How to Trust Yourself Again: Rebuilding Your Inner Authority.

So many empaths and sensitive women find themselves asking:

 “Why don’t I trust myself?”
 “Why do I doubt my intuition?”
 “Why am I always second-guessing my decisions?”

In today’s episode, we’re exploring the real reasons self-trust breaks down - not because you’re doing something wrong, but because you’ve been conditioned to disconnect from your inner authority.

We’re going deep into the moments, experiences, and survival patterns that quietly teach you to override your intuition, suppress your truth, and question your own knowing.

This episode includes two powerful personal stories from my own journey of self-abandonment.

These stories anchor the emotional and energetic reality of what it's like to trust (or not trust) yourself as an empath.

You’ll begin to understand that self-abandonment isn’t a flaw — it’s a learned protective strategy.
And because it’s learned, it can be unlearned.

Key Themes You’ll Hear:

✨ How your nervous system learns whether you’re safe with yourself
 ✨ Why intuition goes quiet when you repeatedly ignore it
 ✨ The connection between boundaries and self-trust
 ✨ The emotional residue of saying yes when everything inside says no
 ✨ Why empaths are especially vulnerable to losing inner authority

Your Free Gift: 

🎁 The Courage Codes Bundle – Your free activation set including a 12-minute Audio Activation- The Call To Courage Activation, The Spark Activating Journal, and Courage Code Wallpapers to help you stay aligned with your truth and take inspired action.
👉 [Download the Courage Codes Bundle here]

Transcript

0:00

Welcome back. I'm Michelle Erman. In today's episode, I think every sensitive or spiritually connected woman has lived through this at least a few dozen times in her life where she has. You have begun to second guess whether or not you can trust yourself, are you gonna follow through? Are you going to do the thing that you really want to do? Are you going to do the thing you don't wanna do? Are you able to follow through with yourself, in situations that you know will be tricky for you? Will I be able to say no? Can you trust yourself? And I think for many of us, there's a moment when you realize. You just don't trust yourself anymore, and not because you're weak and not because something inherently wrong with you. But because over time through a series of small misalignments, you slowly stopped choosing yourself over and over again, and this episode is all about rebuilding your inner authority. The part of you that knows the part of you that leads the part of you that doesn't abandon your truth when it's inconvenient. And if you have been struggling with your intuition or like struggling to hear it, or you second guess every decision, or you feel like you've lost yourself somewhere along the way, or maybe you just recognize this as something you're not going through right now, but certainly something you've been through, this is going to feel like coming home in a sense, because we are really gonna dive into stuff that you're familiar with. But I'm gonna give you some clarity and I'm gonna share some stories that. I think could help us look at the importance of this work and what you need to do. But before we dive in, If you're listening to this at the release of that podcast episode, the Doors to Modern Empath Boundary Mastery are still open for just a couple more days. I am closing the doors on the third, and, I'm heading on an airplane actually, and going to Nashville on the fourth. Everything we're gonna talk about here today, and honestly everything we talk about in this podcast, if it relates to you, if you like this podcast, if it's re resonating with you, then consider what it might be like to work together and join the group. We'll talk more about that at the end And the show notes will have the link, So let's talk about what it really means to lose self trust. Let's start with something honest you don't. Lose self-trust in one dramatic moment. I think this is a compassionate take on it because it isn't some dramatic thing that happens. Like I said, it's, it's lost in the tiny choices where you told yourself, oh, it's not a big deal. Or you said, oh, I'll deal with it later. I'm overreacting. They know better than I do each moment feels small when you're saying these things to yourself, but energetically they add up. They're big. And this is especially true for us sensitive empath types because we are taught most of our life because we can be so open emotionally and we understand people and we are helpers by nature. We're taught to prioritize. Harmony over truth, our relationships over our needs and peace over our own inner alarm bells, and that's how self abandonment habits actually become habit, that's how that all happens is by those small little micro movements that eventually build up. Because here's the real truth, you cannot trust yourself if you outsource your decisions. If you outsource your needs and you outsource your identity, like letting other people decide who you are. But there is a turning point, and I am gonna tell you a little bit about one of my stories. Where I also, I really had to learn, I had to learn my limit. I too obviously, you know, was a people pleaser and, an over giver, over doer. And, it was the bane of my existence in some levels, and I can still remember. My turning point very clearly. There was a moment and, and there were others, but this one just really stands out when I think about it. Have you ever had the experience where your boss at work asks you to do something so outrageous that you actually think they must be joking, right? They, they've gotta be joking. This can't be, uh, like, like maybe you felt at this time like you were being punked. If you have that story in you and you're like, absolutely. I was asked the craziest thing, I am about to blow you out of the water. Okay. I was asked something that you will be so shocked and like, oh my God, Michelle, right? This was just such a crazy experience. So I have lived many lives like you. Most of us. Many of us have lived many lives previous to this one, where I find you at now. One of my lives was that I lived. I was out in Colorado and I worked for the state of Colorado. I was a social worker. I had started as a, i, I sort of worked with kids who got arrested and got in trouble with the law and I would sit with the DA court and I'd go back and I would work with these kids as a case worker, social worker type. So I was a social worker for the state, however. Child Protection Services took over, the entire sort of umbrella to the job that I was in, and made us become part of that without really asking us if that's what we wanted. So I had no choice, and suddenly my job became doing child protection services and. We saw a lot. I saw a lot. It was the craziest stuff that you that you can't imagine. It was really crazy to hear the stories I heard and to witness what I had witnessed. So I didn't stay there too long. But this was the breaking, this is one of the breaking points. So I'm on the job and my boss one day calls me into his office and he says, I have a question for you. I said, okay. He's like, can you sit down? I'm like, I guess, yeah, sure. And then he asks me. Um, he actually, he starts with telling me, you know, there's an opportunity here. I should have known right away, there's an opportunity here for you to make some extra money and I'm wondering if you'd be interested. And I said, okay. And he said, with a straight face. He said, there is something that, uh, we'd need you to do. And because it's out of, out of the usual, they would pay you more. I looked at him and I was like, what, what, what would I do? And he went on to explain to me that they just removed a small family, so two adults and a child from a tiny, home. They both suffered from mental illness and they were sadly, in living in a world that they believed that the aliens were coming and they were told and instructed that they needed to jar all their feces into jars. Yes, I know this is gross. It's only gonna be a minute. So they did this for, I don't know, remember how long, but they did it for so long that. Their entire home was filled with jars. Like hoarders would fill a house with jars of feces. So every time they went to the bathroom, they went in a jar and they closed the jar and they put it somewhere. And so the bathtub was full of jars. The shelves were full of jars. The walls were full of jars, like at countertops, sank full of jars. So we're imagining no one's really necessarily showering, you know, they obviously figured this out. Got this kid outta this situation, and these two parents. And I am sitting there in the office as he explains this to me, and I'm looking at him like, what is he going to ask me to do here? And he stumbles into it and he says, we have hazmat suits. Yep. You got that right. He said, we have hazmat suits for you. And I think my eyes started to maybe even water at this point. Previous to this moment, I'm not gonna lie, I have been a people pleaser my whole life saying no to things difficult, particularly on the job type stuff, right? Like I, I'm really gonna bend over backwards for you, especially if you're my boss and it's a work situation and, you know, and so. He says to me, we have a hazmat suit. We're putting together a small team of people. You guessed that there's probably two people that are willing to do it. I have no idea. They're going to go in all suited up and they're gonna remove all the jars and they're gonna clean out this house. And we're we're wondering, we're kind of hoping you might be interested. There's extra money. He says, again, and I tell you, the whole body. Experience that I was having as he was talking to me, and I looked at him and I looked him in the eyes and I could tell there was slightly a smirk behind his, behind his eyes. You know, you can see that and somebody could feel that. But on the other hand, there was also, I guess, seriousness. You know, he was really holding his posture in this, and I looked at him and I said, absolutely not. No. No, no, no. I think I said it like four times. I couldn't say no enough and. At that moment, I looked at him and I said to him, I said, you, you, you honestly, if you were to expect me to do this, I cannot work here. And I can't believe I said it because it wasn't like me to say that. But then, you know, he kind of gave me a smile and he made it all. Okay. And he's like, no, no, I totally understand. He's like, I just have to ask people, we gotta get the team together to do this, which is just ridiculous. Right. So that, for me though, was a turning point of using a. Full body No. And saying not only am I saying no, but I'm letting you know what the consequences if you push this is I'm letting you know the consequences that I will no longer work here. And that was like a coming to Jesus meeting with my nervous system and really recognizing that. I know what's not okay. This was not okay. So saying no calmly, clearly without apology wasn't just a boundary. It was an act of self-trust. It was me choosing myself over someone else's expectations. He would've, I mean, he would've been psyched if I said yes, right? That is what rebuilding your inner authority looks like in real life. It's facing your situations and really aligning yourself with the feeling, the intuition, the experience you have internally, who you are, your values, right? All of it. You're aligning it. With what comes out of your mouth, what boundaries you set, whether or not you show up for yourself, of course is also part of it. If you really want something, if it's really important to you showing up for yourself, but this is what it can look like in real life. And I think a lot of us empaths and sensitive, people here, we lose inner authority kind of easily. If you have people pleasing, right? You take on other people's emotions as your truth. So you kind of feel like that's your responsibility. You say yes when your intuition is screaming. No. In that situation, my, in my intuition said absolutely not. I said absolutely not. But I have been in other situations many, many times where my intuition was trying to tell me absolutely not. And I'll share another story there, but there is ways in which we have. We have let our desire, our need for, being liked, loved, and approved of. It overrides our intuition. And so that becomes an issue and you value this external approval over this internal sort of self alignment that you're trying to have, and you override your body's cues because someone might be disappointed. You confuse keeping the peace with being safe, and that's something that happens unconsciously. Many of us didn't grow up with emotional permission. I'm gonna guess you might not have had outright permission. To disappoint me. Right? Your, your parents didn't say, it's okay if you disappoint me. Your feelings are more important. That's so unusual, right? It's so unusual. And if you did get that, that's so beautiful. But that becomes a lens through which we make decisions, even as adults. And you know, sometimes we make poor ones, you know, sometimes. We make decisions that are so against our intuition. I have an example of another job that I had in a previous life to the one I just explained to you when I was actually an intern in, in college and I worked for this respite for, adults with mental illness. And there was one individual who was there and he was not doing well. Having some sort of an episode or something going on, I was asked outright if I would drive him in my car and bring him to his apartment because he had needed some things. He didn't expect to be there so long, so he needed some things and they can't be left alone because he couldn't be left alone because, um, it would be a safety risk. So I needed to have eyes on him. So I had to be in the apartment with him and I. I, I felt really uncomfortable about that. I, I felt it in my body. I had just walked by him and you could tell that he was so off and he was agitated and he just was, just not right. And I was like, this is gonna be weird. I didn't really feel really comfortable with it, but I didn't say anything. They were in a pinch. The guy that usually does this went home and it was just us females on staff. But we really need it done. So I did it because that's what I do, right? That I was a good girl. I always were the one that would bend over backwards. I'm the one that'll be there for you, right? And that is when I had a really scary encounter where I drove this man to his apartment. Now imagine this. I'm in the car with him, and as we're driving. I can see him getting, and he's, he's in the front seat next to me, which again, uh, dumb, right? Really not smart. And he's getting more and more agitated. And as we get closer to his house, he starts, his hands start shaking. His legs are shaking. And I know this isn't right. This is not smart, Michelle. But I also knew that I was being paid for this. This was my job. I'm the counselor there. This is, you know, I am, I need to prove myself. I, I'll take care of it. It'll be fine. I walk into the apartment. And as I open the door and he walks in, I see. I mean the, the smell of the place in itself just washed over me. It was so strong. And then the mess, you know, right? Like there was food out that had been left. I mean, it was just a mess. And I walked in and I was like, wow, this doesn't feel good to be in. I don't wanna be in here. And many people. Might have said I'm out. Right. But no, I was told I needed to watch him, so I knew I needed to be there. So I waited and I stepped inside, and then he kind of slipped off into another room and I heard this large bang, but I didn't wanna go in the room and check on him because I know that there was a safety issue, but I was starting to feel really unsafe. Then there was another bang that was really loud. And so I yelled out, are you all right? And he comes out and he's shaking and he looks crazy in his eyes. And then I knew I'm in trouble. And so I stepped backwards towards the door. I put my back to the door, I put my hand on the doorknob, and I opened the door and I said, I'm gonna wait for you outside, but you need to come. And I tell you in that moment. He looked like he was about to lunge towards me, but he was far enough away that I had time to get out. But I was just, it was an awful situation to be in, and I completely override my intuition. I found out the next morning I came to work, you know, I got him in the car, I brought him home. Everything went okay, but the next morning when I went into work, someone said, Hey, did you bring so and so to his apartment last night? I said, yeah, they asked me to, and they said, wow. You know, he was just in a therapy session and just told them all that he was having hallucinations of beating you, and he had to hit the wall with his fist to stop himself from acting on it. I'm not joking. And so Right. Like we can't expect other people to do the work of keeping us safe. We can't expect other people to step in and make the decisions that are correct for us. And I know this is an extreme situation, but again, I was thinking, well, they told me to come here so it's okay. Right. Like they expect this from me, it's okay. They wouldn't put me in this situation. Right. Of course they, they did. Right. Which is awful. But the reason I share this is just to point out how important it is for you to not lean on other people to make those kind of decisions for you, that you listen to. I mean, every light was going off in my body, telling me this is wrong, this is wrong, this is wrong. And I'm so fortunate that it went okay, but. That is the stuff that many of us women in particular have learned to bypass. We've learned to bypass our signals in order to make other people comfortable or in order to do the job and show up and have everybody think, you know, we're indispensable. And so I wanted to share that with you today just to highlight the intensity of, of how that can be, that it could actually put us into danger. The moment taught me. Something that I didn't really have words for at the time, but my body does know and my intuition does speak to me. If I don't honor it, I am the one who will pay the price, and you are the one who will pay the price. If you are not honoring what you need to do to build yourself trust back, because it is you that pays the price when you don't, when you deceive yourself, when you don't show up for yourself, when you abandon yourself, it's you that pays the price. You know when you ignore yourself, your system learns something kind of painful. It learns I'm not a safe place. For me, your intuition quiets because it believes you won't listen. And anybody who's worked with me for any period of time that does intuition, if we do intuition work together. We've probably explored that it's really common for women to lose track of their intuition because they have overridden it for so long that it no longer shows up for them. And in fact, as soon as you start doing the work of listening to it and believing that everything is something and buying into it all, all of a sudden his gangbusters again. But when you don't listen and you don't, and you do that self abandonment piece, I'm talking about, you know, your confidence starts to shrink. You stop believing in yourself to follow through with things. You stop believing that you can Actually, I., Grow and expand big because you can't trust yourself to show up for yourself the way you need to, to set boundaries or whatever, right? Your inner guidance system goes offline, and every decision can kind of feel like a guessing game instead of knowing because you're feeling indecisive. But here's the empowering part. I just want you to hear this, that it's not like you're broken. The self-trust that you have with yourself isn't broken. It's only unpracticed. Okay, you can rebuild it anytime. So you heard this episode today, so let's rebuild it. Let's get back in alignment with your trust and really start making a new, because this is it. We're about to hit into the new year here. We're ending a full year. There's a lot going on astrologically. That's a whole other show. And, um, you know, there's so much to support you right now in shedding and rebuilding. And so let's look at what it takes for you to get your authority back online. First and foremost, number one is radical self honesty. I want you to ask yourself, where am I pretending not to know when you really do know? You are like, I don't know. I don't know. Or you are, really not willing to put it out there to people. Like, where are you doing that? What truth have I you been avoiding, truly owning? That's your truth. And who am I trying to protect by silencing myself? I want you to ask yourself, who am I protecting when I'm, you know, letting everybody else speak for me? Or I am, quieting myself in the background, and not trusting my, my opinions, my thoughts, my feelings, my signals. I want you to ask, you know, who are you protecting? Because the truth is, honesty is the doorway to trust and being honest is how you start to trust yourself. But it's also goes both ways. Being honest with other people is how they start to trust you. Someone who is transparent is trustworthy. Someone who says yes when they really mean no is not trustworthy. And I'm gonna say it straight right here, is that. I mean, I think all of us need to hear this. The, the truth is, is that people want this from you. I mean, there are definitely some who benefit from it and may feel differently. They benefit from your silence. They benefit from you being small. They benefit from you, not standing in your power in this way. But most people, most people, they want this from you. They want you to take care of you. So it's not their job. So they don't have to feel like it's, it is their job. It's not their job, and so they shouldn't feel like it is, it's not their job to decipher what is true for you and what isn't. It's not their job to coax it out of you. So let's go into number two. We talked last week about making micro boundaries, and this is kind of the same thing. I just want you to talk. Think about start small. The nervous system needs proof. It doesn't need perfection, but it does need to see This is important to you that you will show up. And so we wanna look at really small, doable ways that you can show up. So set really small little promises, like micro promises to yourself. Like, I'm gonna do this tiny little thing here and that's gonna feel good and I'm just gonna do it, and I'm asking you to do that. Do that all week long. And then do it the next week, right? So keep showing up for yourself and build upon it. Set another one after that because that's what your nervous system needs. It needs to know that you are safe and you will show up, and you will follow through. You need to strengthen that muscle and you're. Intuition is clearest when your body is regulated. So also we wanna have sort of that nervous system safety. So that's number three. Just really like deep breathing, creating stillness. Your soul speaks through a calm body. Your intuition comes through a calm body. And so if you are noticing that you are, feeling like you're not trusting yourself, you have a situation coming up, you don't know how you're gonna be able to handle it, or you wanna show up for yourself with a goal or whatever it is. You gotta call your energy back. Take a deep breath, call it from all directions, bring all your energy back from anything it's attached to, and really do some deep breaths and get back into the body and calm yourself into grounding. And then the next piece is, a new inner authority story. Like we need new stories. The narrative that you have ain't working for your sister, right? Like, I don't trust myself. I can never follow, I never follow through what's wrong with me. All of that kind of talk is certainly also like the chicken, pour the egg kind of thing. It's also not serving you, and so it is hurting you and so when you, I want you to replace, I don't trust myself with, I'm learning to trust myself again. I want you replace, like I always mess up, fill in the blank. I always or never anything is never a good statement, right? I always mess up and you replace that with every choice. Brings me closer to clarity. Like whatever you wanna say is better than that. And then just allowing some energy boundaries that self-trust thrives or inside boundaries. So really detaching from others' reactions. Say no sooner. But learning to get ahead of it a little bit because learning how to communicate around it and detach from other people's reactions. 'cause the truth is ain't, They're in charge of them. They're adults. Every time you try to make decisions for how people should feel, or you wanna try to keep them comfortable, you're taking away their power because they get to decide whether or not they choose to be comfortable. They get to decide whether or not they stand in their power. They get to decide how they respond to your. Boundary. It's up to them. They get to do that. They're an adult. It's not your job to do that for them. And so really learning to stand in that is really helpful. And just choose your truth quietly. You do not have to explain yourself endlessly. You just don't. And so I think these boundaries are just sort of the architecture of self-trust, right? They really hold it in place. So if you are feeling like this all sort of resonates and there's parts of this you really, you could really work on,. If you feel that way in general about the podcast, I wanna personally invite you to check out the Modern Empath Boundary mastery. You've got a couple days. And this program, we really do a lot of this work where we meet weekly live and we really connect as a group. It's a small, beautiful group of women and, uh, only about nine or 10 in there right now. We do this work of rebuilding net tangible self-trust, creating boundaries that stick ending people pleasing and emotional over responsibility, and really learning to choose yourself consistently. And we do this in community with each other. We do this in sisterhood. So we have a meet weekly meeting where each person gets a little bit of time to really just like put out there what's going on with them. And so it really allows us all to sort of. Hold space in this container for each other as we're going through this incredibly valuable work. And there's also monthly group healings that help you to release all these blocks and all this stuck emotion that's getting in the way of moving forward. And lots of tools and beautiful things included to help you really go inward and just really blow this up. And get it done. So doors are open for a short time. I would love to welcome you inside. Let me know if you have any questions. Don't hesitate to shoot me an email. Um, but check out the link in the stone notes and as we close, I want to say out loud, you don't need to become a new version of you. This isn't oh, I gotta go be somebody else. This is about you being more youth. The most you, you can possibly be, you just need to stop abandoning the one person you already are and really show up for her. That is what is being asked of you here. Not to be different, but to actually lean in and show up and really show up for yourself and, and make that a point, because it's important. It's really that simple. I'm really excited for you because this can be a game changer. So thank you for being here. Thank you for listening, and thank you for doing the work. Until next time, go ahead and trust yourself a little more. I want you to choose yourself, honor yourself, and I will talk to you next week. Bye for now.