Mental health challenges like anxiety and depression can make it difficult to believe in yourself. You may struggle to experience greater depths of confidence, worthiness, and safety to be who you are. Disorders such as these can mask your ability to trust, be, and express your authentic self with the world.
You are more than your disorder, you are capable of feeling positive emotions, and you are allowed to be yourself. Embodying these experiences takes work, and that starts with believing in yourself.
Giving Yourself Permission
When you become used to experiences of self-doubt, self-loathing, and negative self-esteem, it can feel like you will never be able to experience the opposite. However, if the experience of self-doubt is possible, so is the experience of self-trust.
Giving yourself permission to change, shift, and pivot in your relationship with yourself, others, and your life is one of the first steps to healing. This starts with awareness of the thoughts, emotions, feelings, and patterns that keep you stuck in an unhealthy loop.
Building Your Self-Trust Muscle
Learning to believe in yourself is like building muscle. You have to begin practicing believing in yourself with small things before you begin to truly experience self-trust and greater self-esteem. For example, you may need to start by looking up treatment options for addiction and mental illness. Doing so eases you into and prepares you for the idea that recovery is possible for you too.
Building self-trust could also look like applying for a job that part of you doubts you’ll ever get. You might try letting go of old habits that no longer serve you even if you don’t know how you’ll cope without them. Perhaps you start trying other things that require you to take a leap of faith and trust that whatever happens, you’ll land exactly where you’re supposed to. With the support of a treatment team behind you, you can feel safe to build self-trust a little at a time.
Trusting the Unknown
Much of healing requires you to trust that which you are not able to see yet. In other words, you must trust that, one day, you will feel experience belief in yourself. However, to do so, you must start by expressing yourself and being yourself, even if you can’t yet see where that will lead.
Having faith can be scary, especially when control feels safer. Luckily, faith can help anchor you when fear of the unknown feels overwhelming.
Cultivating self-esteem and self-trust are building blocks of sustainable recovery. They need to be nurtured and strengthened over time; they do not grow overnight. At Avalon Malibu, we recognize how challenging it can be to begin believing in yourself if you have been experiencing addiction and mental illness. Our treatment team is here to support you in beginning to build your muscles of belief in yourself and self-esteem to reach your goals in recovery as well as in life. Call Avalon Malibu today at (844) 857-5992.
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