Self-Trust

What is it, how we lose it, where it goes, what can happen when it’s gone, and why we need to find and nurture it to heal and live fully.

I have been thinking a lot about self-trust lately.

Here’s how the thoughts have rippled over the last few weeks:

Epstein, Maxwell, and others, and their violence against women and girls.

Violence against women and girls in general.

My own experience with sexual violence and coersion as a young teenager.

Patriarchal, colonial power dynamics. How much of our economic and political systems are built on it. How harmful it is for everyone.

The history of disbelieving and discrediting women’s stories, victim’s stories.

The punishment of victims.

Wondering and understanding why I stayed and allowed when I wanted to say no and leave.

When we live in a culture that discredits our stories, we learn to discredit them ourselves.

Compliance and obedience as values and virtues prescribed to girls. Boldness as defiance.

Shame as a tool for control and silencing.

Appeasement as survival.

Victim blindness as a coping mechanism.

Anxiety, and why the fuck we don’t take it seriously as an alarm system. Why do we pathologize it? Why the hell don’t we listen to our bodies, trust what we notice about ourselves, accept it as wisdom.

Why didn’t I trust myself? Why didn’t I trust that every single thing my brain, body, and heart have ever tried to tell me was worth pausing for, to notice, listen, believe, sit with and decide?

What erodes self-trust? Wait, how do we even get it? Are we born with it? Are we supposed to learn it?

What were the narratives I heard in my life as I was growing up about listening to myself, trusting myself? None! Fucking none.

Why is that?

I belonged to a faith group that was male-dominant, that taught me I am less-than because I am female, that my body is sinful, and that I am not worthy by nature. I was always told to listen to God, to listen to authority. I was never told to listen to myself.

These thought ripples are an unfolding, a process I am in the middle of. It is uncomfortable and also necessary. I can feel that. When something is uncomfortable it means for me that I have not yet made sense of it, but I need to. I am trying to make sense of what is happening in the world, and I can’t do that without trying to understand the human experience. And in trying to understand the human experience I am realizing what I need to understand and heal in myself. It is universal, and it is personal. 

As I move through this unfolding, this journey of understanding, I have the great privilege to accompany my clients on legs of their journeys during our sessions together. Their brave introspective work contributes greatly to my understanding, because I can see their personal stories in the collective experience. Our healing work, at its core, is really all about self-trust.

What is self-trust?

Simply stated, self-trust is the ability to trust in yourself. In practice, self-trust is a complex process that can be multi-layered and crowded.

Imagine a home. In that home, you have your own room, and in your own room, you have your own cozy safe space that is just yours. Let your imagination find it. Look around in that room, let it be full of whatever you like, from colours to light to textures to items to sounds to smells to energy. Let it be just yours. Get curious. Take your time in this place. This place is just yours.

Where is this room situated within the home? Is it in the basement? Is it on an upper floor? Is there a window? Let yourself see what exists around this room.

Now see if you can leave that room and walk around the rest of the home. Imagine the rest of the home is the other areas of your life, other relationships in your life, outside of yourself. Get curious about what else takes up space in this home. Maybe there is a room for some of your childhood memories. Maybe there is a room for every critical thing anyone has ever said to you. Maybe there is a room for all the rules you have been told you have to follow. Maybe there is a room for cultural guidelines. Maybe there is a room for what the media tells you about what or who you are supposed to be. Maybe there is a room for every team you’ve ever been on, or every play you’ve ever been in. Maybe there is a room for every book you’ve ever read and what it showed you about yourself. Maybe there is a room for every hard thing you’ve ever overcome. Maybe there is a room for every time you have ever felt really proud of yourself. Let there be a room for everything that has ever influenced or shaped you.

This home is your life. Self-trust is the process of finding your own cozy safe place in your own room in that home, and staying connected to it for every question you explore, every decision you make. It can be crowded. There might be stairs to climb or descend. Self-trust is the path we walk, back and forth, to and from that cozy safe place in our own room, and back out into our life. We don’t have to physically stay connected to that cozy safe place in our own rooms to have self-trust, although we might need to visit it more frequently at different times in our lives, but we do need to stay mentally, emotionally, and spiritually connected to it or we might lose it. 

Your human body is actually that home. In it you have that cozy safe place inside a space that is just yours. In it you also have the imprints of everything you have ever experienced, everything you have walked though, in your physical body and your brain, which are reflected and known to you and others through your emotions, your mind, and your behaviours.

You might not feel like you know that cozy safe place very well. You might have only caught glimpses of it. You might be scared of it. You might know it well and never want to leave it. All of this depends on your lived experiences, and how safe you feel about it, but we all have that cozy safe place somewhere inside of us.

To have self-trust, we have to know we have a cozy safe place inside of us, and we have to be able to find our way to it. We have to know what it means to own that place inside, to belong to ourselves.

How do we lose trust in ourselves?

As human beings our primary need is survival and we will do anything to meet that need, to survive. As babies, we survive through attachment to our caregivers, through non-abandonment by our caregivers. If we perceive that any human that has power and authority over us doesn’t approve of some part of who we are, we will abandon, ignore, and reject those parts of ourselves to be approved of so that we can continue to be cared for in service of survival. Humans are so brilliant at surviving the conditions we are in, that we will trick ourselves into thinking they are okay even if they are not. We may become blind or numb to the pain. We may gaslight our own experience. We may bury it completely. The human nervous system is a sneaky survivor, working quickly below the level of consciousness and awareness. It always chooses acceptance over authenticity if it thinks acceptance will keep you safer. It will sacrifice self-acceptance and self-trust for belonging and acceptance if that means survival in that moment. The benefit of this is that we survive. The cost is that we erode our authenticity and disrupt our sense of self-trust.

Where does it go?

It never leaves us, but it hides, and the depth to which it is hidden depends on how far down it felt it had to go to be preserved. The journey back to that cozy safe place in your own room is a pilgrimage of sorts. You may have to walk through a lot of crowded rooms, on a couple of different levels, but you can find your way. The way back is through your body. You have to walk through that home of your life. You may first have to clear a path, and then you have to walk it so regularly that it becomes known.

Why we need to find it?

We need to find it because it is our essence, our compass and our map, and because we have a right to live our lives connected to it. Without it, we just don’t feel well. It’s that simple. Without it we feel unsatisfied and uneasy in our lives. Without it, other people can hold power over us and we may never feel our own. Without it, we can remain stuck or lost in rooms and even homes that are not our own, feeling estranged from ourselves, unsettled, and unsafe.

As we move towards adulthood, self-trust becomes a source of safety and stability. As we move out of dependence in childhood toward more independence in adulthood, the most important attachment relationship for survival transitions away from our relationship with our caregivers towards our relationship with ourselves. We need to be able to depend on ourselves and our knowing so that we can step into agency and leadership, and make good healthy decisions in our lives, families, and communities. Authenticity becomes more critical to survival than acceptance. We need to be able to know who we are and trust ourselves.

How do we find self and nurture self-trust?

To find self and nurture self-trust we have to walk through that home, towards that cozy safe place inside that room of our own. This may not be an easy walk and it may take time.

Move at your own pace.

Be honest with yourself.

Have compassion for past versions of yourself.

Be curious. Seek to understand, not judge.

Ask yourself what it is about your life that you need to own.

Ask yourself what in your life you need to take accountability for.

Let yourself consider the idea that as an adult you can be safe without acceptance from others, you can depend on yourself.

Get to know your body. Your body will let you know when it wants authenticity, when it's ready for the truth, when it wants you to return to your own room. See if you can trust its intelligence.

Let yourself have a voice. What does it sound like? Listen to yourself. 

Notice any other voices you hear and who they actually belong to.

Ask yourself what you believe. Write your own narratives.

Make small (or big) decisions every day that feel right for you just because they feel right for you, not because you think you should or because it’s what you’ve always done.

Trust, between any two people, is developed over time, through honesty, consistency, and accountability. Trust with yourself is the exact same process.

I went to see my TCM practitioner for a treatment yesterday, and while I was on her table silently receiving somatic healing through acupuncture needles and tuning forks, I went into a deep state of surrender. I heard a voice inside of me say to me “I want to be known.” “I want to be known?” I repeated in my mind, questioning this message. “What does that mean? Am I supposed to be more visible in the world? Should I be doing more? That doesn’t feel right. What do you mean?” I silently pepperd the voice with questions, looking for clarity. “I want to be known by you,” she said. Ohhhh. I got it. She wants me to know myself. She wants me to accept myself. I took a few breaths with this new information. “There is fear,” I noticed in my body and showed her silently. “It’s okay,” she said.