"I don't know how."

I don't know what to do. I can't figure it out. I cannot afford to mess up.

I’ve been thinking quite a bit about self-trust lately. In fact, I spent most of the summer sitting with the questions of what I want, what gives me joy, and what matters most for me to live a well-lived life. I decided to focus on these questions because I realized that I never really asked them of myself without adding in self-judgement and learned expectations.

Here are some of my own socialized beliefs that kept me from wondering what I desired in life:

wanting is selfish;

sacrifice was the most valuable quality of a woman;

follow the rules if I wanted to avoid hell because I was easily duped by the devil;

only one person could be the head of the household (and it wasn’t me!).

Just think about the allure of the damsel in distress or the times when we text five friends asking for advice because we think that we need to crowdsource before taking action.

We were all exposed to these gendered messages. We didn’t create them, but we do carry them with us.?They tempt us to believe that we don't know what we want or how to take action toward those desires.

Hetero-patriarchy socializes womxn and others of any gender with a minority identity to look to others for authority and approval.?We’ve been taught that there is someone else in the hierarchy, an expert, who can tell us how to make the decisions "safely" in our own lives. While we may experience a sense of relief that we don’t have to make the difficult decisions, we also undercut our self-trust and confidence. We abdicate our authority because we don’t trust ourselves. That's the way that hetero-patriarchy and white supremacy-influenced structures work.

In other words, we give control of our lives away to others (who we may not even like) and we look for external validation to measure our own self-worth. I’ve done it in academia and in my personal life. No level of hustling for “success” can develop self-trust. This reliance on “authority” results in our experiences of imposter syndrome, perfectionism, and self-doubt.

The thought that “I can’t solve my own problems” can be especially painful for feminists who believe in liberatory practices.We feel confused because we think that we?should?be more confident and then we judge ourselves for being “bad” feminists.

This is belief layering.?We have adopted our social justice ideology and practice on top of the toxic patriarchal conditioning and they don’t play well together. Hetero-patriarchal socialization pops up and disrupts our lives because we haven’t yet excavated it.

Have you ever asked yourself what someone you admire would do because you don’t know what to do? The reality is that I don’t know what anyone would do because I can’t read their minds.?When I spend time imagining what’s happening in someone else’s brain, I miss spending the time with my own amazing self.?That’s why I dedicated most of the summer to asking myself what I desire. I love what I learned while also noticing how deeply the patriarchal conditioning in my own life trained me to look outside myself for answers. In addition to keeping me in uncertainty, it also kept me “in line” (and the patriarchy applauds). That’s how hetero-patriarchy and white supremacy culture work. They teach us that it’s dangerous to make decisions for ourselves.

Womxn begin to trust ourselves when we uncover the layers of gender socialization in our lives. This leads to a life of liberation and impact. This is what I teach my clients. This is what I teach myself.