JOIN IN THE DISCUSSION ON THIS EPISODE AND MORE IN MY FREE FACEBOOK GROUP, FIND YOUR FEMININE FIRE HERE.

Hello,

My name is Amanda Testa, and I'm a Sex, Love, and Relationship Expert + Trauma Resolution Guide.

My goal is to support you to heal your relationship to your sexuality so you can eliminate shame and guilt, own your sexy confidence, feel like a Goddess/Goddex in your skin, and have the deeply connected relationships you desire.

My unique proven process, The Feminine Fire Method™ combines the latest in neuroscience and somatic healing with ancient practices from Tantra and Taoism to facilitate rapid and lasting transformation. 

 I'm also a Senior Teacher for VITA Coaching, a ReBloom trauma resolution coach, Mama to a gorgeous 10 yo girl, Wife to my sexy hubs, and the Host of the Find Your Feminine Fire podcast.

I believe deep in my soul is that sexuality is the missing key in personal growth and development. 

I believe your sexuality and sexual energy fuels your creativity, confidence, and power. It is a vital part of your holistic health and vitality.

When we own our sexual power our pleasure and creativity flourishes.  Our confidence and body image soars.

Our relationships deepen.

And when you can connect to that power in yourself, it’s life-changing.

Have a topic or question you'd like Amanda to address on a future episode? Submit it on this anonymous form.

If you liked this episode, please consider giving me a 5 Star Review on Apple Podcasts! It truly does help the podcast grow. 

If you've been interested in learning more about coaching with Amanda, she's now booking coaching clients for 1-1 support in creating the relationship and orgasmic pleasure of their dreams.   If you’ve been thinking about it, maybe we should talk!  Link here to book a free call to see if we’re a fit. 

EPISODE 223: Trust Yourself

[Fun, Empowering Music] 

Amanda Testa: Hello, and welcome to the Find Your Feminine Fire podcast. I am your host, Amanda Testa. I am a sex, love, and relationship coach, and in this podcast, my guests and I talk sex, love, and relationships, and everything that lights you up from the inside out. Welcome!

Would you like to stop second guessing yourself and your worthiness? If you're looking to grow your self-trust, then listen in to this episode. I’m gonna share why so many women-identifying people suffer from not-enoughness and lack of self-trust and how to build this muscle to feel more confident and have more trust in yourself. I’m your host, Amanda Testa, and welcome to the Find Your Feminine Fire podcast.

So I want to share a story with you about when I was little. I remember, when I was a kid, my sister and I loved to go to the beach. So we would drive from our house in Georgia to the beach which was always, like, around a three-hour drive, and when we would get there the first thing we would do is jump out of the car, blow up our rafts, and run as fast as we could into the water. 

0:01:07

We loved it so much, just feeling free in the ocean, and I don't know if you remember those old school rafts that were sewn together with some kind of cloth-type material that ripped up the inside of your legs, but we would spend hours out there riding the waves, pretending that our rafts were horses, having the time of our lives and just floating along with the current and trusting our ability to swim, trusting that we were safe, right? We didn't even think twice about the ocean or what could be in the water, and I remember we would just float on down and down with the current. My mom would be chasing us down the beach screaming at us to come back, and we had zero worries in the world, right? There is a time, at some point in our past where we had that full capacity of trust, and through our life we just get disconnected from that, and there’s a lot of reasons why.

0:02:03

It’s from our culture, number one. It’s not our fault, right? It’s our culture so much of the time, and that’s just the way that our lives imprint these ways of being onto us that keep us from trusting our true selves. And so, when you don’t trust yourself, it feels like you're not good enough, right? You can really come down on yourself. You can have a really harsh inner voice, feel guilty and ashamed when you make a mistake, have a really hard time making decisions, and constantly asking others for guidance. There’s a lot of fear of making the wrong choice or disappointing other people, feeling like you need someone else to tell you what to do even if it may hurt you in the long run, and feeling overly self-conscious, right? That’s some of the ways that it can show up. When we do trust ourselves, we have a lot of wisdom, we have clarity on who we are. We have this natural blueprint of health when it comes to self-trust: clarity and choice. 

0:03:00

One of the archetypes that I love that demonstrates this (through the ReBloom body of work from Rachael Maddox that I’m certified in) is the natural blueprint of the Sage.  This blueprint of health for the Sage is having a clear sense of who you are, knowing who you are, having a clear sense of what you know, what you want, and what your options are at every moment. You make decisions from a place of alignment with your whole-hearted values, embodied wisdom, and mental discernment. You are the validator of your experiences. You trust your perceptions to be true and know that your feelings and opinions matter. You take time and space to yourself or with trusted support to get clarity when you're feeling unsure or uncertain, and you have inner authority and knowing. You choose and consent with yourself first and foremost. You trust others from a place of trusting your own integrity first, and you are empowered through access to the truth.

Oftentimes, in our lives, what can happen is we all have different experiences of growing up, but even just in our culture we get taught from an early age not to listen to our own body’s wisdom. This can happen, just for example, when you're a kid and you go to school and you can only go to the bathroom at certain times, right? 

0:04:08

You can't necessarily drink water when you want, so you start to lose those internal urges to care for yourself, and that is a very simple way, but that’s how it can happen, right? Maybe when we’re little and we’re forced to hug people we didn't want to hug, you kind of stop listening to that inner voice. 

Those are just little ways that it can happen over time, but in your life, if you’ve been shamed or if you’ve been guilt tripped or have been faulted all the time or having others’ moodiness blamed on you, being projected on, all the things, being bullied. All these things can show up, and there are a few different ways that this manipulation control can show up, right? There is the hyper-response which this is when we have a healthy nervous system, typically more often than not, we’re ranging in the range of resilience (the window of tolerance) which means when things happen and disrupt us, we can go through an experience, and we pretty quickly come back to a place of calm, of feeling resourced again, but when we get triggered, we can usually react in a couple of ways.

0:05:16

One is we can shoot up into a hyper response where we’re really anxious or stressed and there’s just a lot of energy, and then we maybe crash down into a hypo response which is below the window of tolerance which is where you're feeling really shut down or confused or all of those things, right? And so, how this can show up when it comes to self-trust is if you're having a hyper response, it can be hypervigilance, right? You can not trust people. You can not trust yourself. You can be extremely skeptical about everything. You can think that other people are just trying to take advantage of you. You can be really stubborn about doing things only your own way. You can be controlling and really want to control things, want to control situations, want to control relationships. 

0:06:04

Perhaps, you are very hyper-guarded or isolate yourself out of fear of being hurt. So it can feel really hard, when you are having this hypervigilance, to let go and trust another person or to trust the mysteries of life or even trusting yourself, right?

Alternatively, the hypo response can be feeling confused, feeling like blind following of others, looking to others constantly for validation, feeling extreme self-doubt, having trouble knowing what’s true and what’s not, wanting to be saved by someone who knows what’s going on. It can feel really hard to trust yourself, to sense your own truth, to align to it, and to feel safe following your own guidance, right? Feeling like I don't know what to choose, I need someone to tell me what to do, all these things. These are normal reactions that we have in life, and so, just so you are aware of this. 

0:07:04

Also, it can just be words that we’ve heard, things that have been told to us (maybe that have hurt us), being wounded by words of others, and this causes us to hold back ourselves and who we are.

And so, I share all this because A, just to normalize the fact that this is very common in our culture and also to realize that, you know, it’s not all our fault. It’s really not our fault, but what we can do is we can have choice in how we reclaim our self-trust, right? We can choose to create new relationships with ourselves, and we can choose to create this new experience where we really empower that sage part of us, the wise part of us, the part that does know how to choose what serves us, the part of us that does know how to make choices that serve us, right? 

0:07:56

I love this mantra around the sage about, “I see the truth. I speak the truth. I align to the truth. I am clarity. I am choice. I am integrity. I trust myself.” So even noticing as I say those words how they land on you. If it feels resonant or if it feels hard, and it’s all okay. It’s all awareness, right? It’s all awareness.

So one of the first things that I think is really important in dealing with building your sense of self-trust is, first of all, kind of being aware of what’s happening, noticing when you have those internal voices coming up, noticing if you're feeling more hyper vigilant and lacking of trusting others and just being with what is, like, having real self-compassion. Number one, self-compassion and self-kindness is so important because that is the way we move forward. We’re never gonna make the right decision all the time. In fact, we probably won't a lot of the time, and that’s okay because it’s not about making the right decision, it’s about just moving forward and trusting that you can deal with whatever happens, right? There never really is a wrong choice because it’s all learning. It’s all growth, and I, too, know what it’s like to be stuck in that indecision because I’ve been at that place many times in my life.

0:09:07

And so, what I find to be really helpful here is just being aware, right -- just being aware of when these patterns are arising, and, oftentimes, it can be younger parts of us that are triggered that are coming up that want to run the show, and we can remind ourselves that we are adults, right? We can tap into the part of us that has compassion, that has forgiveness, and trust the nudges that we have.

My husband was telling me about a book he was reading about special forces and decisions and how, oftentimes, they make the wrong decision, but the thing is they just keep moving forward. You don't really have time a lot of the time to assess all the decisions, so you have to be quick to make decisions in that environment. Gratefully, we’re not always in that environment all the time, but we can still use that concept of looking at what’s true, noticing what’s true, and making decisions based on that. 

0:10:04

One of the things that I think is a really powerful way to make these decisions for yourself is by, first of all, learning to tune into what’s going on below the surface. Now, this is a learned skill and it can take time, but I love the process of interoception. That means knowing what’s happening on a sensational level in your body. Now, this can be any sensations that you're noticing (your felt sense). So, for example, if I am going to make a decision, and I feel like the part of me coming up that is judgy, that is my inner critic, that wants to tell me I’m gonna make the wrong choice, that wants to tell me I’m gonna disappoint others, that wants to tell me I don't know what to do, I could be aware of what that feels like in my body. So, for example, as I feel those thoughts, I notice my chest gets tight. I notice that I feel like my shoulders curl in. I notice that it feels like my breath gets more shallow. So when I can pay attention to those things, that’s really good information for me, right? 

0:11:03

If I’m thinking about moving forward from that type of physical experience, that even just a physiological experience, then that’s probably not gonna be the best way to move forward, right, because I’m in a very closed, clenched body position. 

Even just that noticing is like, “Okay, well, what if I just spend a little time with this clenching in my chest. What’s happening there?” You can even just spend a few minutes noticing the sensations. I notice that when I bring my awareness to the sensations in my chest, even just bringing awareness there kind of invites some openness, and that can be the first simple step. I love this process of just, like, bringing awareness to what is, can often bring about some change, bring about some openness.

So that’s just one example of learning to be with what shows up in your body, having that skill of interoception because then you can kind of learn your cues, right? If you are making a decision, and you are going against what your, maybe, inner voice is telling you, you might feel tight, you might feel constricted, you might feel differently than if you're making a choice in alignment with what feels true to you, right? 

0:12:10

‘Cause when I’m making a decision and I’m thinking about, okay, what really feels most in alignment for me, maybe I feel more openness, maybe I feel like a little bit of space is expanding in my throat, right? These can just be little things to start to notice, and it can take time because, for some of us, it might not feel very comfortable to be in our body, and that’s okay too. You can just be aware and start to notice, because I think these are just little nudges that you can trust, right? 

What happens when you trust? What happens when you don't? What happens when you do follow the inner nudges that you get and taking evidence of your successes in this exploration, I think this is a really important way to kind of notice. Like, when you're going to make a decision, let’s see what our inner voice is telling you or when you're getting a nudge of some sort, do you follow it or do you not and just making notes. “Okay, I had this urge to do XYZ and then I did XYZ. Here’s what happened,” right? 

0:13:04

Or, “I had the urge to do XYZ, and I didn't do XYZ. Here’s what happened.” This is just good information to collect for yourself because it can really help you trust yourself by knowing what’s true in your experience and what’s not, right? 

Sometimes it might be important to maybe remove yourself from situations that make you feel uncomfortable, that make you feel unsafe - giving yourself permission to create the space you need to feel honor and express your truth, right? That’s an important thing. 

Also noticing what you are tolerating and what do you not want to tolerate, right? Those are important things too. It can be hard sometimes especially if you're in situations that feel like it’s really impossible to get distance from, there are always ways to do it. 

You can always start in baby steps. You never have to make huge decisions, right? You can make baby steps. I always think that’s just a good way to do it because as you make the baby steps, you can determine how that’s feeling, as I just talked about. Creating the evidence of what supports you and what doesn't.

0:14:09

So another benefit of really tuning into your own experiences is, then, you can change that locus of control from outside of yourself to inside of yourself which is a really important process of cultivating that self-trust, and as you cultivate that connection with yourself, it makes it easier as well to cultivate that connection with others and really tuning in on who are the people that I can trust who honor and validate my experiences, and developing these systems that support you. Like, I really love that little collecting evidence thing. If I’m getting the nudge, am I following it, what happens, am I not following it, what happens, and just using it as information, right? This allows your trust to grow slowly over time. As you do this, you build that courage, the courage it takes to honor the truths that you hear even when they're hard, and so, I think it can be so, so key to grow that inner trust.

0:15:18

I see this so often with clients is just a lack of trusting themselves, a lack of wanting to put themselves out there because of feeling like they will be judged, like they will be harshly criticized, right? This can all be stemming from that lack of self-trust, so it’s such an important key skill to build. I was just recently teaching a retreat. One of my joys in life is being on the senior teaching team for Layla Martin and the VITA Coaching Certification, and so, we just had four weeks of retreats, actually, for our students, but I was there looking out the window one day (we were in Costa Rica), and I was watching these monkeys, and this one money -- and it was so interesting ‘cause we were literally talking about trust in that moment, and this one money literally leapt, his arms flying, and flew, like, four trees over, and landed on a branch. 

0:16:14

That, right there, is self-trust, right? We are animals at our core. We have this natural blueprint of health, that blueprint of trust, that blueprint of knowing. Throughout our life, it gets dulled, it gets tarnished so we don't have that same level of trust. We don't want to leap uninhibited. We’re too afraid to leap, but we do have that ability within us, and I loved that image of that monkey ‘cause I was like exactly. That is exactly what trust is - just leaping and knowing you're gonna land. That comes from practice because knowing, you know what, if I make the wrong choice, I’m gonna figure it out -- if I make the right choice, I can celebrate myself. Whatever happens, it’s learning, and there’s no wrong decision, right? So I just really love that image of the monkey. Just bring that to mind whenever you're like, okay, what’s standing in the way of you trusting what you're inclined to do, trusting what your instincts are?

0:17:16

The other thing, too, is when you're kind of looking to affirm your inner trust, your inner wisdom is just tuning in to maybe feeling in what is something you want an answer to, right? Maybe there’s a question that you want an answer to, and you can just have a little journaling activity about this and just tune in. Ask yourself, if my wisest self were to answer this question, if all the wise parts of me can share what they know to be true, what would you write? Just see what happens for five minutes, right? There’s no wrong way to do it. 

0:18:01

It’s just a way of tuning in, and then you can often get a lot of insight because I think we are (in different experiences) more and more able to tap into these different parts of ourselves that do know that blueprint of trust, that are able to tap into that more easily, right?

And so, another thing that I want to share around protecting your trust (which I think is really important) is protecting your confidence, right - protecting your confidence. My husband actually shared this with me, but I love what it means ‘cause what it means is don’t indulge in things that make you feel bad about yourself, right? Protect your confidence. So, for example, if you go on social media, and you find yourself comparing and despairing and feeling like poop, that’s a good note to be like all right, well, maybe I need to spend less time on social media. I was joking because while I was away I was also 75% less on social media, and I think my happiness went up 75% which is just a good note. I always notice. Less time on social media is really healthy for your brain and more time in the real life is good. 

0:19:02

So just noting that. Like, what am I doing that might be pulling away from my confidence, and how can I stop doing those things? I think that’s a big one. Also, more resourcing in what feels good. Really make a list of things that make you feel good, that support you to feel in your body, that support you to feel grounded, that support you to feel capable, and do those things more often, right? Maybe whatever that practice is for you, tuning in. 

I love bringing in pleasure because I think that’s a beautiful way for me to get into my body, and you know I love that. [Laughs] So I think that’s one of the things I talk about a lot because I feel like it’s so important. Give yourself permission, too, to tune into your needs on a regular basis because I think that is important. We don't often do that enough, and you know I talk about tuning into your needs and creating your desire list on a regular basis because it does help keep you aligned to what you want and need. It can be really easy to get disconnected from that in our busy lives.

0:20:00

The other thing is really allowing yourself to be vulnerable, allowing yourself to feel, allowing yourself to go there so that you can trust that you can feel the feelings and move through them because they are like a tunnel and sometimes it feels like we don't want to feel something, and we avoid it at all costs, and that can make it even worse, but oftentimes if we just allow ourselves to feel what’s there, we can move through it and be on about our day in no time at all. 

Also, making sure that you are creating the boundaries that support you, knowing that if people are pulling away from your confidence or making you feel bad about yourself, maybe give yourself some distance from those people in the ways that you can, right? We’re never gonna be perfect. We’re always gonna make mistakes, but that’s okay, right? We are gonna be kind and compassionate with ourselves. We are gonna be kind and compassionate with ourselves.

Really, to wrap all this up -- because I know I’ve been kind of rambling a bit, but I do feel like it’s all related to this trusting ourselves and how to cultivate self-trust, right? 

0:21:06

Number one, we need to remember that we have the ability to trust in our systems. Our bodies. We have to reconnect to that sometimes. We have to trust that we can be with ourselves in what’s coming up, learning that tool of interoception, trusting our felt sense (what we experience in our own bodies as a result of something), really starting to collect our evidence when we are following your nudges and when we’re not. Like I said before, “I had the urge to do XYZ. I did it. Here’s what happened.” “I had the urge to do XYZ, and I didn't do it. Here’s what happened,” right? It’s just a good way to kind of track your successes as you listen to yourself. Protecting your confidence, resourcing what feels good, self-forgiveness and self-kindness is so, so key, and always, self-compassion. This is a tool we cannot cultivate enough. Really understanding when our bullying inner voice is coming to the surface, and maybe it’s got some points. 

0:22:04

You can say, “Listen. I hear you. These are some valid points you’re sharing. It’s understandable that I would be thinking these thoughts based on my lived experience. However, I’m going to have you sit over in the corner for a minute because I’m gonna tune into my wise sage self, and we’re gonna have a little discussion about what is true and what I know to be true and how I can find a way to move forward in this situation,” right? These things that sound pretty simple are, but it sometimes takes time to learn. 

So if this is something that you are wanting to cultivate more of, and cultivate more self-trust, then I invite you to reach out. You can always book a free call with me, and I’m happy to give you some strategies at amandatesta.com/activate, and I can walk you through some strategies, but even if you just implement the things that I’ve shared here on the podcast, it should be really helpful for you. I also have a great meditation around cultivating trust in your body that if you’d like to get that, again, shoot me an email and we will send it out to you (info@amandatesta.com), and you can put in the subject line “Trust Meditation” and I will send that your way.

0:23:09

As well, I’d love to hear you share with me what some ways are that you have cultivated trust in your own life and how that has benefited you. I always love to hear your own stories as well so please don't hesitate to share those with me. Again, sending you so, so much love. 

As we leave, I’m gonna reshare this mantra with you one more time because I love this mantra from the Sage archetype on really being in your truth-aligned leadership, making choices and taking actions that are in impeccable alignment with your truth, right? Letting go of what’s misaligned for the sake of honoring what is true for you and just noticing how this lands. I’ll invite you to play with this. “I see the truth. I speak the truth. I align to the truth. I am clarity. I am choice. I am integrity. I trust myself.” 

0:24:12

Sending you so much love, and we’ll see you next week!

[Fun, Empowering Music] 

Thank you so much for listening to the Find Your Feminine Fire podcast. This is your host, Amanda Testa, and if you have felt a calling while listening to this podcast to take this work to a deeper level, this is your golden invitation. I invite you to reach out. You can contact me at amandatesta.com/activate, and we can have a heart-to-heart to discuss more about how this work can transform your life. You can also join us on Facebook in the Find Your Feminine Fire group, and if you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please share with your friends. Go to iTunes and give me a five-star rating and a rating and a raving review so I can connect with other amazing listeners like yourself.

0:25:02

Thank you so much for being a part of the community.

[Fun, Empowering Music]

EPISODE 223: Trust Yourself

[Fun, Empowering Music] 

Amanda Testa: Hello, and welcome to the Find Your Feminine Fire podcast. I am your host, Amanda Testa. I am a sex, love, and relationship coach, and in this podcast, my guests and I talk sex, love, and relationships, and everything that lights you up from the inside out. Welcome!

Would you like to stop second guessing yourself and your worthiness? If you're looking to grow your self-trust, then listen in to this episode. I’m gonna share why so many women-identifying people suffer from not-enoughness and lack of self-trust and how to build this muscle to feel more confident and have more trust in yourself. I’m your host, Amanda Testa, and welcome to the Find Your Feminine Fire podcast.

So I want to share a story with you about when I was little. I remember, when I was a kid, my sister and I loved to go to the beach. So we would drive from our house in Georgia to the beach which was always, like, around a three-hour drive, and when we would get there the first thing we would do is jump out of the car, blow up our rafts, and run as fast as we could into the water. 

0:01:07

We loved it so much, just feeling free in the ocean, and I don't know if you remember those old school rafts that were sewn together with some kind of cloth-type material that ripped up the inside of your legs, but we would spend hours out there riding the waves, pretending that our rafts were horses, having the time of our lives and just floating along with the current and trusting our ability to swim, trusting that we were safe, right? We didn't even think twice about the ocean or what could be in the water, and I remember we would just float on down and down with the current. My mom would be chasing us down the beach screaming at us to come back, and we had zero worries in the world, right? There is a time, at some point in our past where we had that full capacity of trust, and through our life we just get disconnected from that, and there’s a lot of reasons why.

0:02:03

It’s from our culture, number one. It’s not our fault, right? It’s our culture so much of the time, and that’s just the way that our lives imprint these ways of being onto us that keep us from trusting our true selves. And so, when you don’t trust yourself, it feels like you're not good enough, right? You can really come down on yourself. You can have a really harsh inner voice, feel guilty and ashamed when you make a mistake, have a really hard time making decisions, and constantly asking others for guidance. There’s a lot of fear of making the wrong choice or disappointing other people, feeling like you need someone else to tell you what to do even if it may hurt you in the long run, and feeling overly self-conscious, right? That’s some of the ways that it can show up. When we do trust ourselves, we have a lot of wisdom, we have clarity on who we are. We have this natural blueprint of health when it comes to self-trust: clarity and choice. 

0:03:00

One of the archetypes that I love that demonstrates this (through the ReBloom body of work from Rachael Maddox that I’m certified in) is the natural blueprint of the Sage.  This blueprint of health for the Sage is having a clear sense of who you are, knowing who you are, having a clear sense of what you know, what you want, and what your options are at every moment. You make decisions from a place of alignment with your whole-hearted values, embodied wisdom, and mental discernment. You are the validator of your experiences. You trust your perceptions to be true and know that your feelings and opinions matter. You take time and space to yourself or with trusted support to get clarity when you're feeling unsure or uncertain, and you have inner authority and knowing. You choose and consent with yourself first and foremost. You trust others from a place of trusting your own integrity first, and you are empowered through access to the truth.

Oftentimes, in our lives, what can happen is we all have different experiences of growing up, but even just in our culture we get taught from an early age not to listen to our own body’s wisdom. This can happen, just for example, when you're a kid and you go to school and you can only go to the bathroom at certain times, right? 

0:04:08

You can't necessarily drink water when you want so you start to lose those internal urges to care for yourself, and that is a very simple way, but that’s how it can happen, right? Maybe when we’re little and we’re forced to hug people we didn't want to hug, you kind of stop listening to that inner voice. Those are just little ways that it can happen over time, but in your life, if you’ve been shamed or if you’ve been guilt tripped or have been faulted all the time or having others’ moodiness blamed on you, being projected on, all the things, being bullied. All these things can show up, and there are a few different ways that this manipulation control can show up, right? There is the hyper-response which this is when we have a healthy nervous system, typically more often than not, we’re ranging in the range of resilience (the window of tolerance) which means when things happen and disrupt us, we can go through an experience, and we pretty quickly come back to a place of calm, of feeling resourced again, but when we get triggered, we can usually react in a couple of ways.

0:05:16

One is we can shoot up into a hyper response where we’re really anxious or stressed and there’s just a lot of energy, and then we maybe crash down into a hypo response which is below the window of tolerance which is where you're feeling really shut down or confused or all of those things, right? And so, how this can show up when it comes to self-trust is if you're having a hyper response, it can be hypervigilance, right? You can not trust people. You can not trust yourself. You can be extremely skeptical about everything. You can think that other people are just trying to take advantage of you. You can be really stubborn about doing things only your own way. You can be controlling and really want to control things, want to control situations, want to control relationships. 

0:06:04

Perhaps, you are very hyper-guarded or isolate yourself out of fear of being hurt. So it can feel really hard, when you are having this hypervigilance, to let go and trust another person or to trust the mysteries of life or even trusting yourself, right?

Alternatively, the hypo response can be feeling confused, feeling like blind following of others, looking to others constantly for validation, feeling extreme self-doubt, having trouble knowing what’s true and what’s not, wanting to be saved by someone who knows what’s going on. It can feel really hard to trust yourself, to sense your own truth, to align to it, and to feel safe following your own guidance, right? Feeling like I don't know what to choose, I need someone to tell me what to do, all these things. These are normal reactions that we have in life, and so, just so you are aware of this. 

0:07:04

Also, it can just be words that we’ve heard, things that have been told to us (maybe that have hurt us), being wounded by words of others, and this causes us to hold back ourselves and who we are.

And so, I share all this because A, just to normalize the fact that this is very common in our culture and also to realize that, you know, it’s not all our fault. It’s really not our fault, but what we can do is we can have choice in how we reclaim our self-trust, right? We can choose to create new relationships with ourselves, and we can choose to create this new experience where we really empower that sage part of us, the wise part of us, the part that does know how to choose what serves us, the part of us that does know how to make choices that serve us, right? 

0:07:56

I love this mantra around the sage about, “I see the truth. I speak the truth. I align to the truth. I am clarity. I am choice. I am integrity. I trust myself.” So even noticing as I say those words how they land on you. If it feels resonant or if it feels hard, and it’s all okay. It’s all awareness, right? It’s all awareness.

So one of the first things that I think is really important in dealing with building your sense of self-trust is, first of all, kind of being aware of what’s happening, noticing when you have those internal voices coming up, noticing if you're feeling more hyper vigilant and lacking of trusting others and just being with what is, like, having real self-compassion. Number one, self-compassion and self-kindness is so important because that is the way we move forward. We’re never gonna make the right decision all the time. In fact, we probably won't a lot of the time, and that’s okay because it’s not about making the right decision, it’s about just moving forward and trusting that you can deal with whatever happens, right? There never really is a wrong choice because it’s all learning. It’s all growth, and I, too, know what it’s like to be stuck in that indecision because I’ve been at that place many times in my life.

0:09:07

And so, what I find to be really helpful here is just being aware, right -- just being aware of when these patterns are arising, and, oftentimes, it can be younger parts of us that are triggered that are coming up that want to run the show, and we can remind ourselves that we are adults, right? We can tap into the part of us that has compassion, that has forgiveness, and trust the nudges that we have.

My husband was telling me about a book he was reading about special forces and decisions and how, oftentimes, they make the wrong decision, but the thing is they just keep moving forward. You don't really have time a lot of the time to assess all the decisions, so you have to be quick to make decisions in that environment. Gratefully, we’re not always in that environment all the time, but we can still use that concept of looking at what’s true, noticing what’s true, and making decisions based on that. 

0:10:04

One of the things that I think is a really powerful way to make these decisions for yourself is by, first of all, learning to tune into what’s going on below the surface. Now, this is a learned skill and it can take time, but I love the process of interoception. That means knowing what’s happening on a sensational level in your body. Now, this can be any sensations that you're noticing (your felt sense). So, for example, if I am going to make a decision, and I feel like the part of me coming up that is judgy, that is my inner critic, that wants to tell me I’m gonna make the wrong choice, that wants to tell me I’m gonna disappoint others, that wants to tell me I don't know what to do, I could be aware of what that feels like in my body. So, for example, as I feel those thoughts, I notice my chest gets tight. I notice that I feel like my shoulders curl in. I notice that it feels like my breath gets more shallow. So when I can pay attention to those things, that’s really good information for me, right? 

0:11:03

If I’m thinking about moving forward from that type of physical experience, that even just a physiological experience, then that’s probably not gonna be the best way to move forward, right, because I’m in a very closed, clenched body position. 

Even just that noticing is like, “Okay, well, what if I just spend a little time with this clenching in my chest. What’s happening there?” You can even just spend a few minutes noticing the sensations. I notice that when I bring my awareness to the sensations in my chest, even just bringing awareness there kind of invites some openness, and that can be the first simple step. I love this process of just, like, bringing awareness to what is, can often bring about some change, bring about some openness.

So that’s just one example of learning to be with what shows up in your body, having that skill of interoception because then you can kind of learn your cues, right? If you are making a decision, and you are going against what your, maybe, inner voice is telling you, you might feel tight, you might feel constricted, you might feel differently than if you're making a choice in alignment with what feels true to you, right? 

0:12:10

‘Cause when I’m making a decision and I’m thinking about, okay, what really feels most in alignment for me, maybe I feel more openness, maybe I feel like a little bit of space is expanding in my throat, right? These can just be little things to start to notice, and it can take time because, for some of us, it might not feel very comfortable to be in our body, and that’s okay too. You can just be aware and start to notice, because I think these are just little nudges that you can trust, right? 

What happens when you trust? What happens when you don't? What happens when you do follow the inner nudges that you get and taking evidence of your successes in this exploration, I think this is a really important way to kind of notice. Like, when you're going to make a decision, let’s see what our inner voice is telling you or when you're getting a nudge of some sort, do you follow it or do you not and just making notes. “Okay, I had this urge to do XYZ and then I did XYZ. Here’s what happened,” right? 

0:13:04

Or, “I had the urge to do XYZ, and I didn't do XYZ. Here’s what happened.” This is just good information to collect for yourself because it can really help you trust yourself by knowing what’s true in your experience and what’s not, right? 

Sometimes it might be important to maybe remove yourself from situations that make you feel uncomfortable, that make you feel unsafe - giving yourself permission to create the space you need to feel honor and express your truth, right? That’s an important thing. 

Also noticing what you are tolerating and what do you not want to tolerate, right? Those are important things too. It can be hard sometimes especially if you're in situations that feel like it’s really impossible to get distance from, there are always ways to do it. 

You can always start in baby steps. You never have to make huge decisions, right? You can make baby steps. I always think that’s just a good way to do it because as you make the baby steps, you can determine how that’s feeling, as I just talked about. Creating the evidence of what supports you and what doesn't.

0:14:09

So another benefit of really tuning into your own experiences is, then, you can change that locus of control from outside of yourself to inside of yourself which is a really important process of cultivating that self-trust, and as you cultivate that connection with yourself, it makes it easier as well to cultivate that connection with others and really tuning in on who are the people that I can trust who honor and validate my experiences, and developing these systems that support you. Like, I really love that little collecting evidence thing. If I’m getting the nudge, am I following it, what happens, am I not following it, what happens, and just using it as information, right? This allows your trust to grow slowly over time. As you do this, you build that courage, the courage it takes to honor the truths that you hear even when they're hard, and so, I think it can be so, so key to grow that inner trust.

0:15:18

I see this so often with clients is just a lack of trusting themselves, a lack of wanting to put themselves out there because of feeling like they will be judged, like they will be harshly criticized, right? This can all be stemming from that lack of self-trust, so it’s such an important key skill to build. I was just recently teaching a retreat. One of my joys in life is being on the senior teaching team for Layla Martin and the VITA Coaching Certification, and so, we just had four weeks of retreats, actually, for our students, but I was there looking out the window one day (we were in Costa Rica), and I was watching these monkeys, and this one money -- and it was so interesting ‘cause we were literally talking about trust in that moment, and this one money literally leapt, his arms flying, and flew, like, four trees over, and landed on a branch. 

0:16:14

That, right there, is self-trust, right? We are animals at our core. We have this natural blueprint of health, that blueprint of trust, that blueprint of knowing. Throughout our life, it gets dulled, it gets tarnished so we don't have that same level of trust. We don't want to leap uninhibited. We’re too afraid to leap, but we do have that ability within us, and I loved that image of that monkey ‘cause I was like exactly. That is exactly what trust is - just leaping and knowing you're gonna land. That comes from practice because knowing, you know what, if I make the wrong choice, I’m gonna figure it out -- if I make the right choice, I can celebrate myself. Whatever happens, it’s learning, and there’s no wrong decision, right? So I just really love that image of the monkey. Just bring that to mind whenever you're like, okay, what’s standing in the way of you trusting what you're inclined to do, trusting what your instincts are?

0:17:16

The other thing, too, is when you're kind of looking to affirm your inner trust, your inner wisdom is just tuning in to maybe feeling in what is something you want an answer to, right? Maybe there’s a question that you want an answer to, and you can just have a little journaling activity about this and just tune in. Ask yourself, if my wisest self were to answer this question, if all the wise parts of me can share what they know to be true, what would you write? Just see what happens for five minutes, right? There’s no wrong way to do it. 

0:18:01

It’s just a way of tuning in, and then you can often get a lot of insight because I think we are (in different experiences) more and more able to tap into these different parts of ourselves that do know that blueprint of trust, that are able to tap into that more easily, right?

And so, another thing that I want to share around protecting your trust (which I think is really important) is protecting your confidence, right - protecting your confidence. My husband actually shared this with me, but I love what it means ‘cause what it means is don’t indulge in things that make you feel bad about yourself, right? Protect your confidence. So, for example, if you go on social media, and you find yourself comparing and despairing and feeling like poop, that’s a good note to be like all right, well, maybe I need to spend less time on social media. I was joking because while I was away I was also 75% less on social media, and I think my happiness went up 75% which is just a good note. I always notice. Less time on social media is really healthy for your brain and more time in the real life is good. 

0:19:02

So just noting that. Like, what am I doing that might be pulling away from my confidence, and how can I stop doing those things? I think that’s a big one. Also, more resourcing in what feels good. Really make a list of things that make you feel good, that support you to feel in your body, that support you to feel grounded, that support you to feel capable, and do those things more often, right? Maybe whatever that practice is for you, tuning in. 

I love bringing in pleasure because I think that’s a beautiful way for me to get into my body, and you know I love that. [Laughs] So I think that’s one of the things I talk about a lot because I feel like it’s so important. Give yourself permission, too, to tune into your needs on a regular basis because I think that is important. We don't often do that enough, and you know I talk about tuning into your needs and creating your desire list on a regular basis because it does help keep you aligned to what you want and need. It can be really easy to get disconnected from that in our busy lives.

0:20:00

The other thing is really allowing yourself to be vulnerable, allowing yourself to feel, allowing yourself to go there so that you can trust that you can feel the feelings and move through them because they are like a tunnel and sometimes it feels like we don't want to feel something, and we avoid it at all costs, and that can make it even worse, but oftentimes if we just allow ourselves to feel what’s there, we can move through it and be on about our day in no time at all. 

Also, making sure that you are creating the boundaries that support you, knowing that if people are pulling away from your confidence or making you feel bad about yourself, maybe give yourself some distance from those people in the ways that you can, right? We’re never gonna be perfect. We’re always gonna make mistakes, but that’s okay, right? We are gonna be kind and compassionate with ourselves. We are gonna be kind and compassionate with ourselves.

Really, to wrap all this up -- because I know I’ve been kind of rambling a bit, but I do feel like it’s all related to this trusting ourselves and how to cultivate self-trust, right? 

0:21:06

Number one, we need to remember that we have the ability to trust in our systems. Our bodies. We have to reconnect to that sometimes. We have to trust that we can be with ourselves in what’s coming up, learning that tool of interoception, trusting our felt sense (what we experience in our own bodies as a result of something), really starting to collect our evidence when we are following your nudges and when we’re not. Like I said before, “I had the urge to do XYZ. I did it. Here’s what happened.” “I had the urge to do XYZ, and I didn't do it. Here’s what happened,” right? It’s just a good way to kind of track your successes as you listen to yourself. Protecting your confidence, resourcing what feels good, self-forgiveness and self-kindness is so, so key, and always, self-compassion. This is a tool we cannot cultivate enough. Really understanding when our bullying inner voice is coming to the surface, and maybe it’s got some points. 

0:22:04

You can say, “Listen. I hear you. These are some valid points you’re sharing. It’s understandable that I would be thinking these thoughts based on my lived experience. However, I’m going to have you sit over in the corner for a minute because I’m gonna tune into my wise sage self, and we’re gonna have a little discussion about what is true and what I know to be true and how I can find a way to move forward in this situation,” right? These things that sound pretty simple are, but it sometimes takes time to learn. 

So if this is something that you are wanting to cultivate more of, and cultivate more self-trust, then I invite you to reach out. You can always book a free call with me, and I’m happy to give you some strategies at amandatesta.com/activate, and I can walk you through some strategies, but even if you just implement the things that I’ve shared here on the podcast, it should be really helpful for you. I also have a great meditation around cultivating trust in your body that if you’d like to get that, again, shoot me an email and we will send it out to you (info@amandatesta.com), and you can put in the subject line “Trust Meditation” and I will send that your way.

0:23:09

As well, I’d love to hear you share with me what some ways are that you have cultivated trust in your own life and how that has benefited you. I always love to hear your own stories as well so please don't hesitate to share those with me. Again, sending you so, so much love. 

As we leave, I’m gonna reshare this mantra with you one more time because I love this mantra from the Sage archetype on really being in your truth-aligned leadership, making choices and taking actions that are in impeccable alignment with your truth, right? Letting go of what’s misaligned for the sake of honoring what is true for you and just noticing how this lands. I’ll invite you to play with this. “I see the truth. I speak the truth. I align to the truth. I am clarity. I am choice. I am integrity. I trust myself.” 

0:24:12

Sending you so much love, and we’ll see you next week!

[Fun, Empowering Music] 

Thank you so much for listening to the Find Your Feminine Fire podcast. This is your host, Amanda Testa, and if you have felt a calling while listening to this podcast to take this work to a deeper level, this is your golden invitation. I invite you to reach out. You can contact me at amandatesta.com/activate, and we can have a heart-to-heart to discuss more about how this work can transform your life. You can also join us on Facebook in the Find Your Feminine Fire group, and if you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please share with your friends. Go to iTunes and give me a five-star rating and a rating and a raving review so I can connect with other amazing listeners like yourself.

0:25:02

Thank you so much for being a part of the community.

[Fun, Empowering Music]