How to Build Self Trust (Even If You’ve Spent Years Second-Guessing Yourself)
- Jennifer Bonilla
- Sep 21
- 4 min read
Updated: Oct 5
You’ve asked your mom, your best friend, your partner, maybe even Google (or ChatGPT)… and you still don’t know what to do!
You reread the text five times before sending.
You ask your friends before deciding between chicken or steak.
....It’s exhausting.
That’s what a lack of self-trust looks like in everyday life: the inability to feel safe making a choice without outside validation.
When I talk to clients about self-trust, I describe it like this:
Self trust is the ability to make a choice and believe you can manage whatever follows. It doesn’t mean you never ask for help. It means you know your choice aligns with your values, that you have skills, supports, and resources to lean on, and that even if you feel sadness, frustration, or disappointment afterward, you’ll be okay.
My Story: When Self Trust Felt Impossible
I’ve been there too! Years ago, I left a job after my mental health completely deteriorated.
Insomnia
No appetite
Crying at random moments
Apathy
Dread
My loved ones were concerned. My body and mind were screaming that I needed to stop.
And yet, it felt wrong....
I thought: What if I’m just weak? What if I’m being dramatic, just another millennial who can’t handle pressure? My parents pushed through harder things; why can’t I?
Walking away from that job didn’t feel like “strength” at the time. It felt like failure. However, the truth was that trusting myself meant listening to what my body was telling me. I wasn’t weak. I was a human, and I was drowning. Leaving wasn’t giving up; it was choosing to care for myself.
That decision became a turning point. I realized self-trust isn’t about being perfect or invincible. It’s about believing your inner signals matter. Sometimes the bravest thing you can do is say, “I can’t keep going like this, I need to choose differently.”
Why Trusting Yourself Feels So Hard
Family and Cultural Expectations
Depending on your family, you may have been discouraged from paying attention to what you wanted, or told that individual needs don’t matter compared to the group.
In immigrant households, choices are often shaped by the need for survival, and parents make decisions about everything from meals to school activities. If you rarely got to practice choosing, no wonder it feels overwhelming now.
And if you grew up in a chaotic or self-centred household, maybe the safest route was to “go with the flow” to avoid conflict. That survival skill made sense back then. But as an adult, it leaves you with little practice in trusting yourself.
Perfectionism and the Myth of the “Right” Choice
Perfectionism whispers: there’s a perfect choice, and anything less means failure. The problem? Life is messy. Even when there’s a “best” option, there are still factors you can’t control.
Perfectionism tries to protect you from discomfort, but it ends up freezing you in fear, away from your values, away from living.
Inconsistent Support in Childhood
If you never knew when your parent would show up, understand, or support you, it makes sense you’d doubt yourself now. Conditional support, love only when you succeed, criticism when you fail, teaches kids: I can’t trust my feelings, because they might bring punishment or rejection. Those early lessons stick.
The Cost of Second-Guessing Yourself
Living without self-trust is draining. Clients describe it as living entirely in their head, worrying, analyzing, replaying, instead of actually living.
In relationships, it looks like leaning on your partner for every decision, needing constant reassurance at work, or family members sighing because “you can never decide.”
And it connects directly with overthinking and guilt. If you don’t trust yourself, you overanalyze every option, second-guess every step, and carry guilt for even wanting something different.
What Inner Confidence Really Looks Like
Self-trust isn’t about always being right. It’s about knowing yourself, your values, your strengths, your limits, and being willing to make a choice even when there’s uncertainty. It’s being okay with outcomes, good or bad, because you trust you can handle them.
Think of it like building a muscle. You don’t walk into the gym and pick up a 50-pound weight. You start small, choosing your own nail colour, sending an email without rereading it ten times, deciding what’s for dinner. Each rep strengthens your confidence. Over time, the weight gets lighter.
Progress looks like those moments where you acted without overthinking, felt the discomfort, and still followed through. That’s the muscle growing.
How to Build Self-Trust: Practical Steps to Strengthen Confidence
Start small. Choose what you’ll eat, what you’ll wear, or what show to watch. Keep it low stakes.
Reframe mistakes. Mistakes aren’t proof you’re broken. They’re practicing. Every decision teaches you something for the next one.
Notice whose voice you hear. Is it your parents’ criticism? A teacher’s doubt? Your own fear of being selfish? Name it, and remember, it’s not the whole truth.
Use therapy as a training ground. In therapy, we can challenge perfectionism, explore family patterns, and practice noticing and naming the parts of you that push doubt. Approaches like ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy) help anchor choices in your values, not in fear.
A Gentle Reminder
Everyone struggles with self-trust sometimes. High-stakes choices can be costly, and doubt is normal. But building self-trust is like learning a new language or training for a marathon; you don’t go from zero to fluent overnight.
You start with small steps, practice through mistakes, and strengthen your capacity over time.
You’re not broken. You’re learning. And you’re allowed to be patient with yourself along the way.
If you’re ready to work on trusting yourself, not just your choices, but your capacity to handle life’s ups and downs, therapy can help.
Together, we’ll build the muscle of self-trust, at your pace, in this season.
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