Learning How to Trust Yourself

Most of my clients, whether they see me for help dealing with anxiety, depression, or even infidelity, struggle with trusting themselves. The inability to trust yourself leads to dysfunction and pain. Trust of self, like trust of anyone, is learned behavior and driven by desire. If we desire someone as a partner, we will go out of our way to ignore red flags and, against our better judgment, overlook shortcomings so that we can give ourselves permission to be with them. When it doesn’t work out, we often then say that “if I had known then what I know now, I would have made different choices.” In most cases, we had the facts long before we acted on them.

Accepting less than we deserve is a matter of not trusting ourselves to get what we deserve or to live up to the standard that would create the opportunities we need to thrive. This lack of trust in ourselves to do the work that would result in our own happiness is generally rooted in a lifetime of settling for less. When we settle for less in any aspect of our lives, we teach ourselves that we deserve less and lose the ability to trust ourselves. Once we are on the path of self-loathing, it is difficult to get off that path and see ourselves as worthy of love, admiration, success, and happiness. The first step away from self-loathing is to admit that is what we are feeling: to admit we do not truly believe that we are worthy.

Admitting to ourselves that we do not feel worthy allows us to start embracing our personal truth and begin the work of changing it. Once we are standing in our truth, we can work towards embracing our excellence. Everyone has excellence in them, and everyone is deserving of self-love. Everyone should have the joy and freedom that comes with truly trusting themselves. Understanding that we do not feel worthy is the place we start because the process of self-love begins with accepting our truths. Once we accept that we do not feel worthy, we can journey back through our memories and ask, “When did I start to feel unworthy?” That first instance of feeling unworthy is the foundation upon which a lifetime of pain is built. We need to go to the root of when self-worth was formed. We need to examine why and how this concept of unworthiness was formed. Once we understand the root of these feelings, we can begin to dismantle them and learn how to feel worthy, love ourselves, and trust that we can be amazing! This week, we have focused on the root of why we distrust ourselves and next we will focus on how to build a better foundation and craft a personal truth that leads to self-trust.

Posted on Monday: 05 December, 2022