“11 signs you don’t trust yourself!”
“As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe,
Do you trust yourself? Do you have your own back? Are you there for yourself when you need it most? Self-trust is not something that is often talked about, but it is something many of us struggle with. The root of self-esteem and self confidence is self-trust… without self-trust we cannot have a healthy self-esteem or self-confidence.
Self-trust is the key component to our relationship with ourselves and like any relationship… without trust… it is almost impossible to have a healthy relationship with another human being… including ourselves.
How do you know if you trust yourself? How do you know if this is something you need to work on? 11 signs we don’t trust ourselves.
- Not acknowledging your own wants or needs: This is common for people struggling with emotional fusion (codependency or people pleasing) because the focus is on others, and not self. It is hard to trust someone who does not listen or show up. People with emotional fusion abandon themselves and their wants and needs for the needs and wants of another person.
- Not allowing yourself to process your emotions: Processing emotions is a learned response, and people who do not know how to do that often fear their emotions will consume them or they will become stuck in them.
- How we make decisions: When making a decision, we form opinions and choose actions via mental processes which are influenced by biases, reason, emotions, and memories. The simple act of deciding supports the notion that we have free will. We weigh the benefits and costs of our choice, and then we cope with the consequences. Lack of self-trust in decision making is usually expressed in the following ways: second guessing yourself; having difficulties making a decision; passing decision making off to others.
Second guessing yourself: This sort of insecurity stems from an inability to be sure about one’s decisions, whether or not you have the necessary knowledge to make the correct decision.
– Having difficulties making a decision: Making a decision than going back on it or doing something to later doubt it. Not trusting that you will be able to deal with the outcomes of the decision.
– Pass of decision making to others: Defaulting to someone else to make the majority of decisions.
- “Good decisions come from experience, and experience comes from bad decisions.” ~Unknown
- 4) Discount your own value: Over-functioning (in relationships, at a job, at home) or being a perfectionist (nothing is good enough), it is hard to trust someone who does acknowledge or believe in your own value.
- 5) Beat yourself up for your mistakes: Continually blaming, criticizing, or question oneself usually in a way that is unfair or unnecessary. It is hard to trust someone who is not uplifting, supportive, and compassionate when we need them to be.
- 6) Downplaying your successes: Not being able to stand in your successes and allowing yourself to be proud of your accomplishments and hard work. It is dismissive. It is challenging to have a connection with people who dismiss or downplay our success, accomplishments, or hard work.
- 7) Overthinking about “the right thing” to do OR ruminating about things you did or said: Overly editing ourselves, worrying about the right way to be, trying to control the outcomes.
- 8) Trying to control everything (work, people, physical space, events): Not trusting that you will be able to handle a situation.
- 9) Being really hard on yourself: Thinking most things are not “good enough” or thinking “I should have….” or “I could have…” (perfectionist or people pleasing
- 10) Break promises made to ourselves: Thinking “I can do it later,” or “I can do it tomorrow.” It is hard to trust someone who is unreliable. When we consistently break promises to ourselves, we are showing ourselves that we cannot be trusted.
- 11) Believing other people’s thoughts or opinions about us:
