Have you ever wondered why it is so challenging to trust yourself, others and life itself?
I have. Often.
After a successful year of pushing through my discomfort in 2018 and saying yes to life, I was feeling pretty confident that I had learned to “trust the process” and deemed 2019 the year I would live Serendipitously…fully trusting the flow of life.
As all New Year’s intentions go I was full of hope that I was gonna rock the hell out of the year. Less fearful of my experiences and more engaged and hopeful in the present moment, knowing there was nothing to worry about.
I know how to do it. I even wrote a book on how to clear the clutter to connect to our intuition and ourselves. I just had to use it. And I did. Inconsistently. One day I would be fully in and the next two fully out. I would start to feel good and then something would happen and I would stop. Sound familiar?
I spent a fair amount of time beating myself up for being inconsistent and getting into the state of worry again. Then I would bounce. I’d be back in and feeling good until the next event occurred which threw me off.
I spent more time frustrated with myself and my inconsistent pattern and why it was so difficult for me to commit to this process of trust. I didn’t understand why I was so scattered and easily shaken.
My intuitive nudge was to start looking at the deeper root to what seemed like surface level fears. I would listen to my clients talk about the everyday stressors and listen for the fears underneath. Was it a fear of rejection, not being good enough, being alone or abandoned? Was it fear of physical safety or harm? Of conflict? Of not being in control? They all seemed to boil down to one or two of these root fears.
It was eye opening and the more I would listen to others, the more I would see how our root fears seemed to be guiding our repetitive patterns. What I didn’t see was where those root fears came from. I just knew they were pervasive and kept playing out.
I was confident I knew my own too. I had classic fear of abandonment due to my mother’s unstable emotional pattern and leaving this life (and me) by choice when I was a teenager. I saw my fears of conflict and my easy withdrawal from relationships to protect myself. What I didn’t see until a series of unexpected and serendipitous events this past summer, was the truth- my fears went much deeper and far more masked than I consciously knew.
If you follow me on social media you may have seen how one incredible and mouth dropping experience after another brought me back to my earliest childhood trauma to re-experience the pain and uncover the real root of my fears. Loss of control. Lack of control. No control. The complete opposite of trust, which allows us to let go of control and feel at ease.
I saw how for most of my life I had been scrambling and grasping for control and the idea of losing it terrified me and sent me spiraling. After having that experience I had to take a break from learning. That only lasted a couple of weeks. I seemingly could not stop myself from understanding what I had been missing for the majority of my life.
One day scrolling through Instagram I discovered The Holistic Psychologist. If you have not seen her work, it is a must. I have not seen any work like it and it is truly a game changer. After devouring one post after another and using her recommendations I discovered the book, The Body Keeps the Score. I sobbed reading through the first two chapters. I was reading about trauma and its impact on brain chemistry and the body. I was reading about myself.
I had lead myself to believe I was over my trauma until last year. I had processed and over processed it and Life said, “sweetheart, you’ve done beautiful work, but now you’re ready to see a deeper truth.”
And smack in my face came one opportunity after another to dive even deeper into myself and see how I was chemically hardwired to not trust. My infancy experiences alone made it difficult for me to safely attach due to my emotionally disconnected mother and events where she put my brother and I in danger due to her own psychosis. One subsequent trauma after another built on that pattern and kept me in a steady state of high alert.
The more I learned the more I understood my anxiety was a chemical response to my perpetual feeling of threat and lack of safety. Playing out over and over again in my mind, real or not. It was a painful discovery, but also one that gave me a hope I didn’t know I was missing. I could change this pattern in myself. And I am.
Mental health practices have long taught us to hide our symptoms, to avoid them, mask them or numb them out. Shaming us through our internal experiences instead of listening to them. Hearing what they have to say. As a mental health therapist, I have listened for the fears. As an energy therapist, I have learned how they are meant to teach us. As a human, I am learning to use that experience and knowledge to support my own ability to thrive and heal the patterns I once believed were a curse to endure.
There are no curses, only limited beliefs.
I am learning how this is the key to self compassion, to self love. To slow down and become more conscious of the stories we play out over and over again. The fears we feed by default and the intuitive voices that get hushed along the way.
I know first hand the power of reconnecting to ourselves and our intuition. I see how awareness of the beauty of life and its serendipities can shake us out of a dark and hopeless state. My intention is to keep digging in and learning and passing on to you what I discover. I want to share with you everything I have learned to be helpful and healing and powerful in this beautiful journey of life.
Do you too believed you are hardwired to not trust? What have your experiences with trust been?