Why Self-Trust Is More Important Than Self-Love
Advice on how to love yourself often includes steps like taking care of yourself, forgiving mistakes, and silencing your inner critic. Some suggest looking in the mirror and saying, “I love you.” However, neither positive words nor activities to boost mood will make us love ourselves unless we truly trust ourselves.
Without strong self-confidence, trusting your own words is hard. Doubts often take over. Society gives us mixed messages: first, it imposes ideas that can make us feel insecure, and then it tells us to love ourselves.
We hear that we should be thin, attractive, always smile, never get angry, and buy things to "improve" ourselves. At the same time, we are told we should love ourselves completely.
These conflicting ideas are confusing and never stop. We get more negative messages from outside and inside than positive ones. So, positive affirmations and quotes don’t help much. Our brains get used to negative thinking. They start blaming us more and see self-love as something doubtful.
Before loving ourselves, we need to learn to trust ourselves. Love is seen as something mysterious: “You only know it when you feel it!” But trust is something real. We can take simple steps to learn trust, just like we learn to trust others.
Trust means feeling sure about your choices, even if they hurt someone or cause trouble. It also means accepting your mistakes and being responsible for what you say and do. This does not give us permission to be mean or selfish. Self-trust is about not doubting ourselves, even when others pressure us or disappoint us.
When we trust ourselves, we know we can handle tough times. Even if we make mistakes or don’t see results, we will be okay. We will still accept ourselves if our boss is upset, our partner is angry, or someone accuses us of being rude.
Gaining this kind of trust does not happen overnight. Still, it is easier to build than to love your reflection in the mirror.
Problems with self-trust in adults often start in childhood. If our parents often tested whether we could trust what we saw, felt, or knew, it can cause issues later. For example, if they denied our feelings—saying, “You’re not sad,” or “It doesn’t hurt, don’t make it up”—we might stop trusting our own emotions.
Sometimes parents hide problems or illnesses, trying to protect us. But doing this can make us doubt whether we see the truth clearly. They think they protect us, but they actually take away our connection to what we understand about the world.
Over time, this can lead us to seek approval from others to ease our inner doubts. That just reinforces the idea that we cannot trust ourselves.
The more we look for approval, the more we confuse caring for others with caring for ourselves. We end up trying to please everyone instead of really working on ourselves.