Learning to Re-trust the Self

We may choose to forgive someone and also feel and understand that we can no longer trust them.

The same applies to self-forgiveness.

When we meet ourselves with honesty, compassion is necessary, alongside a gentle mother’s sight that sees clearly that choices we have made may have been harmful, but we were also still learning.

We may often want to turn away from the presence of shame that often comes with self-honesty, and protect our definition of who we are by projecting outcomes onto the external world, but self-liberation does not come from hiding, it comes from seeing clearly.

It is true that there are people and situations in the outside world that have played a part in our suffering and are things that we cannot control, but self-forgiveness requires looking at the choices we DID have in circumstances that caused harm.

It requires unraveling the beliefs and patterns that we may not have been aware of, holding them with gentleness, and allowing the inner mother to guide us with wisdom so that we do not make the same choices again.

It is saying out loud to ourself, “I forgive you for the choices you have made that caused self-harm”.

It is allowing anger and resentment to rise to the heart and be held in the arms of grief for what has been lost.

In that space of release, acceptance for what has been moves in slowly.

In that settling place, we can begin to make amends so that we can learn to re-trust ourselves.

Repairing self-trust requires consistency, inner listening, and repetitively choosing what is most loving and supportive for our own wellbeing.

It requires listening to how we FEEL and choosing to honor what we need and desire with integrity.

It asks us to choose the health of the relationship we have with ourselves over the expectations or demands of others, or the pressure to mold ourselves into situations that do not love and honor us and do not offer reciprocal transparency, value, and respect.

We begin to rebuild self-trust when we stop settling, and consistently CHOOSE what is nurturing and protective of our physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual health.

Within those shifts, much must be eliminated from our everyday experience, and will require faith that what we truly want to experience from a heart perspective will eventually become available to us, once we clear the clutter and make space for its arrival.