As a trauma survivor, choice can be complicated.
There are things you know you want but don’t let yourself have. Things you know you don’t want but do anyway. People you know aren’t good for you but stay with. Jobs you know are draining you but keep showing up to. Boundaries you know you need but can’t hold.
The choicelessness of these experiences can feel like a violation.
The elements of choicelessness, exposure, power and victimhood can make these experiences feel retraumatizing.
You may feel victimized by your own life, like a pawn in a game you don’t understand and you’re not winning. You don’t even know how to win because the rules keep changing.
You’re exhausted doing things you don’t actually want to do, saying yes when your body is screaming no, staying quiet when you want to speak, making yourself smaller when you want to take up space.
You feel robbed of your own authority, stripped of your power in order to appease the ever-changing demands of everyone around you. You feel like you “have” to be agreeable, that your goodness is entwined with how easy you are to love.
The pressure to keep the peace, to anticipate other people’s needs, to make the right decision, to avoid disappointing anyone keeps your nervous system frantic to keep up.
Your own internal signals become something you can’t trust.
Are you actually tired or are you being lazy?
Do you actually want to leave or are you just being selfish?
Are you angry because someone crossed a boundary or because you’re being difficult?
Do you actually want this relationship or do you just want to be wanted?
And slowly, this becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy of powerlessness because every time you look outside of yourself for the answer, your brain-body system is learning “you cannot be trusted”. You might not consciously believe this. You might actually think you are being thoughtful, responsible, considerate, safe. But your psyche is keeping score.
You don’t listen to your anger, so you find yourself in situations where you have to become angry to finally leave. You don’t listen to your resentment, so eventually you explode over something that seems disproportionately small. You don’t listen to your desire, so it starts coming out sideways through envy, irritability, fantasy, impulsivity, withdrawal, or a strange feeling that you are living someone else’s life.
The psyche needs to express itself. Your authenticity needs somewhere to go. And when it doesn’t have a clear path through conscious choice, it will often find another way out. This is part of what can make self-abandonment so confusing. You can spend years trying to be agreeable, responsible, good, easy to love and then look around one day and think: How did I get here? Why do I feel so trapped?
You may feel powerless in the life you have built, without realizing that the powerlessness has been reinforced every time you abandoned your own knowing in order to preserve connection.
The problem is that eventually, the part of you that has been silenced still wants to speak and authenticity doesn’t disappear because you stop listening to it. It just finds another way to be heard.
You might complain about feeling trapped all the time. You hate feeling like you have no choices and you leave a relationship conversation complaining about “having” to do something you don’t actually have to do. You “have” to stay because they need you. You “have” to say yes because it would be rude not to. You “have” to keep the peace because you can’t handle someone being upset with you. You “have” to make the responsible decision.
Self-trust asks something different of you. It asks you to listen. To actually notice when you’re tired. To notice when you don’t want to go. To notice when something feels wrong. To notice when you’re excited. To notice when you’re angry. To notice when you want more. To notice when you want less. And then, eventually, to believe yourself.
Having more boundaries with yourself can begin to hand power back to you. As soon as you feel you “have” to do something, sit down.
Sit.
Listen.
Wait.
What do you actually want?
Sometimes the answer is yes. Sometimes it is no. Sometimes it is I don’t know yet.
Self-trust isn’t that you make the right choice all the time or never second guess yourself. Self-trust doesn’t guarantee you’ll know what you want immediately. But it does mean that you’re committed to listening to yourself, that you won’t violate your body’s boundaries to keep the peace, or make yourself smaller to remain easy to love. You won’t override your no because someone else might be disappointed or manufacture a yes because you are afraid of rejection.
When it is safe enough for you to want, you can choose yourself.