Trusting yourself

Sensitive Content: self harm, suicide

Trust. Is it something you feel? something you do? A state of being? How were you taught to trust? I don't know about you, but I was taught more about what breaks trust and less so of how to repair trust. I know I learned it's the foundation of all relationships. No wonder relationships are so messed up these days! If we never learn the key. And what of our relationships to ourselves?

I struggled with self-trust for much of my life-- cutting and suicide attempts will do that. I know my behaviors did a lot of damage to important people in my life, and most significantly, my relationship to myself. Whether you call it my soul, my spirit, my body, my being, I affected them all. Its a hard road to rebuild when you don't even know what you are rebuilding. 

I found out that I was born with the key. It was calling me my whole life, and I never even knew. Maybe it was too close for me to notice. 

Biswas. 

What is that? Its as if I can hear you saying it.

Biswas is my Maiden Name, the name I was born with. It is Bengali (you can see it in Bengali Script in the image above), and it was a title that was bestowed upon my Great Great Great Great Grandfather Lakhikanta Mazumdar, to honor him with Trust and Dignity. I kept this name as my middle name when I got married, but it wasn't until the last 5 years that I really understood its meaning. 

5 years ago I went through a spiritual rebirth, stripping away everything I thought I knew, my entire foundation. I rebuilt it, piece by piece, learning about Biswas every step of the way.

Biswas means trust. It also means faith and belief, in Bengali. To believe someone or something, we must trust or have faith. They are interrelated. Faith is the choice to believe even if we can't see it. 

So that must mean that it is a feeling, something that comes and goes, like joy, and sadness, right? Or is it a choice, a decision we make to choose to trust? Or perhaps a state of being, like the title bestowed, something consistent. 

I really believe that it is mostly a choice, like acceptance- something that we all have the choice to do, at any time. When someone behaves in a way that breaks our trust, we either choose to trust them again or not. They can do things that make it easier or harder, but the choice still is to choose to trust. When it feels easy, I believe that is when we talk about feeling trust. 

So what about trusting ourselves? That too is a choice. And we must give ourselves the opportunity to trust ourselves. This is what builds a relationship, especially with yourself. I believe that a powerful way to build trust with yourself is to learn how to self validate. 

So many of us, myself included, spend so much time seeking validation and approval from outside sources. The most important place is to find that within. But we can only trust what is within by choosing to, and it gets easier if you give yourself many opportunities to self validate. 

What does that mean? Basically, you have to spend time with yourself. You have to make time to connect with yourself. Don't think of it as time to be alone, many people are afraid of lonlieness. Think of it as getting together with yourself, really it's quite busy once you connect, you have your spirit, your ego, your inner child. There are so many parts, its more like a loud busy party! What's your favorite way to get together with yourself? I'd love to hear from you!