I have spent years struggling in Schools, from elementary to middle school, high school, and finally, many, far too many years at two-year colleges. I have several degrees from those junior colleges, so I am not an ignoramus, nor am I an intellectual; yet I often sit and notice that I frequently feel empty of intelligence. It is as if I experience the moment as a man who is just empty of thought. In those moments, I feel as though I know nothing whatsoever. If you asked me a question, I’d be void of the answer. I could have a doctorate, I imagine, and I’d feel the same void of knowledge in these moments in time. How is knowledge necessary to my ‘identity’ if I sit empty-headed in the moment?

I mentioned I struggled throughout my school years. What do I mean by that? Daydreaming, inability to concentrate or focus, impulsive to be the clown, seeking attention, and thus getting the paddle frequently from the principal (in middle school, it was the vice-principal who performed the ‘imperative’ corrective punishment). Something was wrong with me; something was wrong in my family; something was wrong in society. Back in the 1960s, when I was in elementary school, I was threatened with being held back on several occasions; Yet, I was somehow pushed forward to the higher grades. Perhaps with a hope I would mature, and/or snap out of “it.”

However, I think I was probably looked upon as simply being “willful,” exercising my free will and “choosing” unacceptable behavior. Where were the school psychologists back then, to take notice of a struggling, disturbed child? Passed through the system, like a badge of honor to the schools for having taught me what I was supposed to have learned. I barely managed grades good enough for high school graduation. I most likely didn’t. Yet they allowed me a diploma. Probably to get rid of me, out of the system, and let themselves shine for not having ‘failed’ that one.

Where were the psychologists in my high school? Maybe they were there, but I was unreachable… I look back and know that now. What a sad journey for a troubled child. I hope it is better for children today, especially those who are troubled. 

Suddenly, it dawns on me that this may be a form of dissociation, characterized by a sense of empty-headedness from the moment, a blanking out. Why did I begin a paper on my state of feeling empty of knowledge? For one thing, it just struck me as “bizarre.” The experience almost makes it seem as if education is unimportant to who we are in the moment, and certainly unimportant to who I am anyway. My sense of feeling loved, experiencing anxiety, trying to remember what happiness felt like, feeling the biting arrows of bullying, criticism, or rejection from others, all float within, inside/outside the bounds of knowledge.

Life, it seems, exists in the realm of the emotional, not the intellectual or the reasoning. Not to belittle reason, the more knowledge we gain, the wider the paths and opportunities for problem-solving, but then there is the self. Is my identity tied up, anchored to having achieved knowledge? He asks himself. If I have an educational title to my name, do I anchor my sense of pride to that label, wearing it like a badge of honor, of “self”? Am I my title of accomplishments? Indeed, one should be proud of earning degrees and awards that bring societal recognition to their achievements. Still, I’m back to that emptiness and the realization that the emotional experience of being seems determined to be who we are.

Then there is the next day; today I’m feeling, in a quiet moment, the old, internalized pangs of feeling ostracized, unacceptable, or unloved; the ‘emotional’ experience that reeks of an abusive childhood, a painful, disturbing reality of having lived intense trauma in the moment; far too many moments. Complex PTSD is a living, yet buried monument to a troubled childhood. Those emotional reactions to physical and emotional abuse from a disturbed mother fill my senses.

The living internalized experience of prolonged, unrelenting traumatic abuse and emotional neglect fills my moments. It consumes me, not allowing me to focus on much else, “coping.” It leaves me staggered, perpetually seeking an escape from life’s ongoing moments. I’m driven to escape into the world of “distractions,” drugs, alcoholism, and impulsive behaviors that ruin my life, but I can’t help it. The Moment is just too disorienting and painful to endure without intoxicating distractions. Free will is often just a blank, lost, or magical thought that far too many seem to insist is the only thing that energizes human behavior.

If “self-love” is my recipe for change and healing from the internalized, overpowering, and unconscious relics of trauma: how do I ‘engage’ with the same level of emotional strength that trauma and unmet infantile needs invaded my being with intense dramatic ‘shock?’ 

I was bathed in icky, toxic, living emotional states of basic rejection and deeply shamed by a ‘false’ childhood interpretation that “it is me”, I am unlovable! Something is wrong with me; otherwise, I’d be loved and comforted. “That” is toxic shame. That is what I experience in my usual quiet moments, a toxic experience of being an irredeemably flawed being. The experience of being ridiculed, bullied, and laughed at is waiting for me around the next turn in my life; even my next moment, as my mind sees it, it conjures and feels the terror of reliving the past.

The concept of ‘self-love’ strikes me as simply something I don’t fully understand.

Suppose the intense emotional impact of an unbearable traumatic event consumes my being with a living regurgitation of those old, terrifying reactions. Doesn’t it make sense that an equally powerful, emotional ‘experience’ would be needed to counteract such internalized past experiences? Sitting in that ‘empty’ moment, which started this paper, was a moment free of the Toxic state of Shame.

On one hand, the toxic, painful, debilitating childhood emotional experiences need to be expelled from the system. Working to become aware of the buried and repressed pain leads to ridding those emotions from the system. Feel it and allow yourself to weep deeply, in tune with the pain that lives within you. That isn’t easy because of the numbed-out life we’ve led. Trying to ‘hide’ desperately from what we need to see, feel, and deeply weep will not help us heal. I can’t imagine how else to work through that block to living openly, as fully as we can learn to be. It is a lifelong battle and journey to overcome the prolonged, severe trauma. For God’s sake, be thoughtful when you administer ‘punishment’ upon your children! Ask yourself, is this right or necessary for me to whip my kids? Listen to what your gut is telling you; I love my child; I don’t want to do this. Then please stop it!

Fulfilling sick and unexamined cultural expectations of “appropriate punishment” can damage a child’s psyche, leaving them perpetually unable to trust others. This drives us to seek the experience of being accepted, safe, and welcomed by a friend or an understanding and accepting therapist. This is all in the hopes of finding the actual ‘existential’ reality that “I am OK,” “It was not my fault what happened to me,” a tragic victim of trauma (CPTSD). It is a struggle for some of us to see and feel that we are lovable, though we are. Just because I think and/or fear I am not, doesn’t mean I am not. It means I’m afraid I am not, and I feel I am not.

Perhaps the powerful ‘emotional’ experiences I’m looking for, or that I conceive as necessary for an impactful change within one’s heart and soul, need to be in a social group setting. To feel and see a group of people ‘welcoming you,’ accepting you into the group; a person or people who authentically miss you if you don’t show up to the group meeting. A place where you can learn to be expressive and find that you are not radically shamed and abused for ‘being’ open and authentically expressive.

That expression of self may be consumed, in an uncontrollable state of hypervigilance, as your moment-to-moment social experience is now; however, with time, patience, and persistence, that can change.

Acutely self-aware of your new behavior, daring for once to begin to express, openly, honestly, and authentically. This sounds like the beginning of learning to become one’s authentic self. That is, being expressive without the toxic, abusive trauma that drove your inner little child scurrying for safety under the proverbial bed. Perhaps the ‘individual’ experience of an intimate friend or therapist, before moving out into the world of a therapy group, when the time is right.

Others who share the same issues that have held you back seek a similar path from a life that was filled with toxic shame, self-blame, intense psychic pain, feeling indescribably ‘different’ from others – alienated. In other words, we are not alone if we reach out and risk connecting, taking baby steps at first.

I’ve known the depths of alienation. You are not alone. You have to ‘risk’ reaching out, risk being vulnerable, and find the courage and guidance toward seeking out a therapist. Before we seek, we must learn how and what it is we are seeking —change, freedom?

That is where knowledge comes into “the play.”  Act 1 is stepping out and risking self-change…

Photo Credit: Unsplash

Guest Post Disclaimer: This guest post is for educational and informational purposes only. Nothing shared here, across CPTSDfoundation.org, any CPTSD Foundation website, our associated communities, or our Social Media accounts, is intended to substitute for or supersede the professional advice and direction of your medical or mental health providers. The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the guest author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the CPTSD Foundation. For further details, please review the following: Terms of Service, Privacy Policy and Full Disclaimer

Jesse Donahue

*Copyright notice. All writings copyrighted and registered with the Library of Congress.

Therapy has helped improve my self-understanding as well as writing skills through journaling and essays. Although this writing journey began in later years, it has led to 70+ essays oriented around issues with CPTSD – a trauma disorder.

My writings, which include therapy notes, poems, novels (unpublished), and essays, are all a part of my ongoing personal therapy. Initially, the essays, intended for my therapist’s eyes only, began with exposing my thoughts, fears, and feelings, or the lack of, onto paper, a journal of therapy notes. Then, with fear overcome and via a personal decision, I shared them with the readers. *My thanks to Paul Michael Marinello, the editor of the CPTSD Foundation. My intent is to encourage readers to recognize traits in themselves and find (if desired) a therapist when they are willing and ready for that step. For some of us, it can be a long and challenging process, over extensive periods, to awaken to the unconscious issues that cause us to act out in life. Our behavior may seem like dancing to a buried, invisible cause we cannot directly see or confront. It is my sincere hope that my insights will assist the reader in the process toward reaching a deeper self-understanding.

Bringing the unconscious out into the light of self-awareness, understanding, and acceptance fosters self-love and the process of change.

 Jesse B. Donahue

*Type a keyword into the foundations search engine. (Jesse, Heart, Personal, Twelve, Bugaboo, etc.) Or, Type Jesse Donahue at The CPTSD Foundation on a Google search.

Published with the CPTSD foundation. Top 10 essays in order of number of views:

1.  ** Personal Honor, Integrity, Dignity, Honesty
2.  ** The Heart of the Matter
3.  * The Smoldering Embers of C-PTSD
4.  * The Hidden Bugaboo (Parts 1-4 of 4)
5.  Twelve Days Without Coffee
6.  Learned Helplessness
7.  Cast Out of Eden by Toxic Shame
8.  *Codependency – Overriding the Monster of Self-Hate
9.  The Emptiness of Yesterday
10.  Surfing the Light Through the Darkness

Understanding the Impact of CPTSD on Personality

Trauma fundamentally changes how individuals view themselves, others, and the world around them. In CPTSD, the effects are often pervasive, shaping emotions, beliefs, and behaviours. Common personality changes may include hypervigilance, where individuals are constantly alert to potential danger, and persistent low self-worth, driven by feelings of guilt or shame. Many people with CPTSD also experience emotional dysregulation, where they struggle to manage intense emotions, often cycling through anger, sadness, or anxiety. These changes are survival mechanisms developed during periods of trauma but tend to persist, disrupting relationships and everyday life even when danger has passed.

How CPTSD Impacts Trust

Trust is one of the most significant casualties of prolonged trauma. The very essence of CPTSD involves a betrayal of safety, which creates deep-seated mistrust in people, systems, and even oneself.

For individuals with CPTSD, trusting others often feels unsafe or even dangerous. Relationships may be approached with suspicion, skepticism, or outright avoidance, as they constantly anticipate betrayal. Conversely, some survivors may overextend trust to gain approval or prevent rejection, leaving them vulnerable to exploitation or re-traumatisation.

Trust issues also extend inward. Many survivors struggle with self-doubt, questioning their own perceptions, decisions, or worth. This internalised mistrust can feel paralysing, preventing individuals from confidently navigating relationships or decisions. Furthermore, fear of intimacy often develops, as the vulnerability required for deep connections triggers reminders of past betrayals, leading to emotional walls and isolation.

Personality Changes Over Time

The cumulative impact of trust issues and trauma responses often leads to significant long-term personality changes. While not universal, many people with CPTSD experience heightened sensitivity to rejection. This can cause intense emotional reactions to perceived slights, even if unintentional.

Defensive behaviours are also common, such as isolating from others or relying on perfectionism as a means of control and protection. These coping mechanisms, while initially protective, can prevent individuals from forming meaningful connections or embracing growth.

Chronic guilt or shame also becomes a dominant trait for many. Survivors of prolonged trauma often internalise their experiences, believing they are fundamentally flawed or to blame for their suffering. These beliefs shape identity and self-esteem, making it difficult to engage confidently with the world.

Lastly, relationships may oscillate between extremes of closeness and distancing as survivors struggle to balance the fear of abandonment with the need for connection. This dynamic can lead to cycles of idealisation and devaluation, further complicating personal and social interactions.

The Path to Healing and Growth

While CPTSD creates significant challenges, healing and growth are attainable with the right tools and support. Rebuilding trust and addressing personality changes involves small, intentional steps and a willingness to confront past wounds.

• Seek Trauma-Informed Therapy: Approaches like EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing), Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), or Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT) are highly effective in addressing trauma’s root causes and teaching new coping mechanisms.
• Rebuild Trust Gradually: Begin by trusting yourself through small commitments and achievable goals. Surround yourself with safe individuals who demonstrate reliability and respect.
• Practice Self-Compassion: Healing guilt and shame starts with kindness toward yourself. Techniques like mindfulness, journaling, and affirmations can challenge negative beliefs and reinforce your worth.
• Develop Healthy Boundaries: Learn to set and maintain boundaries in relationships, protecting your emotional and mental space while fostering mutual respect.

Engage in Support Networks: Whether through support groups, friends, or community resources, connecting with others who understand your journey can provide strength and validation.

A Journey of Transformation

The effects of CPTSD on trust and personality are deeply ingrained but not insurmountable. Healing requires patience, persistence, and support from trusted professionals and networks. Through intentional effort, survivors can begin to rebuild their sense of self, reclaim their resilience, and foster healthier, more fulfilling relationships.

While the road to recovery may be challenging, it also offers opportunities for profound transformation. By addressing the wounds of the past, individuals with CPTSD can step into a future defined not by their trauma but by their strength, growth, and renewed ability to trust.

If you have been impacted by betrayal, you might like to check out my blog, Betrayal Trauma & CPTSD. https://cptsdfoundation.org/2022/09/22/betrayal-trauma-cptsd/

Photo from Unsplash: timo-stern-EvcUtLF12XQ-unsplash.jpg

Guest Post Disclaimer: Any and all information shared in this guest blog post is intended for educational and informational purposes only. Nothing in this blog post, nor any content on CPTSDfoundation.org, is a supplement for or supersedes the relationship and direction of your medical or mental health providers. Thoughts, ideas, or opinions expressed by the writer of this guest blog post do not necessarily reflect those of CPTSD Foundation. For more information, see our Privacy Policy and Full Disclaimer.

Tracy Guy

Tracy Guy is a published author and a proud guest writer for the C-PTSD Foundation. Professionally, Tracy has experience in mental health and muti-trauma nursing and is now a full-time registered counsellor working with people struggling with complex trauma, anxiety, and grief. Her passion for writing, unwavering instinct to help others, and professional and lived experience drives Tracy to support and advocate for those suffering from debilitating traumatic experiences and C-PTSD. Tracy hopes to raise understanding and awareness of C-PTSD, more specifically, the association of C-PTSD with abusive relationships.

I had a weird tension in me about it

Like other techniques, we also employ the idea of a “safe place,” where he helps me anchor into safety before we do any deep work or regressions. I have always used the same safe place since I have been seeing Dr. Gabe: the beach in front of my grandma’s house, now our second home. As we began chatting at the beginning of the last session, I realized I was feeling a little hesitant about “going to my safe place” because, in reality, this was where I had broken my wrist a few weeks prior, and I had a weird tension in me about it.

So, all the things we normally do and go through to work through deep-seated trauma from the past, we went through the same process on the trauma of breaking my wrist. That was our starting point. First, I re-experienced the crack of my bone that I heard and the onset of the fear I experienced. I was scared and alone and had no way back up the small cliff I had descended to the rocky shore. (I am quite good in emergencies, and this was no exception. I simply trespassed onto a neighbor’s property, used their private staircase, and thanked them later for using it.  They have offered for me to use their stairs down any time I need to since I won’t be going down or up on the climbing rope for a while at least. It’s when the emergency subsides, and the adrenaline rush crashes that emotion tends to overwhelm me, and I cry and shake and get embarrassed at my reactions.)

As we followed my subconscious, it led me to the scene in my home when the ambulance arrived.  Fire truck, too. There must have been 15 people all congregating around me. People were sticking my veins for an IV and missing. Pandemonium. My parents happened to have just arrived at our home because we were all going out to dinner. When I called my husband, John, and told him I had broken my wrist and was coming up the neighbor’s stairs, my parents were already there. I was still somewhat in shock, and the pain was amplifying exponentially from moment to moment. I just needed a minute to process everything. I wanted to see my husband, hug him, and figure out the best thing to do. I was still evaluating how badly I had been hurt. My dad took over and called the ambulance without my knowledge or approval; he just did it. Ultimately, I am glad I went to the ER that night and that I did so in an ambulance, where they were able to administer pain medication during the hour-long drive to the hospital. But all of a sudden, I saw the pattern clearly of how my father always made “executive decisions,” as he sometimes called them, and put situations in front of me where he had already made a decision and effectively removed the element of my own choice from me. Over and over from a young age until it seemed normal.

But I have a voice today. Sometimes, I still have to speak up forcefully to get my dad back in check, and I do know he means well and cares – and I am truly grateful for that. But it was ultimately nice to recognize how pervasive that pattern had been in my life and how and why it has taken me a lifetime to speak up for myself and make my own best decisions. It still amazes me how we think that trauma is about one particular thing, and then we do the work and find all these other things mixed in and attached in ways we hadn’t ever even realized before.

And my safe place is safe again.

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

Guest Post Disclaimer: Any and all information shared in this guest blog post is intended for educational and informational purposes only. Nothing in this blog post, nor any content on CPTSDfoundation.org, is a supplement for or supersedes the relationship and direction of your medical or mental health providers. Thoughts, ideas, or opinions expressed by the writer of this guest blog post do not necessarily reflect those of CPTSD Foundation. For more information, see our Privacy Policy and Full Disclaimer.

Adina Lynn LeCompte

Adina Lynn LeCompte is a sixth-generation Californian. After having lived in varying parts of the US and abroad in Florence, Italy, she has come home to roost, splitting her time between the Central Coast and the Foothills of Yosemite. She holds her Bachelors of Arts from UCLA (Language & Linguistics), her Master of Arts from Middlebury College School Abroad / Universita’ di Firenze (Language & Literature), and studied 4 years in the MDiv program at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado. Over the years, she founded several successful local businesses and worked as an interfaith hospital and hospice chaplain.

Adina is a working writer, an award-winning poet, and is working on her upcoming book “Spilling Ink: Write Your Way Into Healing”. Additionally, she has designed an interactive transformative workshop by the same name that uses writing as a tool for healing from trauma, especially abuse and grief. She is also co-author of several compilations of poetry with her husband, John LeCompte, who is also a writer. (“With These Words, I Thee Wed: Love Poetry” was published in 2023.)

Her most recent exciting endeavor is being a part of the Bay Path Univeristy’s MFA program in Creative Nonfiction, with an emphasis in Narrative Medicine.

writeyourwayintohealing.com

Those of us living with complex post-traumatic stress disorder often find our self-trust destroyed and ourselves living in a predicament because we have little self-awareness.

This article will explore the benefits of building self-trust and how you might learn to believe and care about yourself.

What is Self-Awareness?

In short, self-awareness is when you objectively interpret your actions, thoughts, and feelings. Doctors Shelley Duval and Robert Wicklund offer the following definition of self-awareness.

“Self-awareness is the ability to focus on yourself and how your actions, thoughts, or emotions do or don’t align with your internal standards. If you’re highly self-aware, you can objectively evaluate yourself, manage your emotions, align your behavior with your values, and understand correctly how others perceive you.”

Developing self-awareness aids in building self-trust because it helps us understand who we are and what our values are so that we implement them. In recognizing our values, we are telling ourselves what we will and will not do, which helps to build self-trust.

Self-aware people can interpret their thoughts and objectives, and that is a rare skill as most of us tend to spiral into emotion-driven interpretations of what is happening to us and how we will respond.

Two types of self-awareness exist, private and public.

Private self-awareness. People with private self-awareness are meditative and approach their reactions with curiosity instead of blatant emotion. These folks are capable of noticing their physical sensations and correctly attributing them to what is happening at the moment. This type of self-awareness allows us not to panic when our emotions are aroused but instead to think or be conscious of what is happening and face it head-on. The con of private self-awareness is that it is easy to appear insincere because one can be too wrapped in oneself.

Public Self-Awareness. This type of self-awareness is consciously aware of how we look to others. With this kind of self-awareness, we are more likely to follow societal norms and behave in a socially acceptable manner. The con to public self-awareness is that people high in public self-awareness may spend excessive time worrying about what other people think about them.

Both private and public self-awareness helps build self-trust by allowing you to examine yourself bravely, know what you believe in, and provide you with a roadmap of how you wish to behave.

The Benefits of Self-Awareness and Self-Trust

Awareness of your deeply felt beliefs and attitudes makes one more capable of looking constructively at your life. When you are self-aware, you can make better choices and see the path you wish to take in your life more clearly.

There are as many, if not more, benefits to developing self-trust through self-awareness. Below is a partial list of the benefits of self-trust.

You empathize better with others. The skill of empathy enables you to have better relationships and, in the process, receive validation of your feelings. Often, you will find you need validation more than anything else.

You improve your critical thinking skills. Becoming self-aware includes the need to think and reflect honestly on yourself and all you do. It is critical to do a lot of self-analyzing to separate yourself from your emotions to see an objective picture of who you are. Practicing these things improves your critical thinking skills.

You acquire good listening skills. The skill of active listening is growing scarce in our modern times. Active listening skills make a positive impression on those around you and can lead to authentic relationships. Good listening skills are characteristic of self-awareness.

You become a better leader. As a leader of any group, with self-awareness and self-trust having given you the other three benefits, you make a great leader. People will want to work with you on any project at work or at home. People will look to you for guidance and feel glad to know you are helping them build lasting positive relationships with others.

How Does Self-Awareness Affect Self-Trust?

Once you have learned to trust yourself, you will understand better what makes you afraid and affects how you deal with CPTSD.

“Trusting yourself means being able to attempt to do all kinds of things without judging yourself too harshly.” – Charanjit Lehal.

How To Tell If You Are Self-Aware?

Self-awareness and self-trust go hand in hand. One will not exist without the other. By now, you might be wondering just how self-aware you might be. Let us examine five essential characteristics of someone who is self-aware.

Honesty. If you are self-aware, you do not need to berate yourself but are honest with yourself about your good and bad qualities, successes, and failures.

Wisdom. Wise people acknowledge that their everyday life consists of continually learning from triumphs and errors.

Self-Confidence. Self-aware folks desire honest feedback from others because it helps them change course if needed and makes them aware of how others see them.

Humility. Self-aware people know their skills and their shortcomings and are willing to change. Self-aware people do not mind sharing triumph with others, nor do they stop themselves from lifting up others.

Self-Compassion. Self-aware people aren’t hard on themselves. Instead, these folks pat themselves on the back when they do something right and hold themselves without judgment when they do something incorrectly.

There are more characteristics, and you will find them as you practice self-awareness and grow in self-trust.

Mental Health Awareness Month-The Mental Health of the BIPOC Community

BIPOC (black, indigenous, and people of color) communities face enormous barriers to good mental health support. With that statement, it must also be said that this group constitutes over 19 million people with mental health conditions. The number is probably much more significant due to taboos in reporting mental health problems in their cultures.

The BIPOC community faces the taboos against speaking of mental health challenges and stigma from mental health professionals. BIPOC communities also face enhanced barriers to mental health services, including lack of insurance, ability to pay, transportation, and language barriers.

Discrimination felt and practiced by some mental health providers is also a massive block in the road to recovery for people who are black, indigenous, and people of color.

With all the roadblocks to care, it is unsurprising that 22% of black and Hispanic high school students seriously contemplate dying by suicide every year.

It is past time for America to stand up and face the fact that BIPOC individuals make up the majority of our nation and deserve equitable and good mental health care. As U.S. citizens, they have the right to receive the services they need to live long and healthy lives.

This is mental health awareness month. Let all of us think sincerely about how we can get involved in aiding the BIPOC community in receiving the mental health care they deserve.

Ending Our Time Together

This series on self-trust has examined many aspects of how to build self-trust. One of the most important methods is to employ a healthy dose of self-awareness. Without knowing who you are inside, gaining any kind of self-trust will be challenging.

CPTSD grows worse in an atmosphere where there is no trust in oneself, resulting in a lack of self-awareness. To change this, we must work hard to defeat the inner critic that keeps telling us we are no good and no one wants us.

I sincerely hope this series has helped you grow in the knowledge needed to begin to trust yourself. Doing so will be life-changing.

“It’s crucial to practice self-empathy, for trust can’t be willed into existence. That didn’t work when our caregivers tried to impose their will on us, and it won’t work internally, either. Only when we can tap into a place of self-trust, with a reliable process of reparation for inevitable mistakes, can we build trust with another person.” – Alexandra Katehakis

Shirley Davis

My name is Shirley Davis and I am a freelance writer with over 40-years- experience writing short stories and poetry. Living as I do among the corn and bean fields of Illinois (USA), working from home using the Internet has become the best way to communicate with the world. My interests are wide and varied. I love any kind of science and read several research papers per week to satisfy my curiosity. I have earned an Associate Degree in Psychology and enjoy writing books on the subjects that most interest me.

www.learnaboutdid.com

This article will focus on how self-trust and how you talk to yourself changes you.

A Description of Self-Trust

Self-trust is when you consistently remain true to yourself and look after your needs and safety. You treat yourself with compassion and never strive for perfection. Deep down, where it counts, you know you can survive and refuse to give up on yourself.

Self-trust affects all aspects of your health and life, including:

Emotionally. With healthy self-trust, you are calm and at peace with yourself. You are confident in your decisions, and your relationships are healthy. You also have a higher level of emotional intelligence.

Without self-trust, you feel you are not good enough and are hard on yourself when criticized, guilty, or ashamed. You find it so difficult to make decisions that you constantly ask others for guidance. You are also afraid of disappointing others.

Relationally. With self-trust ruling your life, you are not easily angered and do not strive for perfectionism. Instead, you love yourself and have healthy relationships with others without using manipulation, guilt-tripping, or oppression to control them.

Without self-trust, you find yourself anxious and ashamed, and these traits get in the way of having a healthy relationship. By not having trust and love for yourself, you prevent yourself from forming healthy relationships and use manipulative behaviors in an attempt to control them.

Mentally. If you have a healthy self-trust, you will experience a mentally healthy outlook on life and others. You will be stable in your relationships and enjoy life.

Those who struggle from low self-trust experience elevated levels of anxiety, depression, and of course, guilt. You will find you do not enjoy life and find it difficult to trust others.

Educationally, Financially, and Occupationally. With good self-trust, you will have enough confidence to finish college. Because of this, you will, because of your education and self-confidence gained from self-trust, seek, obtain, and maintain suitable employment.

Without healthy self-trust, life would be so disrupted that you cannot attend college or a trade school and take the first job you can find. Often, you will stay in that position for years not because it pays well but because you are afraid to leave.

The Inner Critic and Low Self-Trust

Healthy self-trust does not mean you have all the answers, nor will you always do what is correct. Instead, self-trust has faith that you will be kind and respectful of yourself regardless of life’s outcomes.

The worst enemy of healthy self-trust is the negativity of the inner critic. The inner critic is part of your psyche that marries shame and self-hate with perfectionism and the fear of abandonment. It is that little nagging voice in your mind expressing frustration, criticism, and disapproval of your actions. Statements of your inner critic, like “you should have” or “what is wrong with you,” inundate your self-talk and destroy your belief in yourself.

The negative inner critic forms in childhood from environmental factors such as living in a home where your parents were not supportive and might have been abusive. In a family where you felt rejected, asking for everyday needs or expressing preferences, feelings, and boundaries was dangerous. You internalized the messages your parents instilled in you, and now you reflect them onto yourself when judging your words and actions.

You may even hope someday to earn your caregiver’s approval and affection by anxiously driving for the impossible, perfection.

Ideas for Defeating the Negative Inner Critic

Although your inner critic is a type of survival mechanism to identify potential threats in your environment, it can also help you avoid failure and aid you in moving forward to success.

However, as we have seen, your inner critic continually tells you why you are not good enough.

Other statements your inner critic may be feeding you are like the following:

• You are fat
• You are ugly
• You are stupid
• You are not worthy
• Nobody wants to hear your opinion
• You don’t deserve love
• You don’t deserve friends
• You don’t have any friends
• You are an imposter

Do any of the above thoughts happen to you? If so, you are being run over by your inner critic.

There are ways to defeat your inner critic and harness its energy to aid you in developing healthy self-trust.

Begin to practice self-kindness. Stop and think when the inner critic attacks your self-worth. Once you begin to recognize your inner critic and what it is doing to your self-trust, you can begin to push those thoughts aside and show compassion toward yourself. Be empathetic with yourself and with your behaviors, thoughts, and feelings. Refuse self-judgment, and you will begin to feel real power and acceptance.

Recognize that your inner critic is going nowhere. You must accept that you, like all people, have an ongoing dialogue going on within yourself that is often helpful. However, you must also acknowledge that you can change the way you engage and repeat negative messages given to you by your inner critic. Your inner critic is a part of you that can be very helpful when dealing with specific situations.

Consider using humor to cope. You can imagine your inner critic as a cartoon character whose voice you think is ridiculous. Choose the voice of your inner critic as a cartoon character. It is much harder to be leveled by what your inner critic is saying if it says it in a voice like Scooby-Do.

Consider therapy. The inner critic is often so hostile and loud that it harms your self-trust. Indeed, it can destroy how you see and treat yourself. Some types of psychotherapy can help you gain new insights into where all the negativism is coming from, and you can learn more ways to defeat it at its own game. There are several different kinds of therapy, including cognitive behavioral therapy and dialectical behavioral therapy. There are many other modalities to choose from.

Mental Health Awareness Month-The Mental Health of the LBGTQ+ Community

Currently, there are 332,000,000 people in the United States, and 4.5% identify as a member of the LGBTQ+ community (14,940,000 people). Of the 4.5%, 39% report having a mental illness, or a little over 5.9 million of that population (more than the population of Kentucky!)

Yet, the mental health issues of the LGBTQ+ community were largely ignored until recently due to stigma and prejudice.

It is time for all sane people to rise up and offer hope to those in our LGBTQ+ community by making it possible for them to receive affirming mental health care.

As a society, we should be ashamed of how we have treated our LGBTQ+ neighbors, but it is never too late to begin showing them respect, dignity, and love. You can do so by showing and affirming they have the right to live and to use their chosen pronouns. By correctly identifying your neighbors, you can save lives, especially those who are transgender.

LGBTQ+ folks are four times more likely to die by suicide than heterosexual people, and transgender people are twelve times more likely to attempt suicide than the general population.

We can end their suffering by acknowledging their right to live as they choose without interference and showing them compassion.

Ending Our Time Together

Self-love is said to be the beginning of all wisdom, and I must agree. When you trust and love yourself, you suddenly become a powerful force to be reckoned with.

No one can defeat you when you trust yourself; no circumstance can bring you so low you cannot recover because you gain tremendous tenacity and strength when you do so.

Complex post-traumatic stress disorder is full of symptoms, with the most destructive being lacking self-trust. Once you begin to trust yourself, the healing journey becomes much less daunting and more achievable.

Consider working on your self-trust because doing so will increase your ability to overcome any circumstance life throws at you.

“Talk to yourself like someone you love.” – Brene Brown.

“Self-care is a selfish act—it is simply good stewardship of the only gift I have, the gift I was put on earth to offer to others.” – Parker Palmer.

“A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval.”—Mark Twain.

Shirley Davis

My name is Shirley Davis and I am a freelance writer with over 40-years- experience writing short stories and poetry. Living as I do among the corn and bean fields of Illinois (USA), working from home using the Internet has become the best way to communicate with the world. My interests are wide and varied. I love any kind of science and read several research papers per week to satisfy my curiosity. I have earned an Associate Degree in Psychology and enjoy writing books on the subjects that most interest me.

www.learnaboutdid.com

People living with complex post-traumatic stress disorder (CPTSD) often struggle with self-trust

Do you trust yourself? Your judgment and your decisions?

People living with complex post-traumatic stress disorder (CPTSD) often struggle with self-trust. This is because they learned in childhood that they cannot trust themselves and still hear the voices in their minds of their abusers.

This article will discover how complex trauma affects your self-trust.

What is Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder?

Unlike post-traumatic stress disorder, CPTSD is caused by repeated trauma that occurs in childhood. Children are trapped in their situation and unable to escape the abuse and neglect they might be undergoing. This lack of the possibility of rescue from their abusers causes the child to deny and internalize their emotions which becomes a problem in adulthood.

The life-altering symptoms of complex post-traumatic stress disorder are numerous and include the following:

• Reliving the trauma through flashbacks and nightmares
• Avoiding situations that remind them of the trauma they endured as a child
• Dizziness or nausea when remembering the trauma
• Hyperarousal
• The belief that the world is a dangerous place
• Difficulty sleeping
• Startling easily by loud noises
• A negative self-view
• Emotional regulation difficulties
• Problems with relationships
• Thoughts or actions of suicide
• Fixating on the abuser or seeking revenge
• Losing memories of trauma or reliving them
• Difficulty regulating emotions that often manifest as rage
• Depression
• Sudden mood swings
• Feeling detached from oneself
• Feeling different from others
• Feeling ashamed
• Feeling guilty
• Difficulty maintaining relationships
• Seeking our or becoming a rescuer
• Feeling afraid for no apparent reason
• A loss of trust in the self or others

As one can see, the symptoms of CPTSD are devastating, but treatment by a trained mental health professional who specializes in trauma disorders can help.

What is Healthy Self-Trust?

Healthy self-trust involves being confident and having great faith in oneself. If you have healthy self-trust, you will have faith in your abilities, and if you find yourself in a situation (such as an uncomfortable work environment), you will remove yourself immediately.

With a healthy self-trust, you stick to your personal standards, core values, and ethics and know when and how to put yourself first. You will also have confidence that you can pursue your dreams and will not allow others to stop you or persuade you.

Other signs you have healthy trust in yourself include:

• You say positive things about yourself.
• You are rarely critical of yourself.
• You never tell or say negative jokes about yourself.
• You are focused on your positives.
• You recognize your achievements.
• You do not blame yourself when things go wrong.
• You know you are as good as everyone else.
• You readily accept compliments.
• You know that you are enough.

If you find you lack the above attributes, you may have difficulty with self-trust.

Self-Trust and CPTSD

Children who are neglected or abused learn to count only on themselves and not trust those around them

Looking at the symptoms of CPTSD, you may have noticed that it includes a lack of trust in self or others. It might be that this lack of trust exists because the adult with complex post-traumatic stress disorder endured severe and repeated trauma in childhood from the people they were supposed to be able to count on.

Children have basic needs for their brains and emotions to develop normally. Children who are neglected or abused learn to count only on themselves and not trust those around them.

Children who grow up in abusive or neglectful homes cannot rely on anyone to save or even notice them, and they always feel endangered. These children exist in a fog of shame, guilt, and fear.

Abused and neglected children often form CPTSD, and they learn to feel they can trust no one. One can see the problems with this deeply engrained belief system as it is difficult to form relationships and keep the ones they do find.

Healing from Both CPTSD and a Lack of Self-Trust

It is critical to recognize there are at least three segments that will aid you in healing from the trauma that has caused CPTSD and feeling you are untrustworthy. If you use these tools, they can help you gain control over the path you are taking.

Utilizing these three building blocks while, if possible, working with a therapist will start you on a new experience that will change your perspective on yourself and others. The segments include self-examination, looking hard at how you see yourself and others, and this means you will encounter your childhood trauma head-on.

The intention of taking on these healing segments is to become less identified with your trauma and make good choices for your future.

The Three Segments of Healing

Segment One: Recognizing the impact trauma has had on your life. Ask yourself, how has my history shaped my perspective of myself and the world around me? How do I identify with my past? Let us examine the answers to these questions together to help you recognize how much trauma has affected your life.

•  Behaviorally you have decreased ability to control your impulses, exhibit hyperactivity, and experience eating and sleeping difficulties.
• Emotionally, you lack trust in others and are reluctant to engage in relationships, plus you have difficulty asking someone else for help.
• Lower self-esteem and you lack confidence and belief in your skills and strengths. You also harbor higher levels of guilt and shame.

Segment Two: Find and Build Trust and Support. Complex post-traumatic stress disorder is relational damage. You trusted your caregivers to protect you, and they did not. Instead of your relationship with your caregivers being supportive, comforting, and safe, they were abusive and ignored your needs. As a child, you had no option to leave your abusers and now find building trust for a relationship nearly impossible. Likely, you spend time protecting yourself by not opening up to anyone.

You may wish to explore therapy as therapeutic relationships might provide a healing experience through the therapists encouraging you and giving you positive support when you become emotional in their office. You might also seek out people who do not criticize or shame you and tell them how they can help you.

Segment Three: Empowerment. How you think about yourself and talk to yourself matters, especially during your healing journey. To become empowered, you must show self-kindness when working through the trauma you lived through as a child. Don’t be judgmental asking. Try not to believe that you are broken or damaged, as you are not. You are a wounded soul mistreated by those who should have been trustworthy but were not.

Setting firm boundaries and sticking with them is another empowering movement for you. When you were a child, your boundaries were violated repeatedly, leaving you unable or cautious to make them as an adult. Start small, such as telling people you need time for yourself alone to recharge, then turn off your notifications from those people and get some rest. There are thousands, if not millions, of boundaries to choose from depending on who you are and what you need.

Another way to empower yourself is to advocate for yourself. Recognizing what you need and want, asking for them, and standing your ground when someone denies you these things. We’re not talking about wanting and expecting a new car; we’re talking about demanding and expecting respect and dignity from someone else. At first, this step will feel uncomfortable and a bit overwhelming, but you must stand up for yourself to feel empowered and in charge.

Mental Health Awareness Month

May is when we try to raise awareness of mental health issues and stamp out the stigma associated with them

I would also like to mention men’s mental health problems and how you can help.

Men in our society are ignored regarding their mental health until something happens, and we can ignore them no more. Too many men die by suicide because they do not feel emotionally well and are afraid to reach out for help.

We expect our men to be stoic and not to show their emotions, condemning them to a life of internalizing their feelings without any escape for them. These emotions build up in some men until they give up and die. It is time we made it normal to go to a therapist or psychiatrist for men to be just as it is to the doctor for heart problems or any other physical health problem.

Reach out to any men you know in your family or circle of friends and tell them you care and respect their emotional turmoil. Society has always placed too much emphasis on their being harsh; we need to change that.

Ending Our Time Together

There is so much to talk about with self-trust that this series might take five posts to explain it all.

Complex post-traumatic stress disorder makes having a healthy sense of self-trust much harder. The two together, CPTSD and lack of self-trust, often lead people down the rabbit hole of self-blame and self-loathing they do not deserve.

Trusting yourself is fundamental to having good mental health. By utilizing the three healing segments while seeing a qualified therapist, your life can make a drastic change for the better. You are in control.

“The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself.” – Michel de Montaigne

Shirley Davis

My name is Shirley Davis and I am a freelance writer with over 40-years- experience writing short stories and poetry. Living as I do among the corn and bean fields of Illinois (USA), working from home using the Internet has become the best way to communicate with the world. My interests are wide and varied. I love any kind of science and read several research papers per week to satisfy my curiosity. I have earned an Associate Degree in Psychology and enjoy writing books on the subjects that most interest me.

www.learnaboutdid.com

This article will explore the importance of self-trust and how not having it damages your ability to function.

What is self-trust?

Self-trust is the conviction to be kind to yourself and respectful no matter the outcome of your efforts. Self-trust means you have felt secure in the fact that you can rely on your integrity.

It is critical to have self-trust, be grounded, have confidence in your choices, have clarity in your life, and experience healthy dependency on others. These qualities are not arrogance but speaking from a place of authority, confidence in what you believe and say, and bending and adjusting to new information.

If you experience a healthy self-trust, you are not hard on yourself when you make mistakes, but you allow room for your errors and learn from them.

However, if you lack self-trust, your life will be much different.

How is Self-Trust Affected by Childhood Trauma

So many things in life are affected by experiencing childhood trauma. The brains of children who live through abuse or neglect have structural changes, and many mental health issues also find their beginnings there.

It is no surprise, then, that self-trust is affected as well.

Research conducted by Downey & Crummy in 2022 states:

“Childhood trauma victims exhibit low self-esteem and experience depression and anxiety. Some deny their trauma history, while others create a false self-image and engage in alcohol and drug misuse in an attempt to prevent their traumatic experiences from impacting their life.”

In layperson’s terms, childhood trauma causes low self-esteem, depression, and anxiety, plus forces the victim later in life to seek out substances to aid themselves in keeping the childhood trauma from impacting their life.

Low self-esteem is a big part of having low self-trust, as it is challenging to trust in yourself when you feel bad about who you are and are using substances to hide your feelings of inadequacy.

Chronic self-distrust affects how you view yourself, and with all you come into contact in your life. You may find you are afraid to reach out to others because you don’t trust yourself to choose the right person as a friend or partner. You may hide from the world, not trusting or believing that you can function well enough to get ahead.

Some Signs of Damaged Self-Trust

Trust issues, whether with oneself or others, cause considerable disruptions in your life. Trust issues affect many aspects of your life, including mental and emotional health. Lacking trust in oneself leads to loneliness, isolation, stress, and perfectionism that keep you bound in dread.

Lack of trust in oneself can also lead to developing control issues that negatively affect:

• Friendships
• Your mental health
• Romantic relationships
• Work productivity
• Relationships with your spouse and children

According to an article written by Sabrina Romanoff, PsyD, the following are also signs that you do not trust yourself.

• You ask opinions from others when you need to make a critical decision.
• You seek reassurance from others instead of listening to your own counsel.
• You are prone to procrastination as you are afraid you’ll make the wrong decision.
• You avoid listening to yourself and instead choose to disconnect.
• You experience tremendous guilt after deciding and fear you have made the wrong choice.
• You ruminate on what might have been if you had walked a different path.
• You compare your decision to the decisions of others.
• You are quick to believe any negative opinion of yourself.
• You underestimate the power of your making choices.

While these signs may describe you perfectly now, they need not run your life in the future.

Ways to Improve Your Self-Trust

Trusting yourself makes it easier to make decisions and reduces your stress levels to moderate levels that you can stand. Even if you have not trusted yourself for decades, you can learn to do so over time.

Below we shall discuss five valuable methods to improve your self-trust.

Try to be yourself. You may find it challenging to be yourself around others because you fear how they will look at you and judge you. Unfortunately, other people will sense your discomfort and distrust.

To mitigate your discomfort and fear, start reminding yourself that it is alright to be you. Practice being yourself in the presence of people you trust first, noting the times you feel uncomfortable and not running away from that feeling but embracing it.

Practice being kind to yourself. Perhaps you know the term “unconditional love,” but did you know you can do so for yourself? What does love for yourself unconditionally look like? You rid yourself of negative thoughts and self-criticism after making an error.

Listen closely to your inner voice to see if it is critical or accepting after you make a mistake. Does your inner critic speak kindly, or is it a mean, vindictive voice?

After you have mastered listening to and correcting your inner critic, you will learn to trust yourself unconditionally, which builds enormous self-confidence.

Make time for yourself. Because you lack trust in yourself, you might feel uncomfortable spending time alone. Perhaps you fill your time by keeping busy by continually being involved in projects with other people. It is critical to end the habit of looking away from yourself for approval and patiently looking inside yourself for it.

One trick you can do is to look inward using meditation. Sit with yourself in a quiet room for 5 minutes each day paying attention to your breath and body. If you experience negative thoughts or criticisms of yourself, acknowledge them and let them go. This crucial one-on-one exercise is critical to building yourself up and filling you with self-trust.

Recognize and build on your strengths. Inevitably, you will be better at some things than others and have a good idea of which things you excel at and which you do not.

Trusting yourself means the ability to do all kinds of things without harsh judgment. It makes sense to do more of the things you excel at and fewer of the ones you do not. Spend lots of time doing the things you are good at to build your trust in yourself because it will help you to understand that you are not a mess, but instead, you are someone who can and will do well at the things where you have strengths. It will also reinforce that, like everyone else, you have weaknesses, which is okay.

Learn to be decisive. When you lack trust in yourself, you question your actions and decisions or who you are, which can be painful. Build trust in yourself by stopping your questioning every decision you make. Instead, make a choice and own it, even if it turns out to be wrong. Learn there is no good can come from beating yourself up over wrong decisions.

The best choices are made after having learned from a mistake. In learning from your mistakes, you will believe you will make better choices next time and move on quickly.

Mental Health Awareness Month

May is a good month to work on trusting yourself as we celebrate mental health awareness month. First celebrated in 1949, it was started by the Mental Health America organization that was then called the National Committee for Mental Hygiene, then later the National Mental Health Association. This month is an excellent opportunity to spread the word that mental health is physical health, as it all concerns how the brain functions. Doing so will help end the stigma associated with having a mental illness and bring it out of the darkness into the light of day.

It is vital to remember that having a mental health condition is not a death sentence. You can and will overcome problems with your mental health if you reach out for and receive the help you need.

There are many numbers you can call or text to receive immediate help if you find yourself in a mental health crisis. However, if you or someone you know is experiencing a mental health emergency, you cannot wait. Please call 911 immediately or get to the nearest emergency room.

If you or someone you know is experiencing a mental health crisis, help is available by calling 988, where you will be able to speak to a trained crisis counselor 24/7. The service is free, and no police will be called unless your particular situation warrants it.

The SAMHSA helpline is available 24/7 and is also free and confidential. Through this helpline, you can receive a treatment referral and information about mental health and substance abuse disorders, prevention, and recovery in both English and Spanish. The numbers to call or text are listed below.

• Call: 1-800-662-4357
• TTY: 1-800-487-4889
• Text your ZIP code to 435748
• Visit SAMHSA’s National Helpline

Ending Our Time Together

When considering self-trust, you must think about how you treat yourself. Do you talk verbally about yourself in a negative fashion? Do you treat yourself the way you treat other people?

To improve your mental health status, it is first vital to consider loving and trusting yourself unconditionally. While that may sound frightening, you must remember that you are just as capable as anyone else and that your thoughts and decisions are valid.

“What the mind can conceive and believe, and the heart desire, you can achieve.”
― Norman Vincent Peale

“Self-trust is the essence of heroism.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

References

Downey, C., & Crummy, A. (2022). The impact of childhood trauma on children’s well-being and adult behavior. European Journal of Trauma & Dissociation, 6(1), 100237.

Please consider visiting my blog about dissociative identity disorder and complex trauma. Thank you.

Shirley Davis

My name is Shirley Davis and I am a freelance writer with over 40-years- experience writing short stories and poetry. Living as I do among the corn and bean fields of Illinois (USA), working from home using the Internet has become the best way to communicate with the world. My interests are wide and varied. I love any kind of science and read several research papers per week to satisfy my curiosity. I have earned an Associate Degree in Psychology and enjoy writing books on the subjects that most interest me.

www.learnaboutdid.com