it bends so much more than you think it should

Especially if it's in a child. Weird kids and their weird flexible bones.

Makes sense to me!

Jokes aside, this actually IS in fact the only effective method I've found to create lasting change in life – basically, you have to find a way to reframe your situation into something that's temporary, rather than making it a core part of your identity. Basically, if you consider yourself poor (or homeless) BY DEFINITION, all you'll ever see is evidence to support that fact. But by doing so, you are in fact robbing yourself of any chance of improvement because if the situation is unfixable, there is no point in even making an effort to try. But if you don't even try, it simply becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, and then you are indeed stuck with no way out.

So in a way, you do in fact have to gaslight yourself in to believing the opposite about yourself, and then attempt to validate that idea by looking for evidence to support it. This can of course be rather difficult at first, but the more you practice it, the better you'll get. And the better you get at it, the more you'll believe it, which ends up making that idea another self-fulfilling prophecy that ends up replacing the former.