trusting – The Healing Modalities

With honey butter.

I used to convince myself that I was happy in relationships where I really wasn’t. I told myself that wanting more was asking too much. That the scraps I was given were enough—if I just tried harder, stayed complaisant, didn’t demand things.

I remember being with someone who didn’t want the same things I wanted, and instead of honoring my own truth, I contorted myself into someone I thought he would want. I told myself I was fine. That this was love.

But it wasn’t. It was me abandoning myself for the sake of keeping the relationship.

We do this in all kinds of ways—not just in romantic relationships.
We mistrust ourselves.
We minimize our needs.
We shrink our voices.
We edit our desires to stay connected, to stay approved of, to stay “safe.”

The thing is, the relationship that suffers most when we do this is the one we have with ourselves.

We stop listening to our gut.
We override our knowing.
We become strangers to our own needs and wholeness, chasing crumbs of validation while starving for the fullness of self-trust.

And over time, that internal erosion leaves us disconnected—not just from others, but from our true and full selves.

The turning point, for me, was realizing:
I don’t want crumbs.
I want the whole loaf.
And more than that—I deserve it.

Not because I proved myself worthy.
Not because someone else finally said I was.
But because I decided to stop abandoning myself and start trusting what I want, what I feel, and what is true for me.

Because staying in a relationship—whether romantic, professional, or even familial—shouldn’t come at the cost of losing you.

Your Turn:

Is there a place in your life where you’re settling for crumbs?
What might change if you trusted your desires instead of downplaying them?
What would self-loyalty look like in that area of your life?
See the poem I wrote here about deserving the whole loaf.

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You deserve better.

Last week I shared about the second pillar of the 3 pillars of transformative self-care – how we speak about and to ourselves. Let’s talk about the third pillar today: how we treat ourselves.

We might think we treat ourselves pretty well. We practice good dental hygiene, we get a massage every once in a while, we take vitamins, we sleep for several hours most nights, we put food into our bodies regularly, we use the stairs sometimes or park farther away from our destination to get in some extra steps.

These are all beneficial things to do for ourselves. And what else can we do for ourselves to show that we care?

One of the strongest ways we can show ourselves that we care is by doing what we say we’ll do – when it comes to ourselves.

How would we feel about a friend or someone close to us who tells us they’re going to do this or that with us or for us, and then when the day comes to do it, they either call/text to say they can’t make it, or they don’t show up at all?

– After the first time, we’ll likely give them some grace but feel disappointed by the outcome.
– The second time they do it, we might start to question the validity of their words.
– If they do it a third time, we’ll see a definite pattern here and probably feel frustrated and give up on believing them. We might even start to think that they don’t really care about or respect us.

This would be a normal reaction to someone who seems to be unable to follow through on what they say to us – someone who flakes on us.

And yet, how often have we flaked on ourselves? Flaking on ourselves means saying we’ll do something for ourselves, but at the last minute, we change our mind and don’t show up for what we said we’d do.

When we do this, we show ourselves that we don’t take our goals and desires seriously. We’re not caring for ourselves, and sometimes, we’re not respecting ourselves. Is that how we want to treat ourselves?

If we want to start treating ourselves better by keeping our promises and commitments to ourselves, we can start to build trust with ourselves by taking small actions. “Today I’m going to walk around the block at 3pm.”

And then at 3pm, we do what we say. We get up and walk around the block.

When we do this, there’s a sense of empowerment, a feeling of accomplishing something and fulfilling a promise to ourselves – no matter how small. “It feels good to do what I said I would!” Celebrate that and remember the feeling. It will help reinforce following through with future plans.

This is how we start to strengthen the muscle of trusting ourselves more, knowing that we can have our own back. We can continue to make another small commitment to keep each day – it could be the same one! – until it’s just automatic for us to keep our word to ourselves. Until it feels uncomfortable when we don’t keep our word to ourselves.

It might not happen overnight, but it’s worth it to keep practicing. WE are worth it. If we haven’t been in the practice of keeping our commitments to ourselves, it can take time to build that up. Take that time.

When we get even better at keeping commitments to ourselves, we learn to treat ourselves better in multiple aspects of our lives. We start to know what it truly feels like to take care of ourselves and treat ourselves in the way we want and deserve to be treated. We learn how to have our own back, no matter what.

Your turn: In what ways do you want to treat yourself better? What commitments do you want to keep with yourself? What is one small commitment you want to make to yourself today that you’ll do tomorrow? When tomorrow comes, are you willing to build trust with yourself and do the thing?

Dive Deeper: If you still find yourself not doing the thing, are you open to asking yourself if this is something you truly want to do for yourself or is something/someone else telling you “you should” do it?

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Tag: trusting

You deserve the whole loaf

When you flake on yourself