In this episode, I discuss the struggle of making decisions and trusting oneself.

I share personal experiences and insights, highlighting the importance of regaining your voice and learning to trust your intuition. I offer practical tips for making small decisions, reflecting on how your personal story have impacted your ability to make decisions, and talk about how you can give yourself disconfirming experiences that allow you to believe something new. I encourage listeners to have faith in the process, to invest in their healing, and to show up for their own well-being and growth.

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(TRANSCRIPT) S2E35: Why Do You Struggle to Trust Yourself? - Gabi Ruth

To note: Transcript is created by AI. Please excuse any errors.

Gabi: [00:00:00] Well, hello, beautiful souls. Welcome back to Pain to Passion Live. Hey guys, you're amazing. Thank you so much for all of your feedback on the episodes that I've had recently. I've had some amazing episodes. One with Tiffany Reese, the host of Something Was Wrong. One with Rachel Havocost, one of my favorite...

favorite mental health influencers and one with Jael who is a client of mine and who's starting to do some amazing things to help you guys in organizing your time and getting the things done that you want to get done. So I've had great feedback and I love hearing from you. If you haven't heard those most recent episodes, I definitely recommend going to check them out.

There's some of my faves, and I just wanted to have an opportunity to come and do a solo episode [00:01:00] because it's been a little while. Life, you know, life is nuts, and I just have to go with the flow, to be honest. I'm still a one woman show over here. I haven't hired anyone to help me as of yet. That day will come.

But right now, I am in that season where I have to really differentiate, like, what is the most important thing that I have to get done right now in order to move the needle in my business. Um, and I'm sure a lot of you can relate to that. And sometimes, sadly, that means the podcast takes a back burner, but that doesn't mean it's not important to me.

It is very important to me and I will continue to show up and have guests and do solo episodes as much as I can. So thank you again for being faithful listeners. I absolutely love you guys. You are amazing. So speaking of... doing things that are important and figuring out what those are. Today I [00:02:00] wanted to talk about something that keeps coming up with different clients of mine.

It seems to be a recurring theme and therefore I think it's probably something that a lot of you are likely struggling with. So let's talk today about making decisions and trusting yourself, or rather If it's difficult for you to make decisions, and if you struggle with trusting yourself, do you fall into that boat?

I know that I have fallen into that boat many a time, and it's something I've really had to work on and work through. And as I, again, as I said, as I've been meeting with clients, I realize that this is something that a lot of people are dealing with. So let's talk about this. Let's talk about... The struggle to make decisions.

Why do we struggle to make decisions? Well, what I keep seeing over and over [00:03:00] again is that those of us who grow into adulthood and have a hard time deciding right or wrong or what to do, what not to do, how to move forward, how not to move forward, or are torn between multiple decisions. Most of us came from a situation as children and young adults where we didn't have a voice, where we were not allowed to speak our minds.

We were not allowed to have opinions about things. Maybe we were shut down by a very strong, uh, leader or adult in our lives who made us feel like we were stupid for whatever reason. The stories vary. They're very varied, but the result is the same. You stop trusting your voice and start believing that most people have a better idea [00:04:00] about what to do and what decisions to make than you do.

Can you relate to that? Um, I know I was asking one client, like, if your husband put blue glasses on the counter and asked you what color they were, and you said blue, and he said, no, they're black. And you were like, I'm pretty sure they're blue. He's like, no, they're black. Would you then convince yourself that they were black?

And she said, yes, why? Because she's been trained at a subconscious level to believe that she's. dumb, that she doesn't make good decisions, that other people know better than her, and that she's just wrong about what she thinks. And this is where we fall into this trap of not being able to make decisions because we don't trust ourselves.

So that is where [00:05:00] this ties in, um, these two themes of making decisions and trusting yourself. So along with this This incredible difficulty of making decisions when you've grown up in a place that has silenced your voice, you also begin to just not trust your gut. Because you've been told so many times your gut is wrong, you're off, or you've had to gaslight yourself, or push away your own feelings about certain things in order to get better.

Bye. In order to receive approval, belonging, connection, listen, we all do it. Every single one of us is hardwired for connection. Without connection, guys? We would die. Like, it's literally one of our most basic needs is to connect, so that's why many of us learn these mechanisms that end up hurting us later in life, but they've helped us survive up until this point.

Mechanisms like, okay, I'm not going to trust my feelings [00:06:00] because when I do and I act upon them or I voice them, then... I get disconnected from the people that are caring for me, or the people that matter most to me, or the people that are supposed to keep me safe. And like I've said over and over again on this show, safety is like the very first thing your body is always looking for.

Am I safe? So if this messes with your safety to speak up, to speak your mind, to make your own choices, to trust your gut, to believe that your intuition is telling you the right thing, then you're going to shut that down. You're going to get really good at being like, um, I feel this way, but that's wrong.

So I'm going to walk the other way. Some of you even I know this happened to me. Some of you may be even to the point where, um, anything that you feel is right in your gut, you'll automatically assume is wrong. You've been [00:07:00] that beaten down and that, like, dislodged from your own humanity, like, your own, um, autonomy, that you literally can't go after anything that Seems good to you.

It almost makes you feel guilty. I would love to hear if you relate to that. Cause that's, I mean, it's extreme, right? But so many of us experience this where we're like, oh shoot, well I really feel like I want to do this, but desire almost becomes guilt. Ooh, that hit me hard. That hit me hard just saying that out loud.

Like, oh man. I can't tell you how many times I have, I have felt that way, especially in years past before I really embarked on this healing journey that I have been [00:08:00] on. I did not know that I was even allowed to voice my true desires, to voice my true opinions about things, to speak my mind. And this came up again recently when I was talking about something that, you know, is pretty complex, it has a lot of twists and turns, and that a lot of really, really smart people are talking about.

And the fact is, I have done a ton of research on this thing, and I decided to voice my opinion about it. I decided to write about it in detail and put it out publicly. As soon as I did, I had that little feeling of, Mmm, maybe you're actually not so smart. Maybe you actually shouldn't be saying anything.

Maybe you don't know what you're talking about. La la la, like, making myself feel badly for the well researched [00:09:00] thoughts that I had written out in black and white. And I was able to tell myself in that moment, like, Actually, you know what? You do have something to say. You are smart. You do know how to do research, and that was, that was cool for me, to be able to recognize the feeling and, and say the opposite to it, like, no, actually, you know what you're doing, and you have something to say, and it's important for you to say it.

I want to say the same to you. Like, you have something to say and it's important that you say it. So how do we regain our voice? That's a, that's a loaded question. There's a lot invested in that question. I think first, you just need to start trusting yourself in the small things. Start by saying to yourself, What I feel is real and what I have to say matters.

What I feel is real [00:10:00] and what I have to say matters, okay? I apologize for the little clicking noise in the background. That is my washing machine. Uh, real work from home life over here. So, as you say that what you feel is real and what you have to say matters, utilize that mantra to make small decisions.

Like, what are you having for breakfast? Make a decision and stick with it. Don't weigh the pros and cons. Don't think, well, I'm bad if I eat this or I'm bad if I don't eat that. I know I have been there. Whatever the small decision is that you can make for yourself today, start there and start by saying like, I'm going to do this and that is good.

I'm going to do this and that is good. One small decision as at a time. Again, I [00:11:00] so believe in therapeutic work, which this is part of what I do with my clients, is we go through their story. We go through their story and we see where these things have come from. We make sense of these struggles. Of like, I don't know why it's so hard for me to make a decision.

Well, let's look at your story and see where this sticky thing comes up. And it's incredible to see the light go on. and be like, oh, that's why I am the way that I am. You can show yourself so much compassion in those moments, so therapeutic work I highly recommend. As you are learning to make small decisions for yourself, also reflect on your story.

Think about the truth of what you've experienced and where perhaps this initial distrust of yourself came from and whether it's valid. Or invalid. Like, you have to actually discern that for yourself. Is it valid [00:12:00] for me to not trust myself? And if it's not, why not? Why is that invalid? How can I invalidate that by telling my story or writing it down in a journal, et cetera, et cetera.

So make those small choices for yourself. Maybe make a big choice. Make one big choice and see if you die. Because almost certainly... You won't. And that will be what's called a disconfirming experience for you. A disconfirming experience is when you do something that has always registered to your nervous system as a threat.

But you do it anyway, and you realize that you get through it, and everything's fine. Or maybe even more than fine. And the more regularly you give yourself disconfirming experiences, [00:13:00] the easier it will be to do that thing that has always felt like a threat. To the point where, hopefully, all of us get where we really start to trust our intuition.

We can make decisions. Quickly and easily without second guessing ourselves or without thinking that we're bad for making the decisions that we're making. Doesn't that sound liberating? Seriously, we take ourselves and life like so, so seriously sometimes. In the sense that we think that every decision is going to make or break us.

It's not. Even the biggest decisions we make likely aren't going to make or break us. So have a little faith. Have a little faith in your higher power in God. That's where I put my faith, man. It's like, I can mess up all day long, but Jesus, he's got my back. Put your faith in yourself. Like, you know what you're doing.

And just, [00:14:00] Trust the process. I know people say that all the time, but it's true and we need to think of it in these situations where we're wanting to trust ourselves and make decisions more regularly is we got to trust the process and the first step of the process is saying given choices A and B, I choose A.

Move forward with it. And don't backtrack. This is where a lot of y'all get stuck. You backtrack on it. If a couple days go by and that decision seems like, oh, it's harder than I thought, or I'm not getting the results that I wanted, Instead of thinking about the results, think about how you are, you're, you're showing up for you.

Like, keep going with that decision. Keep going. Don't give up if it's hard. Because you might just be missing out on the process that's leading you directly to a breakthrough of some kind. [00:15:00] Okay? Show up for yourself. Make those decisions. Follow through. Show yourself that you're trustworthy. Show yourself that you're trustworthy by following through on the decisions you make.

And over time, I, I've seen it in my own life, guys. For real, for real, you're going to be trusting yourself more. Which also means you'll be better at setting boundaries. You'll be better at saying no to things that you should be saying no to. You'll be better at taking care of yourself. All of those things are connected with trusting yourself.

Okay? If this was helpful for you, Would you please rate and review the podcast? That would mean so much to me. Um, it really helps a lot to keep the word out there about the show and to get these kinds of nuggets out to as many people as possible. Um, thank you so much for taking the time to rate and review.

I really [00:16:00] genuinely appreciate it. I'd also love to hear from you. So send me a DM on Instagram or send me an email through my website and let me know. If this impacted you, what did you think of it? Do you struggle with making decisions? What areas are you struggling to make choices in? We'll have a conversation, I would love that.

Again, thank you so much for being here. I hope that you have all embarked on a holiday season with joy. Um, I know the holidays bring a lot of different emotions, so please take care of yourselves, and I will talk to you so soon. Love you guys. Bye bye.