A Pathway to Self Trust

“It sounds like you know what you need to do. What’re you afraid of?”

“Making the wrong choice.”

“You’ve made a lot of tough choices before. How many do you actually regret?”

“Okay, but this one is different because...”

“Love, how many ‘right choices’ do you need to make before you finally realize you can trust yourself?”

After working with dozens of clients on healing trauma, attachment wounds, and overcoming anxiety, I’ve realized there’s one common thread they all struggle with:

A sense of self-trust.

I’m talking about things like:

• Chronic indecision & self-doubt
• Over-reliance on external feedback, reassurance & validation
• Fear & panic around making mistakes
• Analysis paralysis
• Perfectionism
• Anxiety
• Feeling stuck and helpless when making bigger, more meaningful decisions

Even if these symptoms of self trust are more pervasive in one area of life, like relationships, we usually notice struggles with self trust bleeding into other areas at different levels of intensity or consistency.

It comes up all over the place, and can show up as:

• Ignoring our gut for months or even years, staying in relationships or friendships far too long, only to later admit we saw the red flags from the start.
• Rewriting the same text message or email ten times before sending it, then panicking when we don't get an immediate reply.
• Knowing we need to ask for the promotion and raise, but being terrified that we’ll mess it up so we shy away
• Imposter syndrome galore, keeping us from pursuing goals we’re 100% qualified for and capable of
• Avoiding setting a boundary with a loved one, boss, or hell - a stranger - because we're terrified of how they'll react, even if we realize the pain of setting our own needs aside is causing us much more harm.
• Spending hours spiraling about whether we're doing enough (or too much) to create real change, until we burn out and do nothing at all.
• It even shows up when we find ourselves changing outfits multiple times before going out - not because of how we feel in the clothes - but because we’re worried we'll be judged.
• The list goes on…

Struggles with self trust are pervasive like this because it isn’t just about making decisions. Self trust is about feeling safe in the hands of your own care for yourself, while balancing the care you need to take in your responsibilities, your loved ones, and your life.

And to be clear, the struggle always makes sense.

When we grow up in environments that don’t nurture our self trust - or worse - destabilize our connection with our own gut instinct, discernment, and sense of self-confidence and belief, there’s no avoiding the impact of this following us into adulthood.

Restoring a sense of self trust is a major part of healing trauma.

But here’s where a lot of people get stuck:

We think that once we start making the “right” choices, then we’ll finally be able to trust ourselves.

That’s not how this works.

We don't trust people because they make the right choices 100% of the time.

We trust people who strive to be understanding, empathetic, and reliable in their show of care and support for us no matter what choices we make.

Even when that means they have to set boundaries or challenge us to respect themselves and their own values in the face of our decisions. They don't stop caring about us in the process.

Our relationship with ourselves works the exact. same. way.

Self-trust isn’t something you earn by avoiding mistakes or tallying up a report card of A+ life-decisions on paper.

It’s something you cultivate by learning to listen to your inner compass, and be steadfast in supporting yourself no matter the outcome of those decisions.

You’re not trusting yourself to be perfect. You’re trusting yourself to have your own back and support yourself in growing and developing even when your imperfections show. 

This is the shift that changes things. These are the "right choices" a lot of us are looking for - and no external validation or reassurance is going to give us permission to be on our own team through thick & thin this way.

This is the shift that turns the experience of being chronically anxious, overthinking, and stuck into feeling consistently clear, confident, courageous, and decisive - even in the face of more difficult and scary decisions.

It's the shift that lets us source more reassurance and validation from the inside instead of trying to find it on the outside - just for it to never really feel like enough anyway.

But developing this takes work. It’s a simple change to explain on the surface, but it’s not easy. If it were, the mental health industry wouldn’t be booming with all this trauma going around.

Building a sense of self trust takes: 

• Taking a fresh look at ourselves and noticing the things we haven't been giving credit to - like what we're capable of, where our heart was when we made those mistakes we're still carrying, and what we've learned since then.
• Learning to take a break from the external feedback and validation to go inward for the feedback and validation that’s already available inside of us.
• Learning to discern between gut, anxiety and intuition. 
• Mediating inner conflict to create win-wins solutions ourselves, so we stop rejecting one part of ourself to favor another when tough decisions come up
• Learning to build ourselves up into transformation and stop trying to beat ourselves down into shame-based, fear-based, and - ultimately - performative changes. Many of which don't stick.

It takes resolving some old grudges we're holding against ourselves, and learning to see what really happened when we made those decisions in the past.

It takes remembering we’re capable of learning from our mistakes and we don’t have to beat ourselves into compliance to do so.

It takes learning to develop a different kind of relationship with external feedback, too.

Not where we become "too independent" to need it. But where we learn to connect with it in a way that doesn't override our own internal knowing or add more confusion with all the extra suggestions we’re getting. 

It takes healing, sure. And a lot of healing takes practice. 

But when you do practice this, you notice you start to: 

• Tap into your gut pretty quickly, and feel it regulate your anxiety for you.
• Find clarity in chaos and know what decision feels right and true for you (even when the external feedback might be telling you to do something different)
• Find a middle ground solution between conflicting parts of yourself instead of second-guessing yourself, constantly battling with extremes
• Set boundaries without feeling guilt or fear of rejection because you know it's the right things to do 
• Lean into relationship, career, business and life challenges that are risky because, again, you know this is the right kind of risk for you to take right now because it aligns with the life you’re building for yourself
• Move forward with more confidence and courage, even when you're facing the "unknown"
• Navigate mistakes with resilience and compassionate accountability instead of self-punishment, criticism and shame.
• Feel safe in your own hands, knowing you can support yourself no matter what happens.

If you've been following me from the beginning, you know that once upon a time I offered a 12-week program. The people who joined that program worked hard and got some incredible results. But that program being more open-ended created an unsustainable level of work for me to keep up with.

I've fixed that problem.

I'm launching a new 12-week program called The Art of Self Trust, and it's focused on helping you with the root:

Your ability to trust yourself to move through anything that's coming up, in any area of life. Because you finally have the relationship with yourself that allows you to.

So you can go inward and know what you need to do to navigate that dilemma or next step with your relationship, your friends and family, your career or business, your activism, your purpose. Because you've found your inner compass and, finally, you're on the same page with it.

If you know you need to build a resilient sense of self trust to build to the life you want to live, and support will help you get there faster, read more about The Art of Self Trust below.

The Art of Self Trust

The Art of Self Trust is a 12-week program to help you break free from indecision and self doubt, and finally trust your inner compass instead.

Perspective by Tori ReidTori Reid

Either way, I'm rooting for you,

Tori