Through my process, I discovered why I had a hard time trusting. For many years I bought into other people’s belief systems for me. When I was unable to live up to their belief system for me, I found myself questioning the whole idea of trust. As long as I continued to buy into their denial system for me, the harder it was for me to trust the process, to trust God and to trust myself. It was only after I began to question the beliefs other people had for me that I was able to begin living life on life’s terms.
As I have learned to live life on life’s terms, I have established my own belief system. Some of these new beliefs are summed up in these short phrases.
I am an army of one. I am a bright and shinning star. My worth is not dependent. I am beautifully and wonderfully made and my soul knows it very well. I am a true believer. I am not alone. I am confident. I am a work in progress. I am kind and loving. I am direct. I am loved. I am safe and secure forever. I am free through the eyes of God’s love for me. I am resilient. I am more than enough. I have all that I need. I am centered. I am at peace. I am ME, wonderfully ME.
To some these declarations may sound like cliché’s, affirmations, or even arrogant proclamations, but to me they are becoming reality. I have found these beliefs are at the core of my ability to trust the process, to trust the God of my understanding and to trust myself.
Trust is paramount to truly living on life’s terms. Apart from trust, I am left to living life on the basis of magical thinking.
Trust
Trust or the lack of trust will ultimately impact every decision that I make in life, one way or another. Trust resides at the core of all healthy relationships, both with oneself and with other people. Apart from trust, there is no firm foundation to be built upon.
Over my lifetime, I have wrestled with trust. My circumstances taught me to rely on other people to define my existence. Consequently, I allowed them to define what and how to trust. In essence, I learned to trust what other people thought and believed as fact. Additionally, I learned that it was not safe to trust myself, as this often conflicted with other people’s opinions. I was also led to believe that what other people thought of me was more important than what I thought of me.
This belief left me emotionally dependent on them, as I continued to seek to please and gain their approval. This way of living often left me puzzled and drained, as I frequently tried to modify and change to qualify my worth. Consequently, I found myself discarding parts of me in order to comply with people’s opinions. I believed that it was not safe to trust what I thought. Therefore, I let other people establish the bench marks for living my life.
To add to this confusion, at the age of 10 I became a traumatic brain injury survivor. Because I was able to excel on many fronts (academically, physically and was highly motivated) the affects of my brain injury would remain a mystery for the next 30 years. Nevertheless, being a traumatic brain injury survivor significantly exacerbated my ability to read people and situations in real time thereby confusing who and what to trust.
Through my growing awareness, I have come to trust my judgment of people and situations. I no longer need to have the approval of others to define what I trust. I have also learned that it is in my best interest to spend more time observing what others do, not what they say. As a safeguard, I now trust slowly (only in proverbial pennies first, then in nickels, dimes, quarters, etc.) I have also come to accept my limitations and learn to trust my opinions.
These days my opinion and what I think is what matters most. Consequently, I have become more patient with myself. I have discovered that trusting myself is more important than trusting what other people think and believe. Today, what I think about who I am is more important than what anyone may speculate about concerning my existence.
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What awesome insights. Trust has always been a big issue with me, but for different reasons I guess.
Keep up your fight!
~Kathryn