To be effective at talking to people of the opposite sex consistently, you cannot be too needy. The way you should view the dating side of your life is from a calm place with no attachments to one thing or another, ready to go with the flow and let your screening personality weed out the wrong options and select the right options. Childhood trauma causes 3 things:

  1. Other people play an enormous part of defining who we are. We were vulnerable as kids, to our parents and our peers, a paradigm that carries to adulthood. Our brains don't let go of the dynamic and in turn we force others (strangers, coworkers, friends) into the power role our parents and peers played in influencing our lives and feelings when we were young. Even though we no longer are reliant on others to that extent. Most people invest and fixate nearly their entire identity and self-worth in the hands of other people. Most times, others are acting out on their own intentions in their own realities. Many times, others are not acting in accordance to how they actually feel. The times where they give you negative or positive feedback based on your actions alone only attest to your social skills or approach in that specific instance. It is not a comment on your worth as a person.

  2. In consequence of point 1, we ping off other people. Our heads build assumptions about other people painted by our conditioning (e.g. they must know more and are worth more than me because they're handsome). This cements who we think we are in that environment. These fucking assumptions about you worth are false Even in the past when you first experienced it, the assumptions you drew and how you felt were false. Our heads make sweeping generalizations about who we are as people on one reference experience that generated strong emotions. These generalizations come from a childhood desperate attempt to interpret the situation in a way to help us survive.

  3. We believe in wrong cause and effect. We think if we do this, if we are that, then this truck of negative things will smash into your face. Our lives are governed by avoiding pain instead of seeking joy. This ties into how we are conditioned to believe the world works.

What helped me? Therapy. If you can't afford therapy, you need to buckle up and get your hands on every resource (and I don't necessarily mean more self-help material) you can to figure out how to heal yourself. Learn to delve into those negative emotions and reactions and release them. At first, it is immensely painful, I won't lie. Now, my tolerance for it is so high I can do it in a second. quick and almost painlessly. It's become nothing. Delve, release, onto the next.

Example of one paradigm shift of mine: Growing up in an abusive home in a shitty neighborhood made me subconsciously romanticize and idolize violence and fighting. It was what I knew and how I got things. It made one man better than the other. My sister pretty much coerced me into therapy after I broke my nose, got two black eyes and cracked my jaw in a fight. I mostly thought it would be bull but coming out of it, I learned a fuckton about who I was and how I operated. In the past, I knew what my actions were but I never knew why until I got therapy. OF FUCKING COURSE before therapy, fighting was 700% the correct choice when confronted with a little shit. That was the only way and that was RIGHT to me. It was the RIGHT thing to do. It was honorable and made me higher value. Now, I would never respond the way I used to. I think it's stupid and I would NEVER EVER fight as a first response to situations. I completely see it as wrong now.

I hope the story shows how emotional trauma fueled my idea of what was right in my reality when I was a kid. I was convinced I was moving up by doing it. It shaped my reality and I couldn't see anything beyond it. Without the trauma motivating me anymore, it is completely wrong to me and I can't imagine acting how the old me used to act. I can view situations without the emotional charge and be in control to determine what the best way to react is.

Please invest in your inner work.