Rebuilding Self-Trust After Divorce

Divorce can turn even simple choices into second-guessing spirals. If you’ve been asking yourself, “Why can’t I trust my own judgment anymore?”, we’re going straight to the root: self-trust is the foundation for everything you do in your life moving forward after divorce; under every boundary, every parenting decision, every next step. When that foundation feels shaky, everything else feels wobbly too, no matter how good your lawyer is or how many spreadsheets you make.

I dive into the history of where women began learning that we can't trust our own authority. For thousands of years, women have been trained to doubt their instincts and hand over authority to someone else, often a husband or partner. I talk about how that conditioning shows up in real life during divorce, how fear keeps us people pleasing and stuck in survival mode, and why courage isn’t “no fear” but choosing to trust yourself while fear rides in the passenger seat.

Then we get practical with five steps to rebuild self-trust after divorce starting with getting present to reassure your nervous system you're safe and ending with giving yourself permission. 

If you’re ready to rebuild confidence, reconnect with your intuition, and make decisions from clarity instead of panic, press play. Subscribe, share with a friend who needs steadiness, and leave a quick review so more women can find this support.

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Transcript

Welcome And The Real Foundation

Karin Nelson 0:00

Welcome to Becoming You Again, the podcast for divorcing and divorced women who want to rediscover themselves, rebuild their confidence, and create a life that finally feels like their own. I'm your host, Karin Nelson. I'm a divorce coach with a passion for helping women reconnect to their inner knowing so they can come home to who they truly are. In today's episode, I'm talking about why so many women lose trust in themselves during divorce and how thousands of years of being told that women aren't the authority on their own lives has everything to do with it. And I'm also going to help you start rebuilding that self-trust right now with five practical steps that can change the way you make every decision moving forward. Let's dive in. Welcome to Becoming You Again, the podcast where you learn to step into your power as a woman in this world, where you learn to reconnect to your wholeness, your integrity, and bring into alignment your brain, your body, and your intuition after divorce. This is the podcast where you learn to trust yourself again and move forward toward a life that you truly want. You are listening to Becoming You Again, and I am your host, Karin Nelson. Welcome back to the podcast, my lovely ladies. I am, as always, so happy that you're here. So, as you just heard, I'm going to be talking about what I believe is the single most important thing that you can do for yourself as you go through a divorce or after your divorce. And it has nothing to do with the legal stuff. It has nothing to do with financial things. It's not figuring out the parenting plan. It's not figuring out how to co-parent best. Not to say that any of that matters. All of that matters. All of that is great and important. But underneath all of that, holding it all up is the foundational one thing that I think is the most important. And that is learning

Why Self-Trust Holds Everything Up

Karin Nelson 2:05

to trust yourself again. I know that might sound simple, right? It might sound like too basic to even pay attention to, but I think that's why we need to pay attention to it because it is the most basic, most fundamental thing that we can do for ourselves that will give us the most support in every area of our life moving forward. So if it sounds underwhelming, I apologize. But again, I get it. When you're in the middle of a divorce, we want practical answers. We want, like, tell me what to do, which lawyer should I hire? What should I put in my divorce decree? What do I need to ask for in terms of the mediation? And those types of things. So I totally get it. But here's what I know after going through my own divorce, and what I have seen after coaching many women through their divorces. Every decision that you make, every boundary that you put out there, every step that you take toward the life that you want, all of it rests on whether or not you trust yourself, you trust the decisions that you make, and you trust yourself that you can handle what comes next. If that foundation isn't there, everything else is wobbly. But here's what I want you to understand about self-trust. And this is, I think, really good news because a lot of women that I coach, a lot of women that I've talked to through social media, will come to me and they'll say, but I don't know how to trust myself anymore. It's been years since I've been able to do that or since I knew how to do that. And I don't know what to do. I don't know how to do that anymore. I want you to know you're not starting from scratch. Self-trust or trust in general

Trust Is Innate From Birth

Karin Nelson 4:00

is a skill that you were born with. I really want you to think about this. You came into this world as a little tiny baby, like we all did, right? We just inherently knew how to trust. Because I want you to think about how a baby operates. A baby cries, and then they just trust that someone's gonna come and take them and like help them feel better, soothe them, right? Or give them food to eat or change their diaper. They just trust that that's gonna happen. They reach for something and they trust that their body is gonna figure out what to do with that something. They stand up to learn to walk and they just trust that like one step is gonna come after the other. And if they fall down, they trust that they are gonna be okay getting back up. They are curious about everything because they trust that like exploring these things are safe. Trust is an original state, it's innate. It came with you when you were born into this world. And what happened to lose that trust in yourself, it's bigger than just your personal history of what happened in your marriage or how you were raised, right? That erosion of that self-trust, it didn't just start with your marriage. That might have been where you recognize it from, but I promise you, this has been generations.

How Patriarchy Trained Self-Doubt

Karin Nelson 5:34

Because I want to talk about a little bit of history in terms of thousands of years before you and I were born. We are living in a patriarchal system, which I talk about a lot on this podcast, right? But this system has been actively teaching women for not just the last hundreds of years or so, but for literally millennia that we are not the authority on our own lives, that men know better, men are smarter, they're not emotional, they know best. We as women have been taught for generations and generations and generations that our instincts and our desires and our inner knowing, that intuition, they are not to be trusted, they are not to be followed, and they are certainly not to be the center of someone's decision-making process or life. So I want you to think about this. Think about ancient Greece. I mean, this is like thousands of years ago, right? We got Socrates, we got Aristotle. They are there and they are developing these philosophical frameworks that the entire Western world is built on, even to this day, built on these ideas. Ideas about knowledge, ideas about truth, ideas about reason, ideas about how to live a good life. And I want you to think about who was present in those frameworks and in those discussions, and who wasn't present. Women were not present ever at any of those. Women were not permitted to be present for those conversations. Women were not in the lecture halls, they were not in the public squares, they were not in the symposiums where ideas were debated and wisdom was passed down and wisdom was talked about. So the very foundation of how we think about human reason and authority that was laid down, the framework was put down in rooms where women weren't even allowed to exist as thinkers. In fact, Aristotle himself wrote that women were fundamentally less rational than men, that by nature, a woman's deliberative faculty was without authority. So that idea that a woman does not fully know her own mind and cannot be trusted to govern her own life, that idea has been woven into philosophy, to religion, to law, to culture in every single generation since that time. It didn't stay in ancient Greece. It got passed down through generations and generations. It went into churches and religious systems, it went into our legal system that we have today. It went into the way that your great-grandmother was raised, and the way your grandmother was raised, and the way your mother was raised, and in the way you were raised. Even if nobody in your family ever said those words out loud. So when you learn to distrust your own impulses or your own intuition or your own thoughts or your own ideas or your own wants or your own opinions, when you learn to doubt your own knowing and to hand your authority over to that other person in your life who seemed to be the most important, right? Probably your husband in this situation, since we're talking about divorce. That was not a personal failing. That was not a personal failing of yours. That was a result of thousands of years of conditioning that has been passed down generationally, so completely and for so long, and it just kind of starts to feel like that's how things are. It just feels like truth. It just feels like it's a part of you to defer to the husband, to the man, to the he knows best. I can relate to this so much of the the deference of not knowing or not feeling like I know my life best. Because I did this for almost my entire marriage. Almost my entire marriage. I was married for 20 years. I did it. So if you recognize this as part of your life, no you're not alone. I did this, I know so many women who do this because of that conditioning. And so if you're going through a divorce and all of those old layers are getting stirred up and those old stories and your nervous system is constantly being activated and you're making decisions from a place of fear, which we typically do when we don't have tools to support ourselves through that fear, when we don't understand what it feels like to trust ourselves, we do make decisions from fear. When we don't believe that we're going to be okay, when we fear that our kids aren't going to be okay after the divorce, or when we fear that we aren't going to be okay, that we can't make it on our own, that we can't figure it out, we will make decisions from that place of fear. And so the way through that is to rebuild the one relationship that can hold you steady no matter what, no matter what. And that is the relationship with you that is rebuilding that self-trust.

Fear, Survival Mode, And Courage

Karin Nelson 11:15

I want to say something about fear for a second because I think it's really important. In my experience as a coach, coaching women through divorce, fear is one of the most prevalent and common underlying emotions that often drives decisions. It'll keep women in marriages far longer than they want to stay. It kept me in my marriage for a very long time before I had the courage to say I wanted a divorce. But other reasons as well, right? Other decisions are being made from fear as well. It's not just the staying in the marriage. It's the we're gonna hide behind the people pleasing. It's the the fear of being stuck where we're at, the fear of like feeling uncomfortable emotions, the fear of feeling overwhelmed and not knowing what to do. And so we'll just stay where it feels comfortable, where it feels safe. And that might mean I'm just gonna like make small decisions. I'm not gonna make decisions, I'm gonna continue to defer, right? All of this makes sense when we slow it down and we take a look at it. But that fear will keep you trying to manage other people's reactions, even though we know we actually can't do that, but we still try. That's very human, natural thing that we do. It'll keep you living in that survival mode, it'll keep you staying stuck, it'll keep you from actually living a life that you want to live. Courage, on the other hand, it is not the absence of fear. Courage is what we feel when we have that fear, we feel that fear, and we choose to trust ourselves anyway. It's allowing the fear to come along for the ride in whatever decision we're making, and but it's just gonna ride in the passenger seat. It doesn't get to drive the decisions, it doesn't get to drive the car, it gets to come along, but it doesn't get to just be the decider. When you have self-trust, you have access to that courage. And again, fear is still there. It may be just sitting in the passenger screen sitting in the passenger seat screaming at you, but you trust that you're gonna be okay on the other side of it, that you're gonna be okay and figure out the next best step because you got you. When you trust yourself, you can be scared and still move forward. So, what does

The Body Signal Of Self-Trust

Karin Nelson 14:00

self-trust actually feel like? Because I think sometimes I'll talk about an idea, but we don't actually recognize what it feels like in our body, right? So for me, personally, self-trust feels very peaceful. It's like a wash of calm, it's a it's like expansive, it feels very open to me. It feels connected to my knowing, and it feels right to me. It feels quiet and steady. Uh, my body feels very calm and aligned. Even if everything outside of me, even if like everybody outside of me is throwing their opinions or saying this is wrong or whatever, right? I can still feel those things in my body and recognize it as my knowing. So let me give you this example. I've told this story countless times on the podcast. I tell I probably told it like two podcasts ago or something. I tell it a lot because for me, it is one of the most important moments of my life. It was one of the first times I recognized self-trust as I was going through my divorce. I wasn't quite in the divorce yet, but as I was, you know, in this space of divorce. So it was one of the first times I recognized it. But it was also so poignant in that I allowed my brain and my body to just slow down. And I noticed what actually was happening in my body, which is why I use this a lot because it's it was a big decision, it was a poignant decision, and I recognized what was going on. So I'll use it as the example, but I want you to look for examples in your own life where you've had moments of self-trust and figure out what self-trust feels like for you. Because in my body, it feels like peace and expansive and it feels open and calm. It may not feel like that to you, but you get to decide and recognize what it feels like for you. And then you can start paying attention every time that self-trust shows up moving forward. So for me, mine was the time that I was trying to decide do I want to stay in this marriage or do I want to get a divorce? I had been going back and forth about this for like weeks and weeks. My husband at the time and I couldn't decide. Both of us were like back and forth. And then one day I was out on a walk by myself, and I just got quiet enough. I think I I had just I was sick of the back and forth. I think I was just like at my wit's end, right? And so I was like, whatever, just answer. What do you want? And so I just for the first time in all of this time let go of what is my kids gonna think and what is my ex gonna think, and what will my family think, who are all Mormon and who are all gonna judge me as being the one person that could possibly get divorced, right? What will everybody think? What do I want? And my answer was, I want a divorce. And when I said that to myself, when I accepted it as my truth and my knowing, I was flooded with peace. I didn't judge myself for it. I didn't say, no, that's not possible, no, that's stupid. Which I probably had done in the past, right? But I just accepted it. And it didn't feel heavy, and it didn't feel scary, and I didn't feel like a failure, and I didn't feel shameful, and I didn't feel guilty even. All of those things came up later in many different areas, but not in this moment. And in that moment, I trusted the feeling of peace, of knowing, of openness, of expansion, of trusting myself that I was gonna figure the fuck out what was next for me, that I was going to figure it out, that I was gonna be okay, whatever my life looked like after this. I was gonna be okay because I was gonna have my back every step of the way. That is what self-trust felt like for me. What does it feel like for you? You have the most beautiful opportunity right now, as you're going through your divorce, to get to know you in the most connective, expansive way, to trust yourself in ways that maybe you haven't for years. And that's recognizing what self-trust feels like in your body, and then looking for those moments moving forward and leaning into them. So I told you at the beginning I was gonna give you five practical steps on how to do this. So let's get practical.

Five Steps To Rebuild Trust

Karin Nelson 19:07

Here are some steps that you can use to come back to that self-trust as you go through your divorce or after your divorce. So, step one, you need to get present and you need to seal and you need to feel safe in the here and now, right? Self-trust, it doesn't live in the future worry of the uncertainty of not knowing what's going to happen, and it doesn't live in the past, the things that we can't change. It lives in the present moment. So when you feel yourself like spinning and ruminating and spiraling about things that you can't control, about things that might happen in the future, you take a breath, you look around the room, you orient yourself to where you are, and maybe you name five things that you can see. Maybe you remind yourself in this moment I am safe. Maybe you do some cross-body movements, maybe you do a grounding practice, maybe you do a breathing exercise, maybe you do a somatic practice. You do something to bring yourself back to the here and now. You remind yourself, in this moment, I am actually safe and my survival is not threatened. Because your nervous system needs to hear this so that your intuition can show up, so that your inner knowing can shine through. So get present. Number two, I want you to be willing to ask yourself what you actually want or what do I need in this moment? And then listen. Listen without judgment. Be willing to ask, get curious, and then provide as much as possible the thing that comes to your mind. This can be hard if you spent years making yourself small and self-abandoning in a marriage. I know it was very hard for me. Like I said, I had gone back and forth for weeks of trying to come to a decision. So if it doesn't happen on the first try, that doesn't mean we give up. It means we keep trying to reconnect with who we are. It means we keep trying to be willing to listen and provide what it is that we need and want. So you can ask questions like, what do I want right now? What do I truly need in this moment? And don't just dismiss the answer that comes. Don't edit it, don't judge it, don't filter it through what other people might be thinking or through what you've been conditioned to believe, right? You don't have to act on anything yet, but we want to just sit with the answer and see how it feels. Step three. Is I want you to question the thoughts that tell you that you can't trust yourself anymore. And these are going to be thoughts like, oh, but I always make the wrong decisions. I always make bad decisions. I always get this wrong. I got this wrong before, so I'll probably get it wrong again. Or I just don't know what I want. All of those things and anything else that might come up along those lines, those aren't facts. They're not facts that your str that your brain is just telling you. Oh, those are old stories, those are old patterns. That's old conditioning. Again, going back to this idea of like being raised in this system that has been built for us to doubt ourselves, to doubt that we know what's best for us. So get curious and ask, uh, is that actually true? Is it a thought that I've just believed for so long that sounds true? Because there is a difference. And you are allowed to question these thoughts that come up. You're allowed to question them, and you should be questioning them to get to know you better, to get to a place where you trust yourself on a deeper level. Step four, I want you to feel what comes up without running from it, if possible. I know this can be very scary, especially if we've been constantly outrunning what we're feeling. But when you start to reconnect with yourself, you're going to feel emotions. That is the most basic human thing that we do is we feel emotions. We have emotions. So you're maybe going to feel grief or sadness or anger or frustration or rejection. Many things that you tried to hide from or run from in your marriage or just in life in general. When we feel negative emotions, when we feel those dis that discomfort or those uncomfortable things, nothing has gone wrong. Nothing has gone wrong. You're having a very human moment. And the best way through it, the most healing way through it, the most reconnective thing that you can do for yourself is to feel what comes up. Notice it in your body. Notice where you feel it. Name it if possible. Allow it to be there without trying to fix it, without trying to push it away. Because the more willing you are to feel your emotions without abandoning yourself, without distracting yourself, without trying to tell yourself, don't feel that, the more your nervous system is going to learn that you can be trusted to feel these things, and nothing bad is gonna happen. That you truly can take care of yourself, that you truly can be there to support yourself through it. And then the last step is I want you to give yourself permission. For me personally, this step, it changed everything for me. Just changing my mindset around giving myself permission in so many areas of my life that I hadn't done. It changed everything for me. I gave myself permission to feel good. I gave myself permission to want something different. I gave myself permission to make a decision. Even if I like knew that it was going to hurt other people. I gave myself permission to take up space and to have a voice and to do things that I knew my soon-to-be ex wasn't gonna be on board with. When you give yourself permission in whatever area you need permission from that you might have been holding yourself back from, or that's been stopping you, or that's been keeping you stuck, that's when your whole world opens up. So give it. Give it to yourself. Give it out loud if you need to. Say, I give myself permission to trust that I'm gonna be okay, that I'm gonna have my own back, and that I'm gonna figure it out. So let me just close with this.

Closing Encouragement And Coaching Invite

Karin Nelson 26:28

Every episode that I've put out, every tool that I teach, every concept that I believe in that I think can make a difference in your life, it all becomes more accessible when you have self-trust underneath all of it, because self-trust is the foundation to all of it. It is the thing that allows you to decide what boundary you want and hold that boundary for yourself, right? What am I gonna do in this situation? It is the thing that helps you make the hard decision without spiraling, without second-guessing. It is the thing that allows you to move forward into a life that you actually want. Instead of just staying stuck in one that you're surviving. You're not broken. You've not permanently lost your ability to know yourself, to know your intuition, to recognize it, and to trust yourself. You are a woman who has been through something really hard. And in this moment, you're learning to come home to you. That voice that's inside of you, that quiet one, the peaceful one, the one that knows that has been inside of you the whole time. And it's still there now. You're just learning how to uncover it. You've got this. I love you. Thank you so much for being here. I will be back next week. Hi, friend. I'm so glad you're here and thanks for listening. I wanted to let you know that if you're wanting more, a way to make deeper, more lasting change, then working one-on-one with me as your coach may be exactly what you need. Together, we'll take everything you're learning in the podcast and implement it in your life with weekly coaching, real life practice, and practical guidance. To learn more about how to work with me one-on-one, go to Karin Nelsoncoaching.com. That's www.k-ar-in-n, ne-l-s-o-n coaching.com. Thanks for listening. If this podcast agreed with you in any way, please take a minute to follow and give me a rating wherever you listen to podcasts. And for more details about how I can help you live an even better life than when you were married, make sure and check out the full show notes by clicking the link in the description.