S2 EP289 – Reclaiming the Power of Self-Trust

Hi everyone, and welcome to the Inner Bonding Podcast. I’m Dr. Margaret Paul, and today I want to explore one of the most transformative questions we can ask ourselves:

Do I trust my inner and higher knowing?

This is a question at the heart of all healing. It’s the foundation of loving yourself, making aligned choices, and living with peace instead of confusion or self-doubt.

Do you ever doubt your decisions? Second-guess your feelings? Worry that you’ll make a mistake or regret a choice?

If so, you’re not alone. Many people have been raised to look outside themselves for answers – to please others, follow rules, or suppress their feelings in order to be loved.

When I lived in Los Angeles and worked with clients in-person, I had a poster on my wall that said, “When you trust yourself, you will know how to live.” This is a quote by German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, a quote that has always had deep impact on me, because it’s so true. Learning to trust myself has been truly life-changing and lifesaving for me. 

Many people tell me:

• “I don’t know what to do.”
• “I’m afraid to trust myself.”
• “What if my gut is wrong?”
• “What if I make a mistake?”

If you’ve felt this way, again, you’re certainly not alone. In this podcast, we’ll look deeply at:

• What inner knowing is
• How to connect with your higher guidance
• Why we often don’t trust ourselves
• And how to build the kind of self-trust that brings deep emotional and spiritual freedom

Let’s start with clarity about inner and higher knowing.

Inner knowing is your soul’s awareness – your body’s intuitive intelligence -your emotional truth in the moment. It lives in your feelings, your gut. It speaks quietly, but clearly, if you listen.

Higher knowing is the loving guidance that comes from a spiritual source – however you define that: God, Spirit, Love, the Universe, or your own highest self.

In Inner Bonding, we practice learning to trust both our inner knowing and our higher knowing.

• Your inner knowing comes from your soul, your inner child, when you are open to learning from your feelings.
  
  
• You access your higher knowing when you are operating as a loving, adult, open to learning and connected with your higher guidance.

When you combine these two forms of knowing, you receive whole-body, whole-soul direction, but it does take time and practice to learn to trust this. I learned to trust both my inner and higher guidance by testing it out over and over, sometimes listening and doing what it said was loving to me, and sometimes deliberately not taking the action to see what would happen. Over and over, things went much better when I listened to my feelings and my higher guidance, so now I always listen and take the loving action I’m guided to take.

Previously, I was just reacting to things, rather than embracing the power of self-trust and responding with loving actions.

How did we learn not to trust ourselves? What false beliefs did you internalize growing up that led you to not trust yourself? Here are some of the beliefs I absorbed from my parents. Do you identify with any of these?

• “My feelings aren’t important and aren’t valid.”
• “I’ll get in trouble if I listen to myself.”
• “Other people know better. Adults know better.”
• “I’ll be abandoned if I follow my truth.”
• “What I think I know is weird and people will think I’m crazy.”
• “I’m just a girl. What do I know?”

What are some of the beliefs you internalized that keep you from trusting your inner and higher knowing? You might want to write down what you are aware of.

Our false beliefs formed in childhood, especially in homes where feelings were ignored, punished, or ridiculed. And often, these false beliefs are reinforced by society, religion, or education.

When your wounded self is in charge, it will tell you:

“Don’t trust your feelings. Your feelings are not trustworthy.”
“You’ll be alone if you follow your truth.”
“You’ll be wrong and things will fall apart.”

The wounded self is afraid of making a mistake, afraid of being rejected, afraid of feeling helpless. So instead of listening inside, it tries to control everything on the outside.

Your inner child is your true soul self who often communicates with feelings, and your feelings have powerful information for you. When you’re anxious, depressed, angry, guilty, shamed, empty, jealous, scared, or uneasy, your child is speaking to you, letting you know that you are likely abandoning yourself and operating from the false beliefs – the lies – of your wounded self. When you feel peaceful, full, and happy, your inner child is letting you know you are loving yourself and operating from truth.

But many people either:

• Dismiss their feelings
• Or get overwhelmed by them, and then judge themselves for having them

Just as an actual child needs their parents to be present with their feelings, to care about what they are feeling, to want to understand their feelings, and to feel safe and comforted, your inner child needs the same thing. Your inner child needs for you to show up as a loving inner mom and dad and listen to your feelings with an intent to learn about what you might be doing to cause any painful feelings. Your inner child needs you to say, “I’m here. You are not alone. I’m listening and I will take care of you.”

Without a loving adult, your inner child is left alone with your young, wounded self running the show or collapsing. 

Learning to trust your inner knowing means turning inward and asking:

“What are you feeling right now?”
“What do you need?”
“What am I telling you that’s causing this pain?”

This is the first half of learning to trust yourself: learning to trust the emotional truth of your inner child.

Now the second half: trusting your higher guidance.

This is where many people get stuck. They say:

• “I don’t hear anything.”
• “I can’t connect.”
• “What if I’m making it up?”

The truth is: Guidance is always here. But you must be in the frequency of love and truth to receive it.

You can’t hear your guidance from your wounded self. As I’ve often said, you hear it when your intent is to learn, not control. The intent to control causes a very low frequency, way too low to access the higher frequency of your spiritual guidance. The intent to learn about loving yourself raises your frequency, and if you are also eating clean, natural, non-processed organic food from regenerative farms, your frequency will be high enough to access your spiritual guidance.

When you are open to learning with your guidance, you can ask questions such as:

“What is loving to me in this moment?”
“What is in my highest good and the highest good of all?”
“What is the truth about these false beliefs?”
“What is the truth about this situation?”
“What’s the next loving step, the next right thing, the next loving action?”

And then… you listen.
Not just with your mind, but with your body, your heart, your energy.
It might come as a quiet voice, a sensation, an image, or a deep knowing.

And the more you practice, the clearer it becomes.

Self-trust begins with inner connection, and it takes practice and more practice and more practice. It’s a process, not an event, and over time of listening to your inner and higher guidance and taking loving actions, you will learn to trust yourself.

The practice is the Six Steps of Inner Bonding. 

The first step in Inner Bonding is using your breath to take you out of mind focus and into body focus, following your breath into your body, scanning your body to check in with your physical feelings, because emotions generally show up as physical feelings, such as a tightness in your chest or stomach. As you get present with your feelings, decide that you want to learn more about what your feelings are telling you.

You learn to move toward your feelings rather than away from them. Doing this is revolutionary—because most of us have been trained to ignore or judge our emotions.

When you begin tuning in with curiosity rather than judgment, you show your inner child:

“You matter. Your feelings matter. I’m here. You are not alone.”

This begins to repair the breach of trust that likely started in childhood – when your feelings might not have been seen, listen to, respected, or understood.

Over time, your inner child learns:

“I can come to you. You won’t abandon me.”

That’s the foundation of self-trust.

Step Two is consciously choosing to open to learning. One of the most important choices you can make in Inner Bonding is to choose the intent to learn rather than control.

When you’re in control mode, your wounded self is in charge. 

But the wounded self can’t be trusted – not because it’s bad, but because it operates from survival, not truth.

When you shift to the intent to learn, you become open to your feelings, your guidance, and loving action. And each time you choose this path, you show yourself:

“I want to know the truth. I want to love myself. I want responsibility for the feelings of my inner child.”

That’s a huge act of self-respect – and self-trust grows from there.

Once you’ve opened to learning, then you open to your higher guidance, inviting love and compassion into your heart so that you are operating as a loving adult. 

Then, as an open, curious loving adult, you explore what your feelings are telling you, asking your inner child if there is something you are telling yourself from your wounded self, or some way you are treating yourself from your wounded self – some way you are abandoning yourself – that is causing your inner child to feel something other than peace and fullness inside. You also ask about the deeper feelings of life – the feeling you are not causing, such as loneliness, grief, heartbreak, and helplessness over others, outcomes, situations, and events.

Once you understand how you might be abandoning yourself, you go deeper into your wounded self, and here is where you become aware of your false beliefs. You are asking your wounded self why you are abandoning yourself, such as judging yourself, avoiding your feelings with addictions, or blaming someone else for your feelings. Here is where you become aware of your false beliefs about yourself, such as believing you are not good enough, and therefore need to control getting love and avoiding pain. And you also become aware of your beliefs about what you can or can’t control.

Then you move to Step Four, opening to your higher guidance, visualizing being in a beautiful place in nature with an older, wiser version of yourself, your higher self, and you ask two questions of your guidance:

“What is the truth about this belief?” and
“What is loving to me right now?”

The more you practice, the more clearly you begin to hear or feel answers – not always in words, but through:

• A calm knowing
• A sense of peace
• An intuitive nudge

Every time you act on this guidance, and it turns out to be true and loving to yourself and others, your self-trust grows stronger.

Eventually, you stop saying “I don’t know what to do,” and start saying:

“Let me check in with myself and my guidance. I’ll know.”

That’s real self-trust. It’s not based on being perfect – it’s based on being connected and then taking the loving actions.

Step Five is acting on what you know is loving to you – even when it’s hard. 

This is where the real transformation happens.

When you practice Inner Bonding consistently, you learn to take loving action – not just sit with insight but doing something about it.

That might mean:

• Saying no to something that drains you
• Setting a boundary with someone who mistreats you
• Taking a creative risk
• Resting when your body says stop
• Letting go of people-pleasing
• Letting go of blaming others

Each time you act on what’s truly loving to you, you show your inner child:

“You can count on me. I won’t abandon you. I’ll protect you. I’ll follow through.”

And that is the deepest form of self-trust: knowing that you will show up for yourself – for your inner child – even when it’s uncomfortable or scary.

Finally, in Step Six, you check in with your feelings again. If you feel relief, you know you’ve taken a loving action.

Practicing Inner Bonding builds self-trust because it gives you a reliable process for:

• Tuning into your real feelings
• Challenging false beliefs
• Accessing higher wisdom, and
• Taking loving action again and again

It reconnects you with the wise, loving, powerful part of yourself that knows who you are and what’s right for you.

Self-trust isn’t something you have to chase. It’s something you build – by showing up for yourself with love over and over.

I invite you to keep practicing, even if you doubt, even if you don’t “hear” guidance yet. Trust is built one loving choice at a time.

Some other ways of building self-trust are to learning to stay in Step One of Inner Bonding all day long – staying tuned in to your inner child as you would a baby. This lets your inner child know that your feelings are important to you, and that you are listening to your inner knowing.

For some, keeping a journal of your inner dialogues builds up trust in your inner knowing and trust in your higher guidance.

Asking throughout the day, “What is loving to me right now?” – listening and then taking action on what you hear or see. Even small loving actions, such as noticing when you are hungry or need to go to the bathroom can build trust. Trust is also built when you have the courage to speak your truth in the moment with others. 

Taking loving action on your own behalf is vital for building self-trust. How can your inner child trust you if you don’t take the actions to take loving care of yourself and your feelings? 

Even if it feels small or uncertain, take the step. Self-trust grows by experience.

Be sure not to judge yourself for not knowing. Self-trust can’t grow in shame. If you “miss” the guidance or make a mistake, be gentle.
Ask: “What can I learn here?” Not “What’s wrong with me?”

Keep returning to love. Inner Bonding is a return to love – love for yourself, love for truth, and love for your connection to spirit. That love is where guidance lives.

Self-trust occurs with a loving relationship with yourself.

Trust isn’t something you magically “have.” It’s something you build – like any relationship.

You build trust with yourself by:

• Showing up
• Listening deeply
• Acting in alignment
• Making mistakes and still choosing love

So let me ask you again, from a place of love:

Do you trust your inner and higher knowing?
If not yet… are you willing to begin?

Because when you learn to trust that deeper voice, when you live from love and guidance instead of from fear, when you honor your inner child and open to your higher self…your life becomes clear. Peaceful. Empowered. Aligned.

Thank you so much for being with me today. I invite you to practice tuning in – not to the noise outside, but to the wisdom within, because your soul and your guidance are always here…waiting for you to trust.

You can learn so much about inner and higher trust and learn to connect with your spiritual guidance with my 30-Day video home-study course, Unlocking Your Inner Wisdom. Do yourself a big favor and support yourself in learning to trust yourself by taking this course

I’m sending you my love and my blessings.