Building trust in yourself again is hard, it is something that requires patience with yourself. It is something that requires time and practice. Practice, practice and more practice.

There can be many reasons why we lose contact or stopped trusting our gut instinct. Usually it involves someone else coming in to our lives and abusing us. That may be through domestic violence (as a child or an adult), rape, life with an addict, a mental health problem or a traumatic event where we felt we were not listened to. The list of what has happened can be endless here.

So it is important to realise you may have PTSD and to understand this. It is also important to identify what you have been through and begin to understand what that means. It could involve reading about it and definitely understanding what you can do about your particular situation. Don’t go overboard with the reading as you can go down the rabbit hole so easily.

When you start to understand the situation you’ve been through, you begin to understand the how/why it “happened to me” questions and why asking for help is so important. Getting into therapy is a necessary first step in building trust in yourself again. The next step is to take some practical steps to build new habits which allow you to trust your gut again.

 Steps To Trusting Your Gut Again

1. Get into therapy: If you’ve been in any form of abusive relationship, domestic violence situation, been raped, childhood abuse or neglect, live(d) with an addict or have PTSD you really need the support of a psychologist. They will advise you on many techniques etc., to help you overcome the trauma you have suffered and rebuild trust in yourself and others.
2. Above all have patience with yourself, it will take time.
3. Start with the basics of self-care and self-soothing (build good habits), we might have forgotten what self-care is all about and need to start again to remember. Don’t worry about breaking negative habits yet, you can tackle these later once you get some good habits in place first to support you.
4. Use meditation, it helps you reset your brain back to centre when you feel out of control, depressed or anxious. It can also help you start to get in touch with your emotions and self-regulate them with practice. It will also help with stress reduction which is so important.
5. Get very familiar with the person you want to become. Make sure to focus on the benefits of the person you want to become not just on what you are trying to prevent happening again. What habits do you want to cultivate? How do you want to feel? How do you want to spend your time? With whom do you want to  spend your time? Review your priorities. Visualise your new life. All this will help you get back in touch with your needs and wants. A lot of the time when we lose touch with our gut instinct we have in fact lost who we are. Now is the time to cultivate you.
6. Start to use affirmations and focus on what is positive in your life, use a gratitude journal it does help. Speak kindly about yourself to everyone including yourself. Counter negative self-talk with positive self-talk and what is good about you and praise yourself every day for a job well done. Celebrate everything, no matter how small.
7. Take a risk, a small one, and then take another one, and another. You are going to have to practice getting comfortable with being uncomfortable.  Join a group, perhaps a support group like Alanon if you’ve been in a relationship with an alcoholic for example. Use your journal to reflect on your progress. Always celebrate all your successes no matter how small they might seem. This is so important. Forgive yourself for past mistakes and let go of the guilt and shame. Again a trained therapist will be able to help you deal with these emotions and also help you grieve out the whole process fully. You need to do this in order to move forward with your life.
8.  Spend time with your team of supporters. Do ask them for their support and guidance. If you don’t have a big team of supporters don’t worry this will come in time as you learn to trust yourself again.
9.  Stop the blame game and take personal responsibility. Be honest with yourself. If you want a better life then you will have to do the work. This can be hard, particularly at first, but the rewards are great.
10. Reclaim your body using grounding techniques, your therapist will be able to help with this. But Peter Levine’s book has some great ones to start with.
11. Re-parent you inner child if you need to. Survivors of childhood abuse or dysfunctional families may still be waiting for the love of a parent that will never come. It can, however, come from you. Again I would only recommend doing this work with a trained therapist but if you’d like to read John Bradshaw’s book on the topic its here.

Work With Me.

Remember you are allowed to ask for support. No one is an island. If you need extra support then you can also work with me. We all struggle with stress and overwhelm from time to time. If you find this has become a problem for you and you’d like some support then schedule an appointment with me.