how to trust yourself when you have been taught not to
the long undoing of self doubt and the science and psychology of self trust
i spent most of my life living in doubt. not of others, but of myself. watching almost helplessly, as i intricately measured up my impulses against the scale of valid or invalid. it became my default. my ugly comfort. to observe, question, hesitate, and repeat. i believed that if i interrogated everything about myself, i could somehow avoid mistakes. only to realise, over and over, that mistakes are unavoidable, and frustratingly necessary.
growing up, every small slip was met with disproportionate punishment. the fear that followed my mistakes then became a constant companion. one my brain, stubbornly, and also quite impressively, has carried well into adulthood.
self-trust begins earlier than we realise. it grows from how people around us respond when we are scared, upset, or unsure. were we comforted when we cried? were we believed when we said we were afraid? or did we learn that every mistake was a reflection of our worth?
if the world has told you your feelings were mistakes, learning to trust them later is a painstaking repair. early responses such as these teach us whether our inner cues can be trusted, or whether we must constantly override them.
and yet even in environments that discouraged trust. the very act of you choosing to even question your self-trust is evidence of a baseline. you are here, your brain has carried you from your first step to today. cultivating self-trust is not about inventing it from nothing, it is not suddenly knowing all the answers or in never doubting yourself. it is simply making conscious what has always been there beneath the rubble of doubt.
instead of framing this as a ladder towards the top, or a race from start to finish, i would say a better way is to see it is as a building. whatever building you choose. it helps in seeing the layers underneath self-trust as the fundamentals that connect with one another to build support from one to the next.
i’ve chosen to use this building metaphor through mapping it onto the foundation, the pillars and the roof. all working together in creating that structure holds up your self-trust to a vantage point, one where you will be able to see and acknowledge it clearly.
and to begin to find and acknowledge your ability to self-trust, it is helpful to know why exactly it seems to have slipped through your fingers in the first place.
the foundation
self-trust hides because the brain has been wired to prioritise safety over certainty. in neuroscience this is described as hyperactive threat conditioning. when a child acts on instinct and is met with punishment, shaming, or unpredictability, the brain gradually learns to treat self-directed impulses as risky.
over time, repeated experiences of threat train the amygdala, the brain’s fear centre, to flag choices and impulses as dangerous. the prefrontal cortex, which normally helps evaluate options and regulate impulses, can function less effectively under chronic stress. the hippocampus, which contextualises memory and helps distinguish safe from unsafe experiences, can also underperform.
prolonged stress in this manner, subtly reshapes neural patterns. creating a system that overestimates danger and underestimates safety.
for those with adhd, irregular dopamine signalling layers on extra complexity. hesitation, overthinking, and impulsivity can feel neurologically reinforced, even more out of your control. the result is a brain highly sensitive to potential error, yet less able to internalise experiences that might teach self-trust is safe and reliable.
in short, self-trust doesn’t disappear. it retreats into neural blind spots. hidden beneath layers of learned caution and hyper-vigilance. your hidden self-trust is still there, it’s structure exists even if obscured.
and from here, let’s start talking about the pillars.
the pillar of subconscious language
one of the first pillars of self-trust is noticing the language your mind uses about you. that feral subconscious voice in the back of your skull. the one that will whisper to a volume that is both nearly mute, and somehow deafeningly loud. it tells you that you are too much, too little, too sensitive, too dramatic. it calls you cruel names and catalogues your every thought, your every hesitation, as if each were evidence against you.
it’s exhausting. you want your thoughts to work for you, to reflect you, not replay a playlist of every time you were shamed, ignored, or doubted. and left unchecked, this kind of language rewires how you see yourself. every repetition lays down grooves in the brain. over time, it becomes less like a passing thought and more like an internal law. and once confidence is eroded at the level of language, it doesn’t matter what skills or achievements you’ve built, the foundation still feels unstable.
our brains are constantly generating thoughts, often in the hundreds or thousands per day, most of them outside conscious awareness. for many of us, it would be convenient if thoughts arrived bit by bit, in manageable pieces. but whether you see it as unfortunate or not, evolution prioritised speed and survival over deliberation.
for people with adhd, this constant mental flow can feel like it’s on overdrive. irregular dopamine signalling in the prefrontal cortex and striatum, the circuits that manage attention, working memory, and impulse control, can make thoughts accelerate, jump tracks, or loop unpredictably. decisions feel precarious because the brain’s “braking system” is uneven. and so what would be a minor hesitation for someone else can feel like a mental cliff. impulsivity arises not from carelessness, but from a nervous system that struggles to regulate itself in real time.
for years i thought the only option was to accept it, because it sounded like me. the voice in my head, the one that criticised, doubted, and second-guessed. felt inseparable from my own identity. it felt both inevitable and unavoidable, like it had been there since the beginning. but the more i practised paying attention, the more i realised there were ways to interrupt it.
sometimes i would picture someone i really disliked, a public figure i couldn’t stand (i’m sure we can think of a few that fit here) or a person in my life who had thrived on making me feel small and less than. if i imagined their face behind the words, it became almost laughable. who are you to talk to me like that? the sentence lost its edge, it’s umph. it was no longer some know-it-all preacher of the truth. it was just some weirdo i didn’t owe my energy to.