Trusting yourself and your intuition can be one of the hardest parts of life for many of us. Since beginning my Year to Live group, based on Stephen Levine’s book with the same title, asking the question “If I were to die in a year….” followed by whatever decision I am weighing, has become a shortcut to receiving a definitive answer.
If I were to die in a year, would I regret taking this week to soak in hot springs with one of my favorite people? Will I wish I had worked and earned money to replace part of my roof instead? Trusting myself and accessing clarity hasn’t always been this easy.
Many factors can interfere with a person’s capacity to trust themselves enough to commit to a choice and take action. Some people are sedated and paralyzed while others are filled with anxiety and cycle through self-doubt. The conditions in which we are raised may erode trusting yourself.
While hiking today I saw a tilting tree on a hillside above me, roots almost bare. The heavy rain this winter saturated the earth, washing away most of the ledge.
While we accept landslides as part of nature, I think of the trauma that creates erosion of self-confidence and untethered roots in humans; Being told you have no right to feel what you feel, aka. Gas-lighting, and being told you deserved what you are experiencing whether it is emotional, physical, or sexual abuse.
Binary norms supported by racism, sexism, homophobia, or fundamentalist religious beliefs make anyone who doesn’t fit into these prescribed notions distrust their value, desires, and experiences. It is especially common for abused children to feel their body betrayed them because it felt too much or too little, it didn’t run or fight back.
As a teenager, I was in a child-protection center, and when I was released, the other kids at the facility gave me an index card covered in stickers with “gifts” of what they each wished for me. The words “trust” and “self-trust” dominated the paper. Trusting yourself and others only happened for me after I developed safety in my body, and that didn’t occur until I discovered somatic bodywork at twenty-four.
Engaging in daily micro-practices, checking internally, listening for what I wanted and needed in each moment, versus orienting around others’ needs and vigilantly tracking my environment was essential. Another byproduct was feeling compassion for myself. Moving beyond listening, to actually responding to what I hear, taught young parts of me, “Oh right, she is listening and she will show up.”
After decades of dissociating from and minimizing my needs, this was a revelation about trusting yourself.
Start with your basic needs. Ask yourself: Do I need to go to the bathroom right now? Am I hungry or thirsty? Do I want to finish this cookie? Do I want to go to that party, go on a date, or make out with this person?
Are you used to having choices? Were you trained in trusting yourself or to have other people force decisions on you? Do you have dominion over your life? Do you know how to center inside yourself or do you default to centering around others? Did you make a choice at some point in your life, and then suffer and regret it so you now feel like your picker is broken?
My somatics teacher, Richard Strozzi Heckler, is an Aikido master, and through him, I learned to feel my lower dantian, below the navel, as home; a place to rest and ground into and orient in all directions from.
1) Center inside yourself to learn more in trusting yourself. Place a hand under your belly button, breathe into the fullness of your belly, and try to locate yourself under it. Relax your pelvic floor and exhale down. What was your conditioning around choosing what feels good and right to you? Is there cultural and familial permission for trusting yourself?
Because of gender, birth order, cultural expectations, or purely due to safety strategies, we may be used to always prioritizing someone else’s needs above our own. Claim your body as your own. Try saying it out loud. “This body is mine. This space is mine.” Do this with open eyes if even thinking or saying this feels overwhelming. If you get dizzy, notice the colors in the room. Remind yourself of the date, place, and time.
2) Calm your mind while trusting yourself. Under pressure to make a decision, your mind can be racing and your body can become dysregulated. You need to get regulated enough to make a choice. Your head can be filled with worry, and conflicting voices and parts. Meditation, qi gong, tai chi, yoga, or even vigorous exercise can help move some energy and then help it settle. Changing your breathing pattern is the quickest way to calm the nervous system. Try slowing it down, breathing fully into your belly, and counting your inhales and exhales.
3) Develop self-trust. The body doesn’t lie. Developing embodiment, listening to intuitive hits that are physical, “gut feelings”, or quiet internal verbal messages and responding to them rather than dismissing them. Attunement, reliability, follow-through, and consistency develop trust. If you make a date with yourself, commit to it and prioritize it as you would a beloved friend.
4) Find external tools to support in trusting yourself that are neutral and can help. Ask your question and divine an answer using a pendulum or tarot cards. Or meditate on it through drawing or writing without lifting your pen and see what arises. Otherwise, ask a supportive and trusted person who doesn’t have a vested interest in the outcome and doesn’t have a history of dictating or judging your choices.
Especially with historical trauma and a tendency to self-sabotage or engage in reenactments of past traumatic events, it can be hard to trust you will make a nourishing decision. If that is the case you can ask, “Does this decision support self-respect, boundaries, safety, evolution, and kindness?” Just because you can evolve through hardship and struggle, it doesn’t mean you always have to choose that path.
in
