Growing up, promises and commitments made to me were often broken. No accountability was taken, no responsibility, no apologies were ever given. There was never any conversations about it at all. It taught me that commitments made to me weren’t important; it was okay if promises to me were broken. Growing up, how my caregivers treated me taught me how I should treat myself. As an adult I broke commitments and promises to myself all the time and thought nothing of it. I’d promise myself a reward, a break, or something fun after completing the task, which helped to motivate me to finish the task. Often, once the task was complete, I’d find I still had energy. I thought the responsible thing to do was to keep working and the reward, the break or the something fun I had planned, could happen another time. It would get pushed back so much, that it never happened. It was a type of self-manipulation. In college, it stopped working. It didn’t matter what I promised myself, I couldn’t get any work done any more. It was only then that I realized I didn’t trust myself anymore.
I didn’t understand trust and I certainly had no concept of self-trust. Nobody, growing up, trust me, so I didn’t expect others, as an adult, to trust me. When somebody shared something personal I felt over-the-top honored and committed it to “the vault” to prove that someone could share sensitive information with me. I thought keeping people’s secrets proved I was trustworthy. But not keeping my promises to myself broke my trust in myself. That didn’t compute. How could self trust be a thing? I’m with myself 24/7. I’m not separate from me. And yet, I couldn’t “motivate” (really manipulate) myself to work when the week before I could. Self trust was a thing, and apparently it was important for me if I was going to get any work done.
I committed to keeping my promises and commitments to myself and things got somewhat better. But I didn’t understand for years, until I watched Brene Brown’s Anatomy of Turst video, a few years ago. In her research, she revealed what makes up trust, and even came up with an acronym: BRAVING
Boundaries
Reliability
Accountability
Vault
Integrity
Non-judgment
Generosity (emotional)
For some more information about each of these read this post. This video blew my mind for many reasons and it gave me a roadmap to rebuilding real trust in myself.
Brene Brown shared a conversation with her daughter describing trust as something like a marble jar. When we interact with people, marbles can go in the jar or be removed from the jar. The more marbles in the jar, the more trust we have in a person. Trust, like loyalty, I thought was something I gave to people based on our relationship level:
Highest trust = family members
Mid-level trust = friends
Low level trust = strangers, community members
This was yet another place I was stuck in child-level development. The idea that someone had to earn my trust was a nice idea but I couldn’t understand where or how to begin. With the marble jar analogy I had some framework. The BRAVING acronym were the marbles that were put in, or removed from the trust jar.
Doing trauma work removed my denial system and showed me all the ways I’d been betrayed by myself and others. Now that I knew that, how do I stop it from happening again? For one thing, I needed to see I was trustworthy to myself. I was instructed to go out, buy a glass jar and place marbles in it for each quality of BRAVING I exhibited every day. For this exercise I was strictly told I could not remove marbles – I was so overly self-critical I needed that rule in place. I was amazed when the jar filled up over the following weeks. It didn’t take nearly as long as I imagined. Once it was full, when I balked or shied away from something because I didn’t know if I could trust myself, such as trust myself to keep me safe, I’d think back on the marble jar. Keeping me safe is part of “Boundaries” and I do that. My marble jar is full. So yes, I can do that thing I balked at, because I can trust myself to keep me safe.
That marble jar gave me something concrete to focus on – an alternative to falling back on my history and all the “proof” it contained of how I didn’t keep myself safe. The marble jar was reality in the hear and now. My history was a fantasy that reflected my past only, nothing in the present and something would only keep me stuck and stunted if I let it.
I trust myself more and more now, because I understand trust and I fully respect how important self-trust is. I make good decisions about my physical, emotional and spiritual safety. I make good decisions about money, in regards to where and how to invest it. And I can make mistakes without breaking or destroying my self-trust. I am Reliable, Accountable and Non-Judgmental to myself. Trust doesn’t require perfection or perfect behavior. There’s always room and space for learning, growth and change. I am free to try new things without fear of breaking my trust in myself. And I can see, I no longer manipulate myself – Integrity – ultimately there’s no need to.
Love and Light,
Mariam-Saba
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