Can you count on you?
the healing power of building self-trust
Me and myself have quite the history together. Lots of ups and downs, times I wasn’t sure we’d make it. There was abuse. There was cruelty. Sometimes being with me was miserable, even dangerous. Yet somehow, we got through. We did the work. We took a lifetime to get it right.
It started out well, my relationship with myself. I was a wise little kid, with intelligent and remarkable tools for getting through life’s scary, unpredictable uncertainties. As a very small child, I found comfort in play. I had a very sweet imaginary friend named Wendy, that flew in through my third story bedroom window to play when I was lonely.
As a middle schooler, I was adept at taking care of me, especially when things got hard. Bullied at school, and feeling unsafe at home, I had to find safety somewhere. Looking back, I see how my relentless reading and writing “novels”was one protective form of escapism. No one picked on me when I was reading. I wasn’t a social misfit deep in a good novel. Crafting characters gave me control over a plot when I had so little over my own. My dopamine and serotonin flowed, stress-free, from the pages of books and from writing stories, novels and poetry. I loved reading and writing about girls who were stuck in the wrong place, the wrong family and of kids who had to make their own way, without adult supervision. Survival stories– children on desert islands, children making a boxcar into a home. Oh, to be without supervision. It was my dream.
These tools were not harmful. They didn’t get in the way– they were the way, through a childhood that was a mine field. Trouble was always lurking, even when things seemed peaceful. And those land mines… they could detonate at any time. One false move… best to stay off the ground, elevated.
In high school, we found Jesus, and my refuge became church, the music, altar calls, speaking in tongues. It was high-intensity and I loved the high. I fell in love with spiritual highs.
As an adult, I found more grown-up ways to elevate. Attention from men, how high I would get, when I felt wanted. Seen, desired. Drugs and alcohol, smoking, shopping, shoplifting, food, they all found their way into my anxious, ungrounded life, and gave me the elevation I felt I needed to survive. Until they didn’t.
I was so tired of running. Tired of escaping. Tired of myself.
I wanted a life where I could be free, from all of that. I wanted a life that didn’t require escapism. A life I felt proud of, the kind of life I knew, somewhere deep within, I deserved.
However, through years and years of self-betrayal and self-abandonment, I destroyed the sense of self-trust I needed to have that life. So many broken promises and failed attempts at letting go, at creating change. At self-care. So many times I didn’t keep myself safe, didn’t take proper care of my needs. So many times I told myself one thing, then did another.
How could I heal if I didn’t trust myself?
Then I learned, to my surprise, one tiny reparative experience at a time, that healing happened while I rebuilt self-trust– not after.
Rebuilding self-trust was the missing key to my healing.
Make no mistake, this process has taken me years, and I certainly have not perfected self-trust. But I can say with confidence that these days, I know I can count on me to provide myself with the protection, nurturance, guidance, approval and love I needed then, and still need now.
Before, I sucked at protecting myself. Many of my self-comforting tools were harmful and sometimes dangerous. My self-guidance system was broken. I flailed through life, boundary-less, seeking validation, seeking safety, seeking refuge, seeking love, seeking elevation, when all along I was seeking me.
Spoiler: All along, everything I wanted or needed was within me.
I wish there was a magic pill or some quick and easy three-step system for “fixing” oneself. There isn’t. But I’ll tell you how I repaired my relationship with myself.
It took one tiny fulfilled micro-goal at a time. It took staying with myself when I wanted to jump ship through some quick escape hatch. Not just once, but time after time. It took changing the way I talked to myself, developing self-compassion, which eventually morphed into love.
It took years of trying, falling, trying, slipping, trying, tripping, trying and trying, until I became the person I needed, until I truly began to parent myself in the ways I had needed.
I learned safety through relationship, vulnerability, kept promises, and reparative experiences. I had to learn (and actually practice) somatic skills, nervous system regulation, and how to have a healthy, informative relationship with my body.
It took learning how to create boundaries and sticking to them. Not everyone is allowed in anymore. I only spend time with people who feel safe.
It took years of good therapy, a lot of therapeutic journaling and art, lots of helpful books but mostly it took me.
Me learning to love me.
Me learning to be a safe place for me.
I now trust myself implicitly, because now, I am trustworthy.
I became a safe place for me to live. I now trust myself with my life.
So I ask you now, are you a safe place to live? Are you someone you can count on, for protection, for love, for acceptance? Do you practice self-nurturing, self-honesty, and kind self-talk?
These aren’t skills that we’re taught in school. They’re skills we must discover and practice on our own. By practicing them, the self-trust builds and builds, until one day, you tell yourself “I got you” and you actually believe it.
And that is what healing looks like.