How to Trust Yourself
& internalize your own authority
Self-trust is the centre of all healing, of evicting internalized obligations and embodying your purpose unapologetically.
I talk about self-trust all the time with my clients (I think they get sick of it sometimes) because it is part of my practical ethics as a therapist to take my clients seriously as the expert in their own life.
distrusting our Selves looks like holding other peoples’ opinions above your own; asking for advice instead of listening to your own preferences
for me, this looked like messaging four friends 15 pictures of duvets when I was choosing my first duvet post-divorce. Being friends with trauma-informed folks & therapists, they all responded with inquiries about my preferences, instead of feeding into my externalization.
as always, my caveat is we are social beings that fundamentally require relationship so asking for advice is totally normal! It’s just when we hold external opinions ABOVE our own that there can be an imbalance of power.
we learn to externalize our authority through purity culture (whether you were raised int he church or not, our society is steeped in purity culture)
our desires are seen as dangerous, our preferences are experienced as too much and our inner voice is assumed to be wrong. If people are told who they are, what they desire is evil or bad, they will come to believe it.
Growing up in systems of oppression affect us. It’s impossible to be unaffected. When you are conditioned to believe that having desire is bad, that even a “lustful” thought is evil, shame is the natural result. Of course.
Our capacity to trust our Selves is built the same way we build trust with others: through shared experiences, shared values and curiosity. You don’t automatically know what your partner takes in their coffee or how your friend prefers subtitles when bingeing Netflix - we learn those things through time, experience and inquiry.
What are you afraid of people finding out about you?
What was a decision you made that without a doubt was right and god and true for you, even if it didn’t make sense to other people?
Developing self-trust is inseparable from our embodiment. The reason body neutrality then body acceptance then body love is so essential to the healing journey is because transformation happens within our skin. Change doesn’t occur outside of us - it happens within us. Cultivating a relationship with our Bodies creates a container that can hold the fullness of our power.
Confidence require self acceptance. Acceptance requires knowing All of you. Knowing yourself requires an investment of effort, time spent.
There are real systematic limitations to knowing our Selves, social narratives that hang our worthiness like a carrot on a stick to say that we will only be worthy of love {even self love} when we check the boxes of social acceptability.
When we’re thin enough to be worthy to love our Selves. When we wear the right makeup and the right clothes to deserve self-love. When we match the heteronormative, ableist, fatphobic, capitalist, white supremacist fantasy of acceptability.
But it’s a trap. Because we’ll never be “enough” in a system that profits from our self-hatred.
The trap is we learn to see our Selves as the problem. We are not the problem. Your body is not the problem. The system is the problem.
Building a relationship with yourself is revolutionary. Not waiting until you check boxes to believe you’re worthy of love is revolutionary. You are good and worthy as you are. You don’t need to change how you are for a system that doesn’t even see you.
The more you know about yourself, the more you can love yourself. Spend time getting to know your body, outside of the lens of systems. See your body as They are, a constant companion. Cut the carrot from the stick and emancipate yourself from standards that constrict you.
You are not the problem. You never were the problem.
As we develop self-trust, we are creating sacred space for our most authentic selves to materialize. If we don’t trust our Selves with our Selves, we will continue to hold our authenticity at bay, believing the vague inevitable lie that if we opened the Pandora’s box of our authenticity, we would unleash evil onto the world. If we don’t trust our Selves with our Selves, we’ll exhaust ourselves trying to keep ourselves at bay. For why?
What are you so scared of in yourself?
What do you think you would do with power?
What ethics will you hold yourself accountable with as a powerful being of authenticity?
Self-trust doesn’t occur in a vacuum because we aren’t isolated beings. We can’t talk about developing self-trust without addressing the systems that purposefully infiltrate and benefit from self-doubt. Self doubt is colonial indoctrination.
Colonial structures purposefully impose limiting beliefs into individuals to keep them stuck in the mud of status quo. These systems project their own imposter syndrome onto oppressed groups in order to maintain power.
My confidence as a white woman is completely intertwined with my privilege. My confidence is because I was raised in a system that benefits me, it was built for me.
Who benefits from your self-suspicion?
What do you punish yourself for? Where did you learn this response?
When entire people groups are told over and over again they don’t fit the “standard”, eventually that false belief takes root. Of course it does. People cannot hear them Selves constantly disparaged in overt and subtle ways in every facet of life without part of it lodging into their psyche.
This is absolutely not to say that oppressed groups, BIPOC, 2SLGBTQA+ folx are all plagued by self doubt. On the contrary, embodying self-trust is a revolution.
Self-trust (and the accompanying confidence from trusting in yourself) replaces self doubt when we evict systems of power from our mind, when we reclaim Space for ourselves and take risks to realize our dreams.
You already have the permission you’ve been waiting for.
Developing self-trust doesn’t happen overnight. When we’ve been indoctrinated (because that’s what it is), it takes a long time of being tender with ourselves to undo that narrative.
Since our Bodies hold such a well-spring of wisdom, reconnecting to our sense of self-trust can start with non-sexual-sensual-self-touch. We need to turn the channel of desire and wanting back on and our Body’s have so much to share.
Start by playing with your hair, stroking your leg, massaging your feet. Notice what you like and what you don’t like, what pressure or pattern of touch feels good for you. Your body contains your path for healing.
Internalizing your own authority means trusting in your power. It means trusting in your preferences, your desires - even if it doesn’t make sense to other people. You are the magistrate of your own life. Your permission is the only one you need. Live your life the way you want to live your life. Your life is yours. No one else’s.