Trusting Your Own Truth

When Your Trauma Taught You to Doubt Yourself

Self-Doubt and Self-Sabotage

Do you sometimes doubt your own experiences in life? Have people often gaslighted you into believing their version of what happened? Have they convinced people around you that you caused the problem when, in fact, they were the one who caused it? It can be hard to trust yourself and to stand in your truth or your knowing of what actually took place. This self-doubt can lead to self-sabotage time and again and to losing your confidence in yourself in many areas of your life.

Trauma and Self-Doubt

There are many ways in which trauma may have impacted you and the reasons for why you doubt yourself. I will go over one way and you can determine if this fits. If not, maybe you have your own reasons based on your own trauma experience that you can explore in order to become self-aware and seek help for how trauma has impacted your present life circumstances.

When you were young, you were filled with life force. You were happy; you were free. You were your authentic self. This is the case for most children before they are traumatized. Children are able to self-regulate their eating, their sleep-wake cycles, and their moods. Their nervous system knows when to get back to a centered place automatically. Often, young children express their feelings. They will be loud with laughter, crying, screaming, or questions. They are fully alive in their bodies and nothing stops them. That is, until a parent who is not able to regulate their own emotions changes this through trauma or abuse.

To an emotionally stunted, immature, and unavailable parent, a child’s natural emotional tendencies can be way too much for their nervous system to handle. This often leads to a child being punished for existing in their natural state. This traumatizes the child. He or she has to learn quickly that in order to survive, they must walk on eggshells, please to excess, and become hypervigilant to their parent’s dysregulation or suffer the consequences. To a parent who is not self-aware or who is narcissistic, avoidant, or emotionally unavailable, this becomes the child’s fault—not their own. Accountability is not something emotionally immature people do—like ever.

So, to the abuser, the other parent, family members, and friends, you are the scapegoat and you are the one who is considered “too much” or “emotionally unstable” simply for being emotional, which is a normal part of being a child. But, to their nervous system, you activate their shame and their trauma patterns which they then project onto you. In truth, they are the ones who are emotionally unstable (because of the trauma that is unhealed in them from their childhood) but they have to deny that in themselves or suffer with how they have abused you and that would bring up shame, which would not feel good. So, it’s just easier to blame an innocent child instead of to get help for their trauma.

Sidenote: This is exactly how generational trauma continues.

The Mirrors in Your Life

So, the seed is planted and takes root and you grow up. You fall in love or have friendships with emotionally unavailable, narcissistic, or avoidant people and, wouldn’t you know it, they harm, damage, abuse, or mistreat you and they, too, invalidate your experience and tell you and everyone they know that it is your fault. When you hold a boundary, they don’t like it. So, they make you the enemy. They smear your name to people you know and love. They turn those who love you against you, but guess what? The original ones who wounded you believe your abusers instead of you. Afterall, if they admit you are correct about bad things your abusers are doing to you, then they also have to admit that they were the original ones who abused you. And, once again, emotionally avoidant and narcissistic people do not do accountability, so they decide to believe your abusers instead of you. This is a very, very lonely life for you. And all you can do is dig deep, heal your trauma and, eventually, believe yourself and the truth of what you know happened to you—even if your abusers and their flying monkeys (supporters) never believe you.

Believing Yourself is Your Liberation

So, because no one mirrored to you that you were being abused and that what happened to you not only actually happened but was also not okay, you have a very hard time trusting yourself. And then, since you were groomed to love people who abuse you and they will not validate that they abused you, you are stuck in the land of confusion. Additionally, this often leads to fawning behaviors and to caring too much about what others think of you. And this is so detrimental to your life and to the person you are at your core and for your reasons for being on this planet. This is true imprisonment.

Once you heal your trauma and your trauma reactions, you can help others heal. You can find your purpose and trust yourself to get you to where you need to be in your life. You learn to have your own back, to take care of yourself in all ways, and to be discerning about people who are up to no good and who are no good for you. When you become self-loving and grounded, anyone who messes with your peace by dysregulating your nervous system needs to be out of your life. You just will not stand for it anymore at all. Even if you love the person, you will choose self-love first. You become your first priority.

In the meantime, practice knowing what has truly happened to you, whether the abuser or others believe you. Step far back and away and become silent to anyone who demonstrates to you that you are at fault for their disrespectful, dismissive, gaslighting, breadcrumbing, ignoring, belittling, or verbally abusive behaviors. In the silence, your strength grows. Your self-love and your self-knowing also grow. This is how we learn to self-regulate again and to come home to our true selves. As our window of tolerance in our nervous system expands, we can hold space for ourselves and learn to love our wounded parts into safety and security. But also in your silence, I am here for you.

If you need guidance to stay strong and to learn to trust yourself, I am here to guide you through it. You are never alone. I have your back and I will teach you how to have your own!