#‘cutting phineas out of her life also means giving up a huge chunk of her support system’🫠🫠🫠🫠🫠🫠🫠🫠🫠🫠

[jedi-valjean]

I feel like Isabella has serious impostor syndrome that rears its head whenever she's not on the high of a big accomplishment or a compliment from Phineas. She knows she's smart and capable and likeable but there are so many moments where she can't bring herself to believe it.

Romance is a field where she's particularly susceptible to this because she has the patches and the invention credit and the bragging rights to prove she shines in so many areas but no concrete evidence that Phineas even recognizes her feelings, let alone reciprocates them.

Which is probably why she tries to move on when they get to high school— she can find success and praise in soccer and student government and all the other activities she involves herself with instead of chasing Phineas.

Of course, she's still heartbroken over Phineas at the end of the day because getting over him is an imperfect solution— the real root of the her self-esteem issues isn't some guy who won't notice her, it's her dependency on external validation. As long as she ties her self-worth to the way other people see her, "the one that got away" is always going to be stuck in the back of her mind as her greatest failure.

Cutting Phineas out of her life also means giving up a huge chunk of her support system, since a lot of her friends are also Phineas' friends. Phineas and the rest of the backyard gang see and love Isabella for who she really is, not the warped image of herself formed by her insecurities. And of course she's got other people who see and love her real self too, but that doesn't change the fact that distancing herself from some of her closest friends is an act of self-sabotage.

I don't know how to conclude this analysis I just love Isabella you guys