Self-Trust & Trauma
a nine week creative exploration of the complexities of self-trust while living with complex trauma and oppression
Complex trauma and abuse often conditions us to believe we cannot trust ourselves, our memories and our intuition.
Oppression often conditions those of us who are marginalized to believe we cannot trust ourselves and our daily lived experiences.
And as part of these conditionings we often learn to distrust and disconnect from our own bodies.
Self-Trust & Processing Trauma
Distrusting ourselves can show up in many ways, from ignoring our intuition to impostor syndrome, from not believing our own lived experiences and memories to ignoring our triggers, from not having a clear sense of our own boundaries to being disconnected from our bodies and not trusting what they are telling us.
And so, wherever each of us enters into the work of processing our trauma or of healing, with whatever modalities we use or whoever we look to for support, I believe learning to trust ourselves is (or should be) a fundamental aspect of the process.
We hear about ‘doing the work’ a lot these days, and ‘doing the work’ of trauma processing, of coming back into our bodies, of anti-oppression, needs to include learning and relearning self-trust at its core. It has to if we are going to break patterns and systems of trauma and oppression.
AND I know this return to self-trust can be a complex experience…
A non-linear practice
Many narratives in ‘wellness’ industries tell us that we can unlearn or process deep conditioning once and it will be ‘healed’ and forever gone. When the reality of living with complex trauma, of having lived through decades abuse, of living with multiple marginalized identities in an oppressive culture, of living in a body that needs the support of systems that teach us not to trust ourselves, is often that we have to learn and relearn to trust ourselves over and over.
Because for many of us we are still living with complex trauma and oppression, and so this process of returning to self-trust is going to be complex and non-linear. It is one of continuously moving against the grain of our historical conditioning and living cultures and systems that are not designed to support us in this process of trusting ourselves, and that often do the very opposite. It is one of beginning to learn to distinguish between something that is activating past trauma and listening to our intuition, which is not something we can perfect, given the complexity of our experiences and the world we live in.
I know this to be true for many of us, and it is true for me too.
AND
I believe learning to trust ourselves is a practice we can return to again and again. Each time, hopefully, with a deeper level of trusting in our knowing (and our unknowing), in our worth, in our bodies, in our full selves.
Because while I do have (many) moments of defaulting back to my lifetime of conditioning and of allowing the voices of the culture we all still live in to take hold, I do now, at my core, believe I can trust myself.
