Building self-trust: be the safety you wish to create

“Being the safety I wish to create” is a principle I’ve been examining deeply lately through my own experience and relationships with others, as well as the shared explorations with clients I coach. I've noticed how easy it can be to seek safety and validation externally, only to find it missing in the moments we need it most. Over time, I’ve come to understand that the most dependable safety often begins within, self-trust being the foundation of this safety.

Like lichen, which survives through a fine-tuned balance between two distinct organisms, algae and fungi, we grow most sustainably when we can nourish ourselves first and then connect with others from that grounded place. Interconnection becomes possible when we’re not reaching from emptiness, but from wholeness, able to self-trust, self-grow and co-create.

What If Your Sensitivity Isn’t a Flaw, But a Form of Intelligence?

When a situation causes emotional shutdown or nervous system overload, it can feel like failure. But what if it’s not? What if your body is simply offering you data, letting you know something’s off, even if your mind hasn’t caught up yet?

Our nervous systems don’t wait for full sentences. It responds to tone, micro-expressions, power dynamics, unclear signals, and subtle energy withdrawals or inconsistencies. It tracks not just what’s being said, but how it’s being said, and what’s not being said, as well as whether it’s safe to stay open and engaged, or not. When danger is sensed, whether harshness, exclusion, ambiguity, or emotional disconnection, the system reacts, often long before your rational brain can explain why.

From a trauma-informed lens, these aren’t flaws. They’re adaptations your system learned in environments where safety and attunement were inconsistent or absent.

Neuroscientist Dr Lisa Feldman Barrett notes that the brain doesn't just react, it predicts based on what it’s seen before. If you’ve been dismissed, ignored, or criticised in the past, your system might brace for it again, sometimes before a single word is spoken. And here’s the hard part: sometimes your system is reacting to a past pattern. And sometimes, it's pointing to something very real happening right now.

At the same time, our own reactions can also trigger others’ nervous systems, making them feel threatened or defensive. This doesn’t excuse the impact behaviour can have, whether the intent is good or not, but it shows how emotional energy flows between people, and why it’s so important to hold compassion for ourselves and others, and to seek our own safety within first, before we try to co-create.

Practical Ways to Support Yourself

1. Resource yourself in the moment
Resourcing means giving yourself cues of safety, connection, and choice. Build a daily practice that helps resource your nervous system, something reliable to return to when the world feels too fast, too much, or too uncertain. This might look like: breathwork, a walk after a hard conversation, a calming scent, a soft blanket, or a favourite playlist.

Recognising when you are at capacity before your system is flooded, is incredibly important. Take breaks with something fun, less intense, and more light-hearted. That doesn’t mean avoiding courageous conversations, but making the time to schedule them when you feel you have the energy required to do so. Managing your own boundaries are critical in this.

2. Get clear on what you’re feeling

Use a feelings wheel or metaphor:

• “My brain is racing ahead of me.”

• “My chest is tight and I can’t focus.”

• “I’m in the red zone—I need a pause.”

Dr Lisa Feldman Barrett’s research shows that accurate emotion labelling reduces ambiguity and helps shift the nervous system from threat back toward regulation. Acknowledging our feelings to ourselves doesn’t always mean we share our moments of activation with others in the moment either. There is a reason people say that it can be good to count to ten.

Emotions can get stuck in our bodies when we resist feeling them or when our brains overanalyse in order not to feel or process. Let the emotion pass through you, and remember to do so in a resourced way.
Helpful visualisation:
Imagine a pebble being dropped at the top of your head, and it running all the way through you. Imagine that being the emotion. Observing how it drops through, rather than becoming the emotion, can help support feelings of overwhelm.

3. Practice between the storms

You don’t rewire in crisis. You build capacity in calmer moments so regulation becomes a reflex.

Try:

• Practice expressing needs. A good framework is Dr Marshall Rosenberg’s Nonviolent Communication: When [x] happens, I feel [y], and I need [z]. Sometimes, even just identifying what we need to give ourselves to move forward can mean we don’t have to expect it from others and can ask for support from a grounded place.

• Create grounding rituals with tools like paced breathing, butterfly tapping, orienting, or visualisations or meditations.
  

4. After the storm, get curious

Once your system settles, reflect gently:

• What felt off? What was I afraid of?

• Where do I need to meet my own needs more clearly?

• Where do I need to reset boundaries, or renegotiate agreements with others?

• Where have I over-functioned in the hope that someone else would finally step up?

• Where is my brain overprocessing, instead of feeling what I need to feel?

• What is within my control that I need to take responsibility for?

• How can I have the conversation with the other person with humility and compassion?

• What still needs integration or healing in me? Others may mirror back unmet needs or places we’ve ignored our own truth. That reflection can hurt, but it can also guide us.
  

It can also be helpful to notice the stories we tell ourselves about what we think is happening. Sometimes, past experiences can shape our stories and can add extra layers of fear or meaning that aren’t fully about the present moment.

So, pause and ask yourself:

• What am I believing right now about this situation?

• Is this belief based on what’s truly happening, or is it influenced by past pain?

• What else could be true here? How can I honour the truth of what happened, whilst telling a more compassionate story?

• Is someone else’s discomfort making me question my worth?

This practice doesn’t mean doubting your feelings or the data you see about the situation, but it means holding them with curiosity, compassion and kindness, so you can respond with clarity rather than reactivity.

5. Collaborate or carry it alone

When you’re unsure whether to hold on, collaborate, compromise, or let go, focus on the consistent patterns, not just the potential or occasional efforts. Clarity calms the nervous system, and accepting the truth saves energy spent hoping things will change without real collaboration.

Grace is for the occasional misstep, but repeated patterns without accountability or mutual willingness matter deeply.

Ask yourself:
• How does the other person respond when I express a need, boundary, or invite collaboration?
• Do they engage and follow through, or avoid and withdraw?
• Over time, do I feel more supported and energized, or depleted and alone?
• Is there a shared willingness to work through challenges together, or am I carrying the effort alone?

It is equally important to not only track what hurts, but also what lands. Noticing these patterns helps you decide whether there is room to co-create a healthy way forward, or if it’s time to step back and protect your own wellbeing.

Growth comes from self-trust

Building self-trust means learning to be safe with uncertainty. You don’t always have to know exactly what you want to honour your boundaries, say no, or make choices that protect your wellbeing. Self-trust is about pausing, feeling into what’s true for you in the moment, even when the ground feels unsteady. It’s about returning to yourself moment by moment, noticing what feels true, and responding from that place.

It deepens when you start listening not just to your thoughts, but to what your body is telling you: signals of tension, ease, warmth, or shutdown. Your body often knows the truth before your mind can catch up. Trust grows stronger when you reflect on what has worked and honour your own inner experience, rather than being swept away by fear or doubt.

This is what creating inner safety looks like:
Not being unshakable, not wanting to force the outcome or trying to predict the future, but staying present with yourself in each moment: with your own clarity, care, and courage.

It is self-leadership rooted in gentleness, truth, and discernment, right from where you are.