People love to tell you to trust your gut.
It’s great advice.
It’s also hard as fuck when you’ve spent your entire life being taught that your gut is an unreliable narrator. I think that’s one of the quietest things abuse takes from you.
Everyone talks about trust after abuse.
Learning to trust people again.
Learning to trust love.
Learning to believe someone isn’t going to hurt you simply because someone else did.
But nobody talks about learning to trust yourself again.
Abuse doesn’t just teach you that other people can be dangerous. It teaches you to question your own perception of danger.
Something feels wrong?
You’re overreacting.
Something doesn’t add up?
You’re paranoid.
That hurt me?
You’re too sensitive.
I don’t like the way you’re speaking to me.
You’re making a big deal out of nothing.
Again and again and again.
Until eventually you stop needing someone else to tell you that you’re wrong.
You do it for them.
Maybe I’m overthinking. Maybe I’m being dramatic. Maybe I’m reading too much into it. Maybe I’m projecting. Maybe this is just my trauma.
Maybe.
Maybe.
Maybe.
I have maybe’d myself out of some pretty fucking obvious truths. And that’s the strange thing about rebuilding your life after abuse. Eventually you realize healing isn’t only about learning that the world is safe again.
It’s about learning that you’re a safe person to listen to. That has been much harder for me because sometimes my intuition and my anxiety speak at the exact same time.
Sometimes an old wound gets bumped and every alarm in my body starts screaming. Sometimes silence feels dangerous. Sometimes a change in someone’s tone can send my brain searching through every conversation we’ve had looking for the moment I fucked everything up.
I know that about myself. And because I know that about myself, I’ve occasionally swung too far in the other direction. I’ve become so determined not to let trauma make my decisions that I’ve ignored myself completely.
This is probably just a trigger.
But sometimes something feels off because something is off.
I would personally prefer a little dashboard somewhere behind my rib cage.
CHECK ENGINE: TRAUMA
CHECK ENGINE: ACTUAL BULLSHIT
Very straightforward. Unfortunately, the human nervous system did not come with this feature.
So I’ve had to learn another way. I’ve had to start paying attention to what happens after the initial alarm.
Fear is loud for me. It rushes in. But intuition? It’s quiet. It doesn’t argue. It doesn’t write an entire closing statement.
It just knows.
Something changed.
I don’t feel safe here.
I don’t believe that.
This isn’t for me.
Leave.
I no longer need someone to confess before I’m allowed to notice that their behavior doesn’t feel good. I no longer need to know someone’s intentions before deciding their actions aren’t something I want in my life. I no longer need to determine whether someone or something is objectively wrong before deciding something is wrong for me.
I spent too long thinking boundaries were something you earned after proving your case.
They’re not.
Sometimes the only information I have is: I don’t feel good here.
That’s enough.
My intuition won’t always be right, and trusting myself doesn’t mean believing every thought I have is prophecy.
It does mean I trust myself enough to investigate what I’m feeling instead of immediately dismissing it.
To get curious before dismissive.
To ask: What am I noticing? What actually happened? and most importantly, what do I need right now?
Sometimes it’s reassurance.
Sometimes it’s time.
Sometimes it’s more information.
And sometimes the answer is simply to get the fuck out.