By Barbara Hunter, Counsellor at Truest Reflections
Trust Me.
In my last article I talked about feeling safe and how to really notice the feeling of safety.
READ MORE: Truest Reflections: Do I feel safe?
Once we feel safe, we learn to trust others, trust situations, and open the vulnerable doors to what is known as “us”. However, I want to pose the question, “When we feel safe, do we trust ourselves?”
Quite often, I have clients who talk about broken trust in past relationships with parents, siblings, friends, or intimate partners. They say, “I trusted them. But they turned on me, hurt me, forgot about me, or abandoned me.” When we start to pull apart the layers of these relationships, I ask my clients if there were signs, conversations, or actions that would have brought forward any awareness of these people not being who they said they were. My clients will almost always say that yes, there were plenty of signs, but they didn’t pay attention because of feeling nervous, insecure, or ridiculous.
When did we stop paying attention to what we need in relationships? When did we stop trusting our gut? When did we stop listening to that voice inside of us that said, “Umm… I don’t know, let’s proceed cautiously.” When did our voice of reason become someone else’s voice of judgement? And why do we keep moving forward into something that clearly isn’t good for us?
Even our bodies will tell us when something is not right, with an odd feeling, a stomach pain, or a heaviness in our chest. Do we trust our bodies as they speak to us?
“Trust yourself. You know more than you think you do.” – Benjamin Spark
When we listen to our voices, our bodies, and our innate energy in any given situation, we learn to trust what is right for us and what is not. That, however, may be difficult if you haven’t been able to hear. So many times, others’ voices are jostling around in our minds, wrestling for focus and domination.
How do we settle these other voices of negativity, judgement, fear so we can start to hear even the whispers of real reason? We stop, we breathe and tune into our lungs, into our stomach, into the present moment. Once we can slow down the talking, we can start to hear the same, useless narrative that no longer serves us. This gives us a moment of clarity to really challenge those thoughts that seem to come so often and fast to their validity. From here, we can start creating a new neuropathway that will allow us to walk a different path when we enter those yucky, messy moments.
Once that neuropathway has been created, we can start to create new beliefs, apply them, and trust the whispers of subtle body cues - such as gut feelings, shivers, tingles, the heeby jeebies etc.
We are responsible for our happiness. Slow down, close your eyes, breathe in confidence, and trust in yourself to flourish, thrive and be creative. Breathe out the uncertainty and the self-doubt. Learn to trust your intuition. It really does know what is best for you.
For more information or to talk about trusting yourself you can email me for a complimentary counseling session at truestreflections@gmail.com.