How do I (24F) cultivate the mentality where it is possible to be vulnerable with others without being engulfed by them / overly needy / illogically and incessantly afraid of losing the ones I love?

This might be a little long, I'm sorry, but I don't know how else to word most of these thoughts.

I've always been somewhat of a people pleaser, and someone who thrives on the company of others. I wasn't always like this, because when I was younger, there was a lot of tension in both my nuclear and extended family - so I had trust issues for the longest time. But I met some amazing people throughout high school and university, and am at a point where I don't actively push people away because of the anticipation of rejection when I feel myself getting close to them. But now I fear I have another problem. I am terrified by the thought of people leaving me, or even just gradually drift away. So much so that I find myself "becoming" more and more like the people I love. To a point where I feel like I don't know who I am anymore because I'm just a mirror of whoever is in front of me. That is also causing the people I love to sort of worry and sort of lose interest in me and that eats into my fears.

So my question is, how do I cultivate a mindset to not place so much (unhealthy) emphasis on my relationships such that I don't need to fear being engulfed by them?

TL;DR: Worked past my trust issues with amazing people, realised that I am by default a very needy person who adopts characteristics of people I love when I interact with them in a desperate plea to keep them around when it is actually pushing them away. How do I counter this?

Submitted June 21, 2019 at 07:23AM by veryreasonable_doubt http://bit.ly/31Jyhsp