Become Your Own Best Friend: Cultivate Self-Trust

When it all feels challenging, can you rely on yourself to be your own best friend?

When our relationship with ourselves is loving and solid, we trust. We learn. We grow. We expand. Our actions reflect what matters to us.

But when we abandon our emotional needs, we create a world that doesn’t align with who we are.

We make choices that are reactive rather than from our deepest core.

Self-Abandonment

Self-abandonment is stealthy. You don’t see it. But you feel it. You feel overburdened, shamed, small and insignificant.

You feel rudderless.

Self-abandonment is when you neglect your emotional wellbeing, turn to the person next to you as if they have the answer for you, or do anything not to feel what is actually going on inside of you.

You reject your insights and emotions. You supress them so much that you may not even be aware of what you’re feeling.

You don’t trust yourself to feel your emotions. You worry you’ll become overwhelmed. “Can I manage this? Will I lose control?”

Of course it all feels overwhelming!

So much of our culture is focused on what we do, how we think, what we know.

But very little is centered on how to support ourselves skillfully on the inside.

For many, the habit is to turn away from our inner world. We don’t like difficult feelings and we’re not skilled with them. So we turn toward anything on the outside of us that we believe is more trustworthy than ourselves.

The result?

We never learn from our greatest resource: ourselves.

And this is when you make choices that work against you – whether or not you’re doing it consciously.

Look at your choices

Do you:

• Stay quiet about your needs?
• Ignore the voice inside of you that tells you a limit has been reached?
• Cover up what you’re feeling or choose to numb yourself?
• Let others drive the conversation?
• Take on more than you can reasonably do?
• Take on responsibilities that are not yours to bear?

If you recognize any of these in yourself, you might also notice that you reject those parts of yourself that feel needy. You judge them as weak and unattractive.

Instead, consider loving yourself to wholeness, turning courageously toward your vulnerability.

Make the Turn Inward

Every time you turn toward your inner experience instead of blaming yourself or others, you deepen your self-trust.

Every time you turn toward your needs and limits with respect, you deepen your self-trust.

Every time you behave as if your limits, values and choices count, you’re in integrity with your deepest self.

Six Steps to Cultivate Self-Trust

1. Choose to focus inward, rather than on what you think others want from you.

Ask yourself:

• What comes up when I think about being with my emotions?
• What are my emotions telling me? Exhaustion? Grief? Frustration?
• Where do I look to resolve my emotional pain? More work? Distraction?
• What do I want to avoid?
• What makes that intolerable?
• Can I love/forgive the part of me that feels afraid to feel?

2. Choose to feel your emotions – all of them. You can tolerate them. The more you feel them, the more the energy will move through you and the clearer you’ll be about what’s going on for you.

3. If sitting with your emotions brings up more inner turmoil, that’s ok. Even that turmoil belongs. It’s deserving of your respect and your loving. You can experiment with strategies for distress tolerance to help you expand your ability to be with your emotions.

There are several key distress tolerance skills, including:

1. Distraction: Engaging in activities or thoughts that divert attention away from distressing emotions or situations. This can include anything from watching a movie or calling a friend, to engaging in a hobby.
2. Self-Soothing: Using the five senses (sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch) to calm and comfort oneself during times of stress. ​
3. Improving the Moment: Implementing strategies to create a sense of ease in the present moment, such as using imagery, finding meaning in the pain, or making a situation more tolerable through relaxation techniques.
4. Acceptance: Practicing radical acceptance of reality as it is, without trying to change it. This involves acknowledging the situation and your feelings about it without judgment.

4. Actively apply self-compassion.

• Recognize when your struggle shows itself.
• See yourself as part of the human race. Remember, everyone struggles.
• Validate your emotional pain, “This is suffering.”

 

5. Set boundaries for yourself.

Listen to what your body tells you. Notice your feelings. Your intuition.

Choose to act on these ‘knowings’. You can start small.

Every time you honour your needs, you strengthen the neural pathways for being in integrity with yourself. It gets easier with time!

 

 

 

6. Celebrate how brave you are.  You’re coming out of hiding. You’re actively cultivating self-trust.

You’re standing in front of yourself, ready to be with yourself – just as your very best friend would be.

There is something wonderfully bold and liberating about saying yes to our entire imperfect and messy life.