Last night, I realized I didn’t trust my friend, B. He told me he would do something, and I questioned him. Then I apologized for being suspicious, but realized it goes deeper than that. I just don’t believe him.

When I started to think about this, I realized that it isn’t just him that I don’t believe, it is everybody. I don’t trust anybody. This becomes readily apparent when I receive compliments or positive feedback. B told me many things last night: He loves being with me, and is so happy he knows me. In the moment of hearing these things, I felt warm and fuzzy, but the insidious voices in my head were already creeping back in to tell me that this is all false. So really, it’s not that I don’t trust him, but rather, I don’t even trust myself. I don’t trust that my being can be good enough, loveable enough, or wanted enough for these messages to be true. I should add here that I do also have a deep (as in buried really, really far down) knowing within myself that I am good enough, loveable enough and wanted enough, and this part is at my core, but very easily covered over by the dark fog of memories and hurts that are easily triggered during my life.

From Project SelfLove365

Several days ago, B suggested to me that I smudge my mental body. Doing this visualization was wonderful – I was able to really see my mental space, and all its dark and dirty corners. As I cleared it out, I felt lighter and the space became cleaner and brighter. Eventually my mental body became a bright open room, with sun streaming in the windows, and a beautiful crystal hanging from the ceiling, reflecting rainbows on all the walls. Immediately after clearing the space, those insidious voices I spoke of tried to creep back in (they became dustballs with eyes) to dirty my mental space again. I quickly realized how much work it takes to keep this space clean.

I recently separated from my husband, so I decided I would also smudge my house (I am speaking of my actual physical house now, not some imaginary thing). This felt cleansing, especially after opening all the windows to air it out afterwards. It seemed to me that by smudging my mental body and my house, I am treating these spaces as sacred. I have the intention to keep these spaces clean, knowing full well that I may let things slide once in awhile and will then need to do some more heavy work.

From Project SelfLove365

Thinking about sacred space made me realize that I have not been treating my body as sacred space. Some of my decisions in the past few days have pushed my body to follow its desires rather than its needs. When there is something I want to do, I have a tendency to ignore my body, and to not check in to see what it needs first (especially sleep). By not listening to my body’s physical sensations, I am not allowing any sort of positive feedback loop to occur (only the unwanted one in which I keep ignoring my body and then I get sick). By not allowing this to happen, I am also not giving myself the chance to trust myself. How can I really be a “HELL YES” to something if my body is saying no? If I am not really a “HELL YES”, then how can anyone trust my answer, especially me, if I can’t even trust it? If I can’t trust myself how can I trust anybody?

This is worth repeating.
If I can’t trust myself, how can I trust anybody?

So, how can I trust myself? I am beginning to ask my body the question and listen for the response. It will come. Right now, my body wants to dance.