If you grew up in a home that had emotional abuse or gaslighting, that could greatly affect your ability to trust yourself. This is a normal reaction to unhealthy behavior, especially when it is reinforced by an unjust system that supports the perpetrator. It can be easy to blame yourself for anything that goes wrong in your life. This is especially true if you believe in the idea of free will and things that go wrong just being the consequences of the choices you made.
That belief system is a gross underestimation of the harm that was done in those unhealthy and toxic relationships. You are the only one who can decide if you have perceived reality appropriately or not. It is not possible for any other person to know what your perception truly is. This article is one example of what I am trying to say. We do not perceive things the same as anyone else. It appears that we perceive the world close enough to communicate, but not so well that our perception is universal.
Another problem arises when we struggle to trust our gut. A study out of Cornell discusses how going against your gut actually increases the amount we blame ourselves. This is completely counter-intuitive. The argument might be made that we made the choice to listen to someone else over ourselves and therefore we deserve blame. However, there was clearly a reason we listened to someone else. Perhaps we thought of them as more equipped to make the decision. Perhaps they even told us they were. Where are they now that we listened to them and failed?
It is our gut we must listen to. This will help us avoid us blaming ourselves for not trusting it. It will stop us from listening to the wrong people. It will help us build confidence in our own decision making. I rarely find that the “there’s something about that person” ick feeling that I get unsolicited is wrong. Part of being a therapist has been trusting the intuitive nature that science struggles to explain in ideas such as mirror neurons and my limbic system. Trusting my gut rarely harms me, especially when grad school was about so much self-reflection to remove unhelpful judgements.
Trusting your gut can also protect you from unhealthy people. The idea of the uncanny valley has been likened to a possible past predator in human history that we learned to detect despite it possibly looking like us. We need to trust our emotional reactions. They often are there to protect us. Red flags are an example of this. We know what red flags are and sometimes explain them away or choose to ignore them. This is ignoring our gut, and going through an abusive relationship is one way of really messing up trust with yourself. It is time to reacquaint ourselves with our gut and learn to understand it.
Take a look around this week and see what you see and ask yourself how you feel about it. Pay attention to new people, places, and things. Don’t make snap judgements, but remember your initial feeling toward things. See if they turn out to be true.