How to Rebuild Self-Trust After Deception and Betrayal (3 Steps)
Anyone who has been deceived or betrayed by someone or something they once trusted understands the impact this experience can have on our ability to trust.
But how do we move beyond experiences like these so that we can regain our self-trust and step more confidently into the future of our lives?
In this article, I’m talking about the relationship between deception, self-trust, and self-doubt to help you understand how these things interact and what you can do to rebuild self-trust after a violation.
How Self-Trust Gets Broken
When someone grooms your trust (i.e., manipulates you into a position where you’re more likely to obey, follow, or believe them) and then deceives you, blindsides you, or stabs you in the back, this can shatter your sense of trust, both in yourself and in others.
When someone uses your trust against you, any sense of trust you once had in yourself, your decisions, and your feelings can go out the window in an instant.
And while this shattering isn’t permanent, it’s deep. It’s lasting. And I want to honor that.
My Own Experience of Deception
I experienced deception in my relationship with my ex-fiancé and with the pastor of the cult-like evangelical Christian church I was a part of in the past.
In both situations, I experienced ongoing, repetitive inconsistency between what these people were saying, and what they were doing. I would get a sense that something wasn’t quite right, yet I was told, “Trust me, everything is fine.” This led me to trust the words and opinions of others over what I was feeling about how they were behaving.
Eventually, it came to light that my ex had been lying to me throughout our entire relationship. My pastor had been spiritually abusing me, along with so many others. The people in whom I’d put so much trust had intentionally deceived me. They used my trust in them against me to gain control and power over me.
Through that experience, I lost all sense of trust in myself.
I remember blaming myself. “How could I be so stupid? How did I not see it?”
But in order to grow beyond that experience, I had to let go of my shaming and blaming. I had to grieve everything I’d been through, to process the pain, and to gradually learn how to trust again.
The 3 Steps I Followed to Rebuild Trust in Myself
I stopped blaming myself for what happened.
First, I had to remove the shame and blame from myself. While it can be so tempting to blame ourselves for “letting” bad things happen, the truth is that we just don’t know what we just don’t know. I did the best I could with the information I had at the time, and no amount of shame or self-blame could change that.
But removing self-blame can feel really scary, because it can feel like you’re leaving yourself open to “making the same mistakes again” or falling into a similar situation. We think that if only we can pinpoint exactly which mistakes we made along the way, we can keep ourselves safe in the future.
Unfortunately, we cannot control what other people do to us. It was not my fault that the people in my life deceived and betrayed me, just like it isn’t your fault if you’ve been deceived or betrayed. Removing shame and self-blame can help you grow toward a place of self-forgiveness and self-trust.
2. I let myself grieve.
To heal from my own experiences of deception, I had to grieve and allow myself to actually feel the pain of what happened. I couldn’t just jump to “figuring out” what trusting myself felt like. First, I had to honor the very real pain that was taking over my body.
Because grief doesn’t happen in the mind — it happens in the body. I had to actually feel my feelings on a physical level. I had to move with the experience of my pain. Embodying my grief was an essential part of eventually being able to trust myself again.
To rebuild your sense of self-trust, you must allow yourself to grieve. Let yourself be angry that your trust was violated, that your willingness to trust someone was used against you. By safely experiencing and processing these emotions, you can grow into a new version of yourself that can once again experience trust.
3. I stopped relying solely on my mind — and started trusting my body.
When I first started recovering from these experiences of deception, I got caught up in trying to figure everything out on an intellectual level.
Who can I trust, and who can I not?
What’s anxiety, and what’s my intuition?
What’s reality, and what are just the lies I’ve been told?
Constantly asking myself these questions was a pointless effort, because I hadn’t processed the pain and grief in my body yet. My mind was trying to steer the ship, when what I actually needed to do was listen to the needs of my body.
Trying to figure out how to trust myself right away before processing my emotions only led to confusion and more self-doubt. Because I had active, unprocessed pain in my system, I saw the whole world through a lens of threat and fear.
Once I began to honor my pain, to acknowledge it and move it through my body, I was able to see situations, people, myself, and my choices from a more clear and grounded place. Now, as the founder and lead Body/Mind Integration Expert at Healing Embodied, I help my clients do the same.
Moving Beyond Fear and Self-Doubt
Moving through this process does not mean you will never experience pain or doubt again. It doesn’t mean you’ll always “just know” what the best decision is or that you’ll never again experience betrayal. Again, it’s never our fault when other people violate us, and there’s no perfect roadmap to avoiding violations of trust.
But rebuilding self-trust is absolutely possible, and when you have deep trust in yourself, you will feel more capable of making the kinds of decisions that feel supportive and aligned with you and your life.
Rebuilding trust isn’t about staying safe from all pain — it’s about knowing how to be with your pain, how to honor it, to grieve, and to actually feel your anger and sadness. Having self-trust means knowing that you will have your own back and be able to support yourself with love, care, and strength if you ever do experience deception or betrayal again.
The Importance of Patience As You Rebuild Self-Trust
Rebuilding self-trust is not an overnight process. Do not rush yourself.
Remember: You don’t have to be fully healed or to fully grieve before you can learn what it means to trust yourself again. Healing is a simultaneous journey of expanding your capacity to hold grief and unlocking your ability to trust yourself again.
It’s a messy, non-linear process, and there is no formula. It’s an experiential process of knowing how to discern in your body what feels safe and what feels unsafe.
Self-trust is a relationship you build with yourself and your own body.
Embody Self-Trust With Healing Embodied
After integrating and processing the pain of my past, I now show up in my life as a wiser version of myself. I am not the same person I was before. I can trust in my awareness and my embodied wisdom, and I can forgive my past self for not knowing then what I know now.
And this is possible for you too.
At Healing Embodied, we specialize in helping our clients build self-trust, find safety within their bodies, and step confidently into their lives. As Mind/Body Integration Experts, we’re here to help support you as you deepen your relationship to yourself, your inner wisdom, and your life.
If you want to learn how to trust in yourself, trust in life, and trust in love, explore our programs and courses or apply for a free clarity call to find out how we can best support you.