Why Do I Struggle to Trust Myself After Narcissistic Abuse?
Why Narcissistic Abuse Makes Self-Trust Difficult
Narcissistic abuse impacts a person’s psychology and nervous system because it is rooted in gaslighting, minimization, and dismissiveness. When you are either raised by a narcissist or in a long-standing relationship with one, your nervous system has adapted to their inconsistent moods by cultivating a state of hypervigilance in which you need to be at the ready for the moment the other shoe drops.
When you are in this environment, what happens is you are more prone to paying attention to what the narcissist is doing — their moods, their behaviors, their reactivity — than you are to paying attention to yourself. When we’re in unsafe environments we are wired to focus externally because “out there” is where the threat lies, so we must forgo what our inner desires and wants are telling us because being safe is the primary concern.
Pretty soon we start to equate our sense of safety with what’s happening outside of ourselves, rather than how well we are connected to ourselves. And this isn’t to say recovery is about only focusing on the internal and never the external — they participate in a kind of dance, but building our capacity to trust ourselves must start from a place of knowing who we are, what we feel, and what we want.
What Self-Distrust Looks Like After Narcissistic Abuse
A woman who is not trusting herself is more likely to outsource her own answers to other people, rely heavily on reassurance-seeking behavior, second-guess what her needs or feelings are telling her, and get caught up in self-doubt when she’s about to make a decision. Essentially it’s a state of being in which she is not in ownership of herself.
Innocently, she’s giving much of her own energy and power away to other people. This can look like asking questions like, “what do you think I should do?” rather than considering what you think you should do; Dismissing your emotional instincts because they seem like “too much” instead of being able to tune inside and glean the messages that they’re offering; Ignoring your needs in favor of making other people comfortable, which slowly starts to decay and erode your own boundaries.
What Most People Get Wrong About Self-Trust
What people tend to get wrong about self-trust is they equate it with being all knowing or certain. You can be self-trusting and completely uncertain about how something is going to unfold, which doesn’t make that decision wrong or illogical. Trust and confidence are closely related. The root word of confidence is fid, which interestingly means, “trust.” We cannot ever be certain about anything, but we absolutely can trust our abilities to manage whatever arises, trust our instincts when they say “go left, not right,” and have faith in our emotions, perceiving them as wise messengers that are here for a reason.
When a woman comes to me wanting to increase her self-trust, I know we have a few places to look. The first place I always like to ask is, “how are you not trusting yourself?” which will inevitably point us to all the ways in which she has learned to keep her emotions, instincts, impulses, and somatic cues out of her awareness.
The Mind Is a Tool, Not a Compass
Another piece of the puzzle is in looking at the role the mind plays in how she relates to life. The mind is a wonderful tool, but it’s not a great compass. When a woman who struggles with self-trust relies too much on her mind, she will fall into the traps that only a mind can offer: rumination, second-guessing, intellectualization, rationalizing, and future-tripping. When any of these processes are at play, you’re not going to be able to hear the wisdom of the other intelligences that live inside of you, namely that of your emotions or your body.
A Somatic Exercise for Building Self-Trust
Self-trust isn’t magic, nor is it something only a certain person can do. It’s a practice that you partake in on a daily basis.
Here’s an exercise you can do at any time to begin building your capacity to self-trust. It’s called the somatic yes/no exercise, and you take one thing that you know for sure, like your name, and you say, “My name is (your name),” and simply notice how your body responds. Does it feel resonant, expansive, neutral? Notice that.
Contrast it by identifying a name that’s not yours and saying (out loud), “My name is (not your name),” and notice how your body responds to that. You can play with this by saying something true like, “I love to read,” and then saying something untrue, “I enjoy the sound of alarm clocks,” and continue to notice how your body responds.
This is about tuning into the hidden layers of our experiences and beginning to build a practice around noticing the nuances.
When I say “My name is Hannah” I actually get almost no response - not because it doesn’t feel true, it’s just that it’s so true and so obvious to me, that my body doesn’t respond. It’s giving me the all clear. However, if I say, “My name is Michael,” I notice a desire to laugh, a tiny little tension in my chest, a sizzling feeling in my stomach. It does not feel very comfortable in my body. T
his is telling me that my body is registering something dissonant, a sort of thats-not-quite-right sensation. The more you do this, the more you can start to really learn the language of your body and feel into what is most resonant for you.
How Narcissistic Mothers Impact a Daughter’s Ability to Trust Herself
Many of the women I’ve worked with over the years have all had one thing in common: A narcissistic mother.
When a daughter is raised by a narcissistic mother, her relationship with herself becomes fractured. She learned to relate to her emotions as intruders, her intuition as false, her desires as too much, and her needs as burdens. When she’s developing, her number one objective is to feel safe and to be loved, but what she doesn’t know is that her mother can offer her neither of those things.
So she adapts. She sees that her mother doesn’t really like it when she’s angry, so she silences it. When she expresses a need like “I’m hungry,” or “I want to be alone,” or “I want to hang out with my friends,” she gets feedback that telegraphs some kind of disappointment or gets guilt tripped out of what she is desiring or needing. Before she knows it, she’s formed a belief about herself, “I’m not that important,” (and there can be many other beliefs that are formed here), which will silently run in the background of her mind, creating a ripple effect in her psyche. If she’s not important, then neither is what she wants. If what she wants isn’t important, then it won’t really matter if she gets it or not. This becomes a vicious feedback loop over time, and it can affect her life in a multitude of ways.
Why Positive Thinking Alone Won’t Rebuild Self-Trust
The advice a lot of women get that actually keeps them stuck is to learn to think positively, change your beliefs, and to stop engaging in a particular behavior such as “stop outsourcing your wisdom and start trusting yourself,” (something I’m advocating, but with context on how to actually do it.)
Addressing this issue from a cognitive standpoint alone is not going to move the needle. It has a place in healing and in managing our feelings, but it’s a small portion. What is going to move the needle more is learning to form a different relationship with yourself. You cannot think your way into a new way of being, you have to feel your way there. We are more likely to shift our mindset when we first address our feelings, stay connected to our somatic experience, learn how to actually regulate our nervous systems (which isn’t a 5 step hack, but a lot of small changes we make to our internal and external environment over time), and begin to relate to our challenges from self-compassion rather than self-judgment. Without those pieces in place, we’re more likely to find ourselves deeply disappointed when that mindset hack didn’t hold, or we simply couldn’t get ourselves to believe something differently.
What Self-Trust Actually Looks Like
When a woman is trusting herself, her decision making starts to look different. She no longer is going around asking her friends and family what they think she should do, instead she gets quiet and notices how her body responds. The fizzy feeling in her stomach is not random, it’s information. Feelings of fear mixed with anger are understood as indicators to back off, hold my boundaries, and get more information. The part of her that is saying, “I don’t want to do this,” isn’t brushed off, rather she tunes in, thanks it for expressing itself, and starts to get curious with it.
She might ask questions like, “How old do you think I am right now?” Or “What are you most concerned about?” Or “What would need to change in order for you to feel more comfortable”. The first place she looks is within herself, not other people. If or when she feels the need to inquire with others, its not coming from a place of distrust, it’s coming from a desire to have someone she can spitball her ideas with. She’s seeking council and support, not answers.
How Self-Trust Changes Your Relationship With Uncertainty
A woman trusting herself handles uncertainty in a few ways. She recognizes that uncertainty is the only certainty in life and she welcomes the feelings that come forward in the face of uncertainty. When fear arises, she says, “Fear is here. That’s okay. It’s welcome to be here.” Her experience of uncertainty doesn’t cause her to lie on the floor in the fetal position, rather it invites her closer to herself. When she’s in trust with herself, she knows that uncertainty is part of living and recognizes that she is more than capable of handling the ups and downs of life. Like a warrior, she reacts only when necessary and maintains a neutral stance until more is needed from her.
Other peoples opinions no longer thwart her or knock her off balance. She takes their opinions either in for consideration or dismisses them because they aren’t needed or helpful. When she’s trusting herself, someone else’s opinions remain just that — not threats, not truths about her, just someone else’s subjective lens.
The Fastest Path to Rebuilding Self-Trust
If I could sit down with every woman struggling with self-trust and tell her one thing, it would be: Learn to embrace your emotions as they are — don’t try to change them, just listen. Our emotions are the fastest path toward building our self-trust. And not just emotions themselves, but how we relate to our emotions and channel them into effective action.
You see, emotions aren’t just random pieces of information coming to us, they often carry impulses for action. When you’re sad, the impulse may be to cry, it might also be to hug someone, express heartfelt emotions, or lean into a supportive person. When you’re angry, the impulse may be to assert a boundary, remove yourself from a situation, amend something you said, or engage in some kind of movement like exercise. When we are truly connected to ourselves, we’ll not only know what we feel, but we’ll know how to use our emotions adaptively.
What Becomes Possible When You Trust Yourself?
When a woman begins to trust herself, many things become more available to her. She might start that business she’s been thinking about since 2019 — the one she can’t get out of her head because it just feels so right. There may be a moment of clarity regarding a relationship that needs to end and she has the required energy to begin that process, trusting in her needs, believing what her feelings about this relationship are telling her.
She may have more of a connection to her body, recognizing its signals with more awareness and making changes in how she nourishes herself — prioritizing rest over 5am HIIT workout classes, eating full fat yogurt because she wants to feel satiated, getting sunlight on her skin in the morning because it activates energy inside of her better than coffee.
The outcome of trusting ourselves means that we are the authors of our own lives. We become self-directed, leading from a place of inner authority.
What Working With People Has Taught Me About Human Nature
After a decade of working with people, here’s what they’ve all taught me about human beings: We are more than our stories. We are entire universes brimming with life, teeming with intelligence, and sparkling with so much creative force. The more we build our self-trust, the bigger that universe gets.
Many of the women I work with have already done a tremendous amount of healing. They understand their patterns. They've read the books, listened to the podcasts, and spent years trying to understand themselves.
What they're looking for now is something different. They want to trust themselves. They want to feel clear in their decisions, connected to their emotions, confident in their boundaries, and capable of creating the life they know they're meant to live.
If that sounds like you, I'd love to support you. This is the heart of my coaching work.
Disclaimer: This post is for informational purposes only and isn’t a substitute for professional mental health support. Please take what resonates and leave the rest.