How do we learn to trust ourselves?

A few thoughts from a panel hosted by Lake Drive Books

Earlier this week, I got to be part of a very cool panel discussion with some very cool people:

Lauren Cibene

, whose memoir Tiger in a Lifeboat just came out last week,

Liz Charlotte Grant

,

Bethaney Wilkinson

, and

Raj Lulla

, facilitated by

David Morris

from

LakeDriveBooks

. The panel topic was “Becoming Brave: The Art of Trusting Yourself Again.”

Whew. No small, easy topic.

Since writing helps me think, I took some time before the discussion to write down a few thoughts about the questions David came up with. They’re such good questions. And I want to share some of what I wrote with you all.

I wonder how you’d answer any or all of these questions, too—because I have no doubt it’s not just us five panelists who wrestle with these things and have so many thoughts. Fortunately, there’s plenty of room in the comments. Please feel very free to jump in.

So, here are some of the questions David offered, and a few thoughts:

1) For your life today, what is an example of you learning to trust yourself?

I’ve been reflecting on how learning to trust myself is connected to learning to trust friendships and community.

Not my actual friends, but they seem fun / Photo by Noorulabdeen Ahmad on Unsplash

I don’t say this lightly.

There was a time in my younger, more evangelical days when I trusted institutions, like the church I was a part of, and the campus fellowship group too. And I trusted people just because they were a part of a faith community I felt happy and at home in.

This automatic, default, unthinking trust is no longer there. For some really good reasons. (Maybe you have your own, too.)

But what’s replacing it, I think, is something much better. It’s an active, ongoing process of discerning who to trust. Really, trusting myself to figure out which friendships can hold the more difficult, more vulnerable realities of my life.

Who do I turn to when things are hard? Who is able to be present, listening and empathizing without trying to fix? Who can hear me out without blaming, shaming, or offering unhelpful religious platitudes? Who will hold the tender stories close to their hearts, not turning around and gossiping, sharing things I wouldn’t want shared with the world?

I think I’m learning to trust myself to find and build stronger relationships with these kinds of friends—and to trust that when I make mistakes in the process, that’s okay too. I can course correct, and I will be okay.

​2. How do you keep moving forward when you’re still afraid?

I think my main answer to this is “baby steps.” When we’re afraid, we can ask ourselves: What are my hopes or goals, and what’s one tiny thing I can do today or this week to move toward these goals?

If the somewhat-daunting goal is to build stronger in-person community, for example, maybe I just text one person I want to get to know better and ask them to get coffee or go for a walk. Maybe my spouse and I invite one other couple over for a meal.

Anything that feels tangible and doable and not overwhelming—something we can actually move forward with, rather than getting stuck in our fears, whether it’s a fear of rejection, or inadequacy, or whatever it might be.

Not really into the “faith over fear” thing, but I like the “more love”… / Photo by Bram. on Unsplash

I think it’s also worth examining our fears and asking some questions about what’s behind them. What exactly do we fear? Is there something or someone that has power over us, and did they earn this power? Do they deserve it?

A few years back, I went through a time of realizing that the self-appointed gatekeepers of evangelicalism—who often present themselves as gatekeepers of Christianity as a whole, even though the Christian tradition has always included a mind-bogglingly wide variety of paths—don’t have power over me anymore.

Their opinions have nothing at all to do with whether I’m accepted and welcomed by God, and by the people who genuinely care about me.

I’m no longer invested, as I once was, in trying to be palatable to religious gatekeepers. This is SO FREEING. As I write and say what’s in my little heart, I don’t need to fear what religious authority figures might think or how they might respond. I don’t have to feel confined or constricted in what I can say, in order to try to remain acceptable to them. They have zero power.

Fear is not necessarily bad. But we can examine our fears. We can see what they might be telling us. And we can decide which might lend themselves toward helpful, guiding concerns vs unhealthy self-contortion into someone else’s pre-concocted image of who we should be.

3) Can you have faith in yourself and broken institutions at the same time?

This is such a good question, and it raises more questions for me. What does it mean to have faith in an institution? Are we meant to?

Faith feels like a strong word to me, and I’m not sure most of our institutions are worthy of it. But I do think we can engage with or be part of broken institutions while also having faith in ourselves. And maybe we have to have faith in ourselves in order to engage with these institutions well.

It might mean existing closer to the margins than the center of these institutions. There might be some grief in this, especially for those who have been closer to the center in the past, or wanted to be.

I think when we’re a part of flawed institutions, we exercise faith in ourselves by choosing how we want to engage, and not letting anyone pressure us in engaging in ways we don’t want to or ways that are not good for us.

It might look like saying “no thank you” to a leadership role. It might look like building community in ways that fly under the radar and aren’t seen and celebrated in a public way, but are no less important for it.

Hopefully, it looks like paying attention to what gives us life and what depletes our energy, seeking out the former and avoiding the latter. And trusting that as we all look for what’s genuinely life-giving, the whole community grows stronger and more authentic and more joyful as a result.

4) How do you navigate when your old spiritual systems stop working?

I wrestled with this when I was in seminary, hard. When I first started out at the moderate evangelical seminary I attended, everything I was learning and thinking about and reading and hearing felt so liberating, so amazing, so freeing. I loved it.

And by the time I graduated, three years later, I felt so much tension with so many things I was being taught. What is this constrictingly conservative place? Why are we still reading the Bible in ways that cause harm? How can we think about some things so progressively and others so regressively?

The school didn’t really change. But I did. The old spiritual systems I had bought into were no longer working for me. It was a rough time. But at some point, I was struck with the thought: This journey is hard, but it doesn’t have to be lonely.

And I think that’s how we navigate deconstruction. Not by finding the One Right Path of Deconstruction—there is none—but by finding people to share the journey with.

Maybe there’s no One Right Path, but there are friends for the journey / Photo by Lili Popper on Unsplash

We keep searching until we find a community—or at least a small set of friendships—that resonates. Not necessarily where everyone agrees about everything, but where questions and different opinions are welcome, not shamed. Where we can be fully ourselves, and others feel free to be fully themselves. Where all kinds of people are actually welcomed fully.

There are communities like this—even if we have to look hard (including looking online) to find them. Don’t give up. Trust yourself. And keep talking with people you can trust.

5) What narratives do you have to shed to become who you are?

This question is also so good. I think that for women, we’ve often internalized a lot of harmful, limiting narratives about how a woman should be, what qualities are or aren’t feminine enough. (So much more on all this in Nice Churchy Patriarchy.)

She’d look good with your cup of coffee or tea. Just saying.

We have to shed narratives about how we must make others comfortable, not rock the boat, not be too different or assertive or unusual or opinionated, etc. At some point we have to realize that others can deal with any discomfort the trueness and fullness of who we are might cause them. That’s theirs to work through, not ours.

We learn that we can be kind and considerate and compassionate—and also free and authentic and bold. These things don’t have to be at odds. But for women especially they can often take some work to reconcile because of how we’re socialized.

6) How do you become brave when you don’t toe the party line, whatever status quo you might be in but don’t feel you’re completely in?

Well, not exactly toeing the party line describes a lot of my twenties. Maybe it’s helpful to realize, here, that bravery can look really different for different people in different situations. There isn’t One Right Way to be brave.

Sometimes the brave thing to do is to stay and make change; sometimes the brave thing to do is speak up even though it won’t change anything; sometimes the brave thing to do is leave. (As Taylor Swift might say, sometimes it’s time to go.)

Trusting ourselves means we get to choose the best path we can choose, among these options or others. We listen to the Divine Spirit within us and to our best selves. We discern whether it’s worth it to stay.

We refuse to be shamed into staying in systems that aren’t good for us or for people we care about. We also refuse to be pushed into leaving before we’re ready. We trust ourselves and God’s Spirit who lives in us for the right course and the right timing.

All that—and, at the same time, my bias is this: If you can, say something. Do something. Try. Because I think we’re often aware of the cost of speaking, but maybe sometimes we don’t necessarily fully consider the cost of staying silent.

Our silence might cost us in terms of our own regret. It also tacitly supports the status quo, which is often dangerous and violent and harmful.

We can ask ourselves: Who is vulnerable if no one speaks? Who is harmed as things remain the way they are, undisrupted?

We can think of these people and aim to speak for and with and alongside them. We can refuse to let anyone tell us we’re being divisive by simply pointing out the pain and problems and suffering caused by the current party line. (Again, much more in Nice Churchy Patriarchy!)

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Thanks again to facilitator, publisher, agent, and author extraordinaire

David Morris

for organizing this panel and coming up with these thought-provoking questions.

I’d love to hear what any of this brings up for you—I know there’s a lot going on here!

In this with you.