Trust begins with trust in ourselves

There is a quote, I believe it is from Goethe, “Trust yourself and then you will know how to live.” Knowing we can trust our instinctive cues, or gut instinct it pretty important in this life, in a world where others will often try to throw us off our centre. And when instinct go awry that is when we are in trouble. But if early relationships were not ‘safe’ how are we going to know how to trust the person who actually is right for us and understands us? We are not used to that kind of safety and acceptance and containment if it never was provided. And if we learned to invalidate our own instincts, impulses and emotions how are we ever going to feel like we can come home to ourselves and feel safe inside our own skin and in relationships which we instinctively know are right for us and which are harmful?

Recovering our true self will be a challenge for those of us who never got to develop a sense of basic trust and self validation. It may be fraught with anxiety especially if necessary and essential parts of us were invalidated by parents or we came to feel ‘bad’ for being ourselves and feeling our emotions, ie. angry, sad or fearful when the circumstances truly warranted it.

I have post along similar lines backed up in drafts which deals with the concept John Bradshaw developed of ‘toxic shame’. Toxic shame says we are flawed at our core, that our true self is bad or worthless when nothing could be further from the truth which is often that the disowned parts of our parents are parts we carry that could not be allowed expression within a dysfunctional family. And if the price of acceptance and love is that we have to work very hard for it or turn away from who were really are the price is going to be a shitload of anxiety and depression. A hole deep withn the soul of gigantic proportions.

Emotional recovery for me has meant learning to recover emotions I lost the way to over 40 or so years. It has involved grief work for the part of me that got lost. It has involved anger work over the boundaries and ego I was not allowed to have or form. It has involved a hell of a lot of fear and anxiety too in relationships since the price of being myself authentically has often turned others away who had no idea of what I was carrying and acting out both in addiction and sobriety. But the path of emotional recovery also has led to embracing the entire spectrum of these emotions in order to understand the purpose they play for my soul and true self.

I think a lot of my boyfriend Simon sometimes. I posted a poem to him a short while back. We met when I had been overseas for nearly two years following the death of my father. We decided to look for a couple’s position in a pub in the EC2 area of London. We connected intellectually and spiritually over subjects like the work of Carl Jung. I remember Simon was with me when I bought my first book by Jung in 1986 “Memories, Dreams and Reflections”. We wrote in each others diaries and we struggled to connect but with the pain I was carrying over my father’ loss and lack of emotional support as well as a terminated pregnancy on the anniversary of his death which I am sure I did not say anything to Simon about, we both saw things fall apart, because Simon had not a clue of what I had been through in the 7 years previous to meeting me.

I remember now how when we parted how he told me I had shown him more of a heart that any other girl he had ever dated but he was not ‘ready’ to settle down and its true, at that stage I believe we were too young and had so much more to go through. Simon ended up having an affair with beautiful girl we met while travelling in Norway and Sweden. A few years later he turned up at the place I was living in Sydney on a weekend I was out of town and at that point my addiction was still out of control. No way was I ready for a healthy relationship. See I didn’t know myself, then, not really. So what did I have to give Simon? He had tried to contact me one other time but that never happened either and so obviously we were not meant to be in this life.

Many years later I think of Simon from time to time and from what I can recall its probably close to the time of year we first meet in Brighton with a group of friends in November 1986. Funny how old ghosts often make an appearance at the time of year we most associate with them in our heart even if we do not always consciously remember. The other interesting thing is that Simon was a school teacher and that was the profession I would have loved to have finished had my father permitted it.

Today I can remember things about Simon and that one year of my life (1986 to 1987) with softness. I am not even sure why he has made an appearance in a blog I started to write about trusting ourselves, but maybe it has to do with the fact that out of all the relationships with men I had in my life, he and I were the most suited of couples, spiritually, physically and intellectually and yet my old ghosts intervened and Simon didn’t know how to cope and probably had his own.

Today it feels okay to be alone. To have finally cut contact with ‘Scott’. To have made a new friend who is at a similar stage of emotional recovery with whom I can share honestly and feel very safe with on an instinctive level. Today I am beginning to realise that I can trust myself and if something feels ‘off’ or like its too much for me (which is how it so often felt with Scott) its a sign that it is, not an instinct or impulse to be second guessed or over ridden but one that needs to be taken very seriously. For how can I live and be happy if I don’t learn and gain the strength to honestly follow my gut?

Trusting ourselves in the end restson knowing ourselves well. It involves embracing a past full of wrong turnings and mistakes and reframing our limited perception to understand that they were really just learning experiences and soul challenges which we lacked the necessary tools or skills to navigate at the time. Retrospection can be good if it teaches us something about what we need to get it right a bit further along the track. And I can cut myself a bit of slack for this retrospection to do with instincts and past love partners as Mercury inches back to make its inferior conjunction with the Sun in a couple of days time at around 18 degrees of Scorpio in square to my North Node in Leo and South Node with Sun Mercury Venus and Jupiter in the seventh house of relationships. For if I look inward to my soul, everything really seems to be right on schedule for the unfolding of trust in myself and growing self knowledge.