I’ve heard that a lot in the self-help world, ‘trust yourself’ and in the feminism world and… to the extent that I follow my own instincts when I’m out in the wild or faced with strangerdanger, I do. I do not walk down dark alleyways, or explore basements (not even my own. ask the plumber.) and I make a lot of noise as I walk through woods so that I do not surprise bears or hunters. Sometimes I even sing. I trust my survival instincts.
And in almost every other case? no, not really, I don’t trust myself. I’m certain about almost nothing. And I wonder if there is a root that I can follow down into this one somewhere. Do other people have this problem? Did something make me find an alcoholic marriage? What was that? Do I still have that? When you look back and see such an enormous fiasco of instinct in your past, how do you trust yourself?
And for all the majority of people who don’t have an issue like that in their past, is it something you can do? Trust yourself? I’m asking this in all seriousness. If you are a businessperson, you better damn trust your decisions, right? Is that why I have never gone that route? Is it really as simple as self-confidence?
I don’t believe I don’t have self-confidence. I know I do. In many ways. not all, but many.
So what then? Tell me about you and your process. Privately or not, I’d really like to know. Do you trust yourself?
- me.
I can relate to this. I’m never certain of my perspective, which is not actually THE WORST thing, because I know a lot of people who could stand to be less certain. But the endless turning back on myself, the voice in my head that argues the voice in my head—I think it’s a problem and I’m trying to learn how to deal with it in therapy. It’s illuminating that I was expressing my feelings about something recently (which is to say, about my shame and embarrassment for having these feelings, for failing not to have these feelings) and my husband said, “What if your feelings are right?” And it was like my brain exploded that such a thing could just be possible. And lately I’ve been practising letting it be so. I don’t even need to act on it, but just to suppose. It’s really empowering.