The Person You’re Not Trusting Is Yourself

Listen to this Article

Full article below

Why Self-Trust Matters More Than Trusting Others

By

Alicia Anspaugh

I heard something recently, and it came at the perfect time.

“It’s not that you don’t trust. You really shouldn’t trust anyone anyway—until they show you irrevocably that you can trust them.”

People who say “I trust everybody until they give me a reason not to trust them” are attracting chaos and problems into their lives.

No. Be good to people without any interest in what happens next. But draw a boundary. Don’t give trust unearned—give fairness.

It’s not everybody else that you don’t trust. It’s yourself that you aren’t trusting.

That line hit me in the face like a brick. It was an epiphany.

Staying stuck in that fear of “Oh my God, I got myself in a bad situation once or twice… what if I make all those same mistakes again?”

What happens if I just repeat the cycle over and over?

Time is a wonderful teacher—and sometimes a hard teacher, depending on how stubborn you are (lol).

Every time we get ourselves into a position, it teaches us a lesson. Every problem, every piece of chaos, every hurt, every pain, every misery—it’s part of the lesson plan.

We are not the same person who made those mistakes.

We change every time we are hurt. Every time life puts us through the wringer. We are always changed after every hit life gives us, no matter whose name is on the bat that hits us.

The lesson sticks around.

Yes, we are the same core person—but we come away a little smarter, a little less tolerant, a little more self-valuing.

It’s hard, and it takes a whole hell of a lot of time. But once I get some distance (a lot of distance), I can see the objective lesson from whatever went wrong. I can understand that it was part of the lesson plan.

But even then, when the emotional impact has burned out a bit and I can see clearly, it’s still so hard to get past that fear and keep moving.

What if I’m wrong again?What if I screw up again?What if I get hurt again?What if I can’t recover?

Because in the moment, it feels like the end of the world.

If I had heard “the person you’re really not trusting isn’t everybody else—it’s yourself” ten years ago, I think it would have changed my perspective and shortened my stumble-and-recovery time.

When we say “It’s myself I’m not trusting—and that is the only person I actually need to trust,” everything looks different.

Because we realize that we control what we let in.

It’s not people doing this to us—it’s us letting it happen.

And yes, sometimes we need to let people and situations do us super dirty so we can learn.

But do we really need that fourth lesson?

If so, okay. But if not, then it’s actually in our hands, and we can stop it.

And that realization is refreshing.

It lets me relax.

Not because I completely trust myself.

But because I’ve figured out that all I have to do is look back at all the absolute chaos I’ve already made it through.

I’m not dead.

I didn’t die.

I’ve done things I never thought I could do. I’ve had some horrible things happen to me—and I’m still here.

I’m still standing.

And every time I think this problem is going to end me, I look back over the list of everything I’ve already survived.

And I realize:

Maybe this won’t be the end of the world either.

Maybe I can make it through this one too.

Now, I’m not saying I haven’t had help. And there are definitely a lot of things I would absolutely refuse to go through again.

And some things that would be my undoing.

But I am saying this:

Trusting ourselves takes the power of what can hurt us out of everyone else’s hands and places it firmly where it belongs—in our own.

“Answers always come at the time we are ready for them.”

— Alicia Anspaugh