How to Finally Trust Yourself

You can be your own most trusted guide

After a lifetime of looking outside myself for answers, I finally learned to listen to, and trust, myself.

This essay is about how you can do that, too.

Trauma has done many things to mess up my life but one of its worst offenses was that it completely cut me off from my body.

When I was a kid, I was scared pretty much all the time. I won’t go into the whole story but suffice it to say I had good reasons to be scared. I was constantly on high alert, scanning for danger.

As I attuned to the external for safety and stability, I learned to abandon my internal compass.

Then I grew up.

I’d spent so many years overriding my own signals that I’d lost access to the most intelligent, most trustworthy source of wisdom available to me: my own body.

Here’s what that looked like in real life. I’d experience a glaring red flag and promptly talk myself out of it, so I could stay in the relationship. I’d abandon my own needs to keep someone else comfortable, so they’d stick around. I’d say yes when every cell in my body was screaming no — and then wonder why I felt so hollow.

I was doing exactly what I’d been trained to do.

Your body is a supercomputer

Your body is a supercomputer that never stops running. Every moment, whether you’re aware of it or not, it’s scanning the environment, assessing threat versus safety, sending messages about whether you’re safe.

The body’s intelligence is the 5G to the mind’s dial-up.

Think about what would happen if you encountered a tiger in the wild. Long before your mind has time to form the thought there’s a tiger, I should run, your body has already bolted halfway across the savanna. What moves you isn’t a decision. It’s sensation. A racing heart, flooded limbs, the unmistakable signal: danger.

That intelligence isn’t just for tigers. It’s operating all the time, in every room you walk into, every conversation you have, every relationship you’re in. Your body knows things your mind hasn’t caught up to yet.

But here’s what happens when you’ve survived trauma. You override that signal. And over time, silencing the body’s signals stops feeling like a choice, and starts to feel like who you are.

I want to say something directly to the person reading this who’s afraid that having done this makes her weak. You’re not weak. You’re a person with a brilliant nervous system that found the only way it could to survive, by adapting to stay safe.

But you’re not a child anymore. And the strategy that kept you alive then is now costing you something enormous.

Self-sacrifice as virtue

The worst part is that the world rewards you for it.

Women who self-sacrifice get called easygoing. Warm. Selfless. Nobody tells you you’re disappearing, that you’ve become a shell of yourself. They thank you and praise you for it.

As women, and notably as moms, selflessness isn’t just praised, it’s expected. We’re vilified if we’re not selfless. Self-sacrifice isn’t just seen as a trauma response; it’s a job requirement.

And so, we stay disconnected. We’ve been doing it since childhood, so it doesn’t feel like a problem. It gets reinforced because everyone around us benefits from it. And we build entire lives on top of it, careers, marriages, families.

We don’t even question the cost to us, the dullness, the lack of vitality, the sense even when we have “it all,” that we’re craving something more, something deeper or more fulfilling. We don’t question it when we have no energy, or we lose our libido, or we’ve lost any semblance of selfhood. We think it’s just life... as a woman, as a mom, as a wife.

Meanwhile, the body waits to be heard.

Reconnecting with the body

Reconnecting with your body after a long disconnection is a skill, a habit you can build over time. And the key, the one skill to master, is noticing.

Start with something that’s low stakes. How do you know, what does it feel like, when you’re nervous? You’re not looking for the thoughts, but for the physical sensations. Notice them. Do you feel tightness somewhere in your body? Tingling? Shallow breath? Heaviness?

Start there. Notice what your body feels when you’re in low-stakes situations. And as you do this, separate your sensations from the story your mind is trying to narrate.

Then start noticing what happens in your body around particular people in your life. How does your chest feel when you’re with your best friend versus your boss? What shifts in you when a particular person walks in the room? What’s the feeling in your body when you get something right at work? You don’t have to interpret it yet. Just notice it.

That noticing is a radical act for a woman who was taught that her body’s signals were irrelevant, inconvenient, or worse.

Every time you pause and ask, what does my body know right now, you’re choosing your own inherent worth over the approval you were trained to look for in every interaction.

Your body has been telling the truth your whole life.

All you have to do is tune in, listen, and trust.

Below I’m sharing the first few steps to start coming home to your body and trusting what it tells you. If you’d like to begin the journey back to yourself, I’d love to help guide you. Become a paid subscriber, with a 7-day free trial, to get started.