learning to trust yourself

im at the start of what feels like a long road to understanding myself

im just noticing my behaviours and remember past things but through new eyes

how on earth to you learn to trust that what you feel is real?

Any type of trust is built over time. Hopefully as we discover ourselves we will rebuild the trust of knowing our true feelings and how to appropriately place them. At least this is what I keep telling myself.

I feel like self discovery is a never fiasco

If you get there before I do.....will you let me know?

Time. For me its constant testing and time.

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I think I trust myself and then Bam! Something happens and I didn't even realize till after the fact. I do trust myself most of the time, but it took a long time to get there.

What you feel, you feel, so it is always real. The thoughts that erupt from the feelings, however, are not always rational or helpful (I hated some of the CBT emphasis on irrational thoughts, so I sometimes use "unhelpful" instead.) When I feel afraid to share my thoughts and feeling with someone, that does not mean it is unsafe to, I can evaluate whether or not I want to based on whether or not they warrant that trust. I find when I acknowledge what I am feeling and then make a decision from evaluations, the emotions dissipate quickly enough.

anika - thats what is happening to me all the time at the moment - i look back at yesterday and think 'why did i do that?'

merlin - ive gone from sharing EVERYTHING, all my thoughts feelings and self to being scared to have a polite chat with the parents on the school playground - ive never been scared to share anything with people so its a shock to say the least

ive always gone from one extreme to another but this is ridiculous!

again, thanks for being there x

Personally I've been looking at it as the emotion is true, but is the thought rational.

I have a secret notebook where I write down the strongest thoughts I have. I then read them back to see if they are reasonable. For the most part, I've found that it is easier to see the line of rational and irrational that way.

Hope that helps.

I hear you, _frogslegs_. I very often do not trust myself, even though I am in a stable place. Maybe I'm just a little gun shy because I look back constantly at what I have done in the past and wonder why I did things or thought in certain ways. Sometimes it makes me think that there's a possibility that most of my actions/thoughts/etc. are somewhat irrational, simply because I'm constantly realizing how unhelpful those actions/thoughts were a day later. I guess I chalk it up to continuous learning - every day I reflect back on what transpired over the previous 24 hours and see where I could have done something better, and I try to grow from it. However, I've always been very hard on myself and can be very critical, which also leads to not necessarily trusting my thoughts. Oh well, it's something I struggle with every day and probably always will.