Rebuilding self-trust
From emotional suppression to an inner compass you can rely on
Many of us begin to look at what really happened in our childhoods quite late in life. We want to understand how we became the way we are, why some patterns keep repeating, and why we feel like we have never really arrived.
The moment you start your childhood trauma healing journey, something strange happens.
Instead of gaining clarity, we fall into an abyss of darkness. Old painful memories come to the surface, we wake up in the middle of the night, sweating from anxiety or overwhelmed by the intensity of our feelings.
How could things get that bad?
Why have we lost control?
And who are we really, after all?
Thoughts like these made me question my reality. I felt like a total failure, was full of self-doubt, and lost all trust in myself. I had no idea how to turn my life around.
That’s when I was finally ready to let go of a version that was never me.
When you realize you were living a role
You can only trust yourself when you know who you are. Sounds simple when in fact it isn’t.
When you grew up in a dysfunctional family system, you were never really seen for who you are. Instead, you were forced to fit in and play a role you never chose.
You learned to function, to cope, to read the room. That’s how you survived.
It was an adapted life. Functioning in it may have brought you far in life.
At some point, the lie you were forced to live with collapses.
Then it’s quite natural that you have no idea who you are. How could you, when in the years that shaped you the most, you were not allowed to be yourself?
But what you do know is the price you had to pay for all that.
By this, I mean the emptiness, the disconnection, and the feeling of never really belonging.
How your self-trust was broken
I believe that deep inside, we have some sort of understanding of who we are, no matter how old we are.
If you go back to your childhood, you will find moments when you rebelled against your role or felt that something was deeply wrong. You probably brought your concerns to the table, which just made things worse.
That’s when:
- Your feelings were dismissed
- You were called too sensitive
- You were heavily criticised and made to feel small
- You were punished for speaking up against the family
The lesson you got there was that showing or expressing feelings was dangerous. So you learned to suppress them. And in turn, this made you neglect a big part of who you are.
The real miracle is that you found ways to function despite living against your nature. Or in other words: You have no idea how strong you really are.
Keep this in mind. If you had the strength to function in a role that was never yours, you also have the strength to find your way back to your true self.
But finding your way back is not something you can solve with thinking alone.
At some point, you have to learn how to feel again without being swallowed by what comes up.
That is where self-soothing becomes so important.