B O O ! Don't be scared. It's just you.

Welcome to fall!

Time flies when you're recovering from a pandemic and quarantine isolation. I can't believe it's already October!

How's your "recovery" going? I was reading something the other week about a collective mental health response to our pandemic trauma where we're oscillating between needing extreme rest and wanting to make extreme life changes like changing jobs, moving, or selling every last thing we own and living off the land. I suppose it makes sense. Pent up energy eventually needs expansion and yet, that expansion ends up being physically exhausting.

The thing is when we're oscillating between two extremes (or several) we're not really grounded in our bodies. Not being grounded in our bodies means that we are more prone to taking action based upon wild changes in mood, feelings, or a wild web of something we've convinced ourselves is sound logic.

So how do we truly know when a thought we are now having is something we should actually take action on? How do we trust ourselves?

Trusting ourselves when our mind runs away with itself is no doubt a difficult task at times, especially after a period of time where the institutions and habits we've grown so reliant and unconscious of have/are/will collapse that we're all going through our own "Come to Jesus" conversations. The good news is that the collapse of these things is right where we need to be. When we feel like we know nothing anymore, we're open to learning everything.

Building trust within ourselves is just like building trust with others. When a new friend talks excitedly about spending time together but doesn't return your calls, you learn they may be unreliable. When a new lover makes sweeping prose of their adoration but is still in contact with their last partner, you learn that perhaps they're not as into you as advertised. The point is, we learn to trust others when their words match their actions.

It's no different when we're learning how to trust ourselves, but first we need to understand why we're thinking and doing the things we do. One of the best examples of this is examining something you habitually do. For instance, if you can't seem to leave your home without being dressed (hair done, nice clothes, or make-up) and one day you decide you're going to go out of your comfort zone and leave your home without even brushing your hair, you'll come up against exactly why you're afraid of doing it and what your habits are protecting you from experiencing (judgement? not feeling enough?). If for instance, you are in the other camp of 'who cares if I am in my pajamas' and one day you get dressed more formally, you'll come up against why you don't want to leave comfort.

Once we understand our habits in this way, what we really come to understand is our deepest needs. In the examples above, it's the need to feel accepted and safe in some way. But instead of choosing a more expansive action to meet those needs, we often choose the one that makes us feel smaller and more hidden. And as a result we start to learn how not to trust ourselves.

What if instead of relying on habit, the most dominant thought pattern, extreme mood swing, etc., we start to ask ourselves, "What need is this trying to express?". The answer to that question combined with our ability to hold ourselves accountable for getting that need met through healthy actions is how we build self trust.

Don't be scared. It's just you trying to talk to you.