Here is advice I gave to a young family member. 

The mind finds the meanest things to run by a person and see if it can scare you off.  Perhaps your new friend will be best buds forever. However, relationships can get screwed up for many reasons.  If your friendship fails, the mind will tell you that it is because you are not good enough and it won’t be true.

I needed to hear this when I was in my twenties.  My main character in Shattered, Mikey, definitely needed to hear it.

Not that only young people would benefit from hearing it.  This is what I have learned, and if someone disagrees with it, I’d like to hear how. Our brains have a negativity bias. It simply tells us negative stuff about others and ourselves.  This is done to protect us. Things happen to us and our brain interprets that as you are going to get hurt, don’t try.  

Our thoughts become our emotions.  Perhaps we are having a great time. But that doesn’t cause us to feel happy.  I’ve been to some great events, but I was not happy because of what thoughts I was having. 

Our emotions then influence our behaviors. Especially as young people. When we are hurt or depressed, we do things that are not healthy.  Engage in a bad habit. Yell at the dog.

Those bad behaviors do what? When regrets sink in, we have some bad thoughts about what kind of person would do that?  What kind of person flips off a Golden Retriever?  The cycle goes on.