?”

Wrong questions! 

Even if she liked me back and we dated, I would’ve still been anxious that she might break up with me. 

So the right question was, How can I feel okay regardless of how others behave?

I would have to untangle my emotional insecurities. Example of how I did this in these two posts:

Integrate self-rejection, gain self-acceptance

Integrating the fear of being disliked

Also see:

what becoming more secure does to a mfer

Thanks to Stag Lynn, Epistea Residency, CFAR, Alex Zhu, Kaj Sotala, Damon Sasi, Anna Salamon, and many others for support. 

Thanks also to <girl> for exposing the zero-day exploit in my psyche.