Trusting Yourself
So I listened to @shawnamawna's latest Hiding Verses podcast (which you all should be listening to). and at the end, she asked how does trusting ourselves look like to the listeners.
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The thing I trust about myself most easily is my intellect. I've gotten "you are smart" type feedback from the world my entire life. This is also a trust that hurts a lot when fractured. When I do something stupid, I feel deep shame and an unmooring. Because when everything else at school was shit when I was young, I knew I was smart. So losing that is a powerful hurt.
Having impostor syndrome, it's hard to trust most other things about myself. Am I kind, or just a people pleaser? Am I a good translator, or have I just fooled people?
In the podcast, Shawna talks about learning to read people's body language and learning to trust that. I don't. I mean, if someone is clearly happy or unhappy to see me, I trust that. But if things are vague? I don't know if my judgement is right. And that's when anxiety hits. This is a great advantage of having an SO like mine, who will always tell it like it is. She simply cannot do things any other way.
The thing I trust least about myself is my physicality. For years, I thought I had a fear of heights, until certain circumstances (leaving intentionally vague, because that story is definitely a future post) taught me that I don't really. What I have is a complete lack of trust in myself not to fall.
So, yeah, trust is a difficult and fraught issue, but one I'm definitely working on.
The fact that you have a partner who meets your need for transparency is proof of wonderful self-care. It is so hard to trust another person enough we can share our hearts with them. I very much resonate with what you are saying about impostor syndrome. Even when the facts line up, I still experience the intense doubt that I am real or worth it when it comes to certain skills. I have been told my whole life I'm a great writer, but I've never believed I'm great (especially when it comes to poetry--I feel like such a hack). It's strange because feedback says otherwise, but that doesn't make us accept these beautiful truths about ourselves. Love to you.
Well, the feedback you've been given is correct. You're a terrific writer. Love right back.