Coming Back to Yourself: A Soft Return to Self-Trust After Burnout

There comes a point where you realize…
 you don’t trust yourself the way you used to.

Not because you’re incapable.
 Not because you’re broken.
 But because somewhere along the way, you learned it wasn’t safe to listen to yourself.

In this episode, we’re gently exploring what it means to come back to yourself —
 after burnout, after overgiving, after abandoning your own needs for too long.

This isn’t about forcing confidence.
 It’s about rebuilding self-trust in a way that feels safe, slow, and sustainable.

Inside this episode, we explore:

•  How self-trust gets disrupted through burnout and relational experiences 
•  The connection between your nervous system and self-doubt 
•  What it actually looks like to rebuild trust with yourself in everyday moments 
•  Small, grounding ways to begin honoring your inner voice again 

This is your invitation to soften…
 and start choosing yourself again.

✨ Journal Prompts:

•  When did I start questioning myself the most? 
•  What signals from my body do I tend to ignore? 
•  What is one small way I can honor myself this week? 

🌿 Affirmation:
I trust myself to choose with care. My needs are valid. I am allowed to listen inward.

—

🎧 If this episode resonated, share it with someone who’s learning to come back to themselves.

If something in today's episode landed for you, if you recognized yourself in the patterns we talked about, I made something for you.

She Left Herself to Be Loved is a free guide I created for the high-achieving woman who has been running on survival mode and quietly knows it. Seven signs, nervous system cues, somatic reflections, and journal prompts to help you start seeing what's actually been happening underneath all the strength.

No email required for the episode. But if you're ready to go a little deeper, it's yours, completely free.

→ Download the free guide: She Left Herself to Be Loved

And if you're ready to take it further, Coming Back to Self-Discovery is the 28-page guided workbook that picks up right where the guide leaves off.

→ Get the workbook: Coming Back to Self-Discovery

Continue the conversation with Shay on her Instagram, Facebook page, Youtube, website, and linkedIn! You can also email Shay at shay@shif...

Transcript

0:00

Hey, love. Welcome to Shift Happens with Shay, your soft space for mental health, relationships, and self growth. Let's shift into healing together. Hello? Hello? Oh my gosh. You could kind of see that in the background, and that is why I usually have that closed. Yeah, this autumn frame is strange. Yeah. Okay, let's get it popping. Oh, all righty then. Hey, love. Welcome back to Shift Happens Shay. I wanna start by asking you something gently, but aren't always gentle, but no, seriously, when was the last time you truly trusted yourself? I mean, you second guess yourself. You didn't overthink a decision. You didn't ask three other people first, but you just truly, honestly trusted yourself through and through. If that question feels uncomfortable or even a little distance, like, uh, lemme put that over there because I don't like it up close. You're not alone because today we're gonna talk about something that us as high achieving women don't realize that we've lost self-trust. In previous episodes of Shift Happens with Shey. I have talked about self-trust. I talked about in your childhood, like her parenting yourselves. I've talked about love, relationship, mental health, and all the above. But we're gonna go into a deeper dive about a pattern because self-trust doesn't just disappear overnight. It unfortunately erodes very quietly. This looks like us overthinking our decisions. Needing reassurance before you act, ignoring your gut. Despite that, it is screaming at you not to do this and feeling unsure. When you know you feel it, you're somatically, as we say in your body. You just know you're making the right decision, but you just still are unsure, like you can't say yes. And from the outside, everybody still sees you as capable. You're still showing up and you still handle the things you need to do. But internally there is this hesitation, doubt, disconnection. And here's the part we don't talk about enough. Self-trust doesn't break because you're weak. It breaks because something or someone taught you, it wasn't safe to trust yourself. And let's sit with that for a second. Who has taught you that it wasn't safe to trust yourself anymore? There are many ways this could happen to us, such as certain relationships, whether that's with families or romantic interests or platonic friendships, where we just start to learn that, man, maybe the decisions wasn't right. Maybe I don't know what I'm doing. Maybe I truly don't know myself. Maybe what everybody else is saying is right. I don't have it all together. Despite that we perform like we do. And some of the things I'm saying, it could look like you burning out from overriding your needs too long. You keep putting everybody else first. I gotta go do this. I got this project deadline due. I gotta show up for this friend. Oh, my family, they wouldn't understand. So I can't put myself first. I have to do X, Y, Z, or it won't get done. Relationships where your voice wasn't honored. Like I said, certain relationships, certain friendships, certain romantic partners where you would speak up and you were made to feel less than. You were belittled, degraded gaslit. I know that's a very popular word everybody likes to say, but No, it's true. And you know you're truly gaslit when you question your reality. You question how you feel. You question what's real. You question what's wrong. You question everything you've ever been taught in your life, and it is a dangerous psychological warfare on your mind that I don't know really what's left from right. Being told you were too much or too sensitive, like your feelings, they're just doing the most, or you've heard that you're doing the most, like, that's real dramatic girl. What are you doing? I've heard that you're too much. And my loved ones have definitely heard. You're too sensitive and there's no such thing as too sensitive or too much. If I'm expressing to you that something hurt my feelings or something doesn't feel right, it didn't land right? It doesn't feel encouraging. It doesn't feel empowering, then it's wrong. It has an air about it. I guess people say, Jenna said quo about it as an aura that something is not right and we're not bucking out. We notice it, but you don't trust it. Because you start believing that you are too much, you start believing that you are too sensitive and growing up you were being good. And to be good meant Ignoring yourself, yourself to be good meant I have to be there for everybody else. I have to take care of everybody else. I have to know everybody else's needs. I need to be there for their emotions, but I can't take time for myself. Oh no, that's selfish. Oh, you can't treat yourself to that beautiful vacation, Uhuh. There were other people who can't go. How dare you go when you're like, what? Maybe growing up you've were like, oh, well I didn't get to do that. Why would you? I sat here and broke my back for you to do X, Y, and Z so that you can have the life that you have, and you're just gonna leave me behind. Being good meant ignoring you, ignoring your needs, ignoring your wellbeing, your welfare and your nervous system did what it does because our nervous system is very sophisticated. It adapted. It started to say, Hmm, it's dangerous when I make decisions on my own. I can't do that. I'm not capable of doing that. So we need to. Double check. Let me ask someone else, let me not mess this up, and others will say, wait a minute, Shay, are you saying I'm insecure because I, I'm not insecure. I do know me. I'm not calling it insecurity 'cause that's not what's going on here. Your nervous system is acting as a bouncer to the club. It's protection, your adaptive information processing, that is what your A IP does. It adapts to dangerous situations or what's perceived as dangerous, harmful, hurtful, and it does anything in its power to make sure we do not feel those feelings again. So that's why you start saying the things that I've mentioned. You double check, you ask someone else, and if you mess up, you're like, oh no, we can't do that. Pause. I can't mess it up. Protection. So, Shea, how do I rebuild self-trust though? What does that look like? Girl, talk to me. because it's landing and I hear that. I've been that girl in that time. She comes up. So I'm gonna help you shift forward. And I wanna show you and I wanna talk about what it looks like to begin rebuilding self-trust in yourself. And you can still also look at my previous episode on self-trust. And I'm going to reiterate, it is not done perfectly. It is not done all at once. This is a journey. This is a race. And it's done gently, softly, and sometimes kind of ugly. You can't, healing isn't perfect. You, you know that that quote was everywhere. Healing isn't linear and that brings true here too. But what it can look like is keeping small promises to yourself. If you say you're going to go get yourself some ice cream after work, go get yourself some ice cream. Don't bully yourself into talking about you need to go do a workout. Follow through on small promises to yourself. Your nervous system needs to see that pattern so it starts to believe it and doesn't see it, and discarded as a one-off. When you keep promises to yourself, you start to trust yourself little by little. Think about it. If someone keeps lying to you, you start rolling your eyes. When they say, I'm gonna be on time. I'm gonna be on time. I promise you this time I'm gonna be on time. And they keep coming late. You start rolling your eyes and you're like, mm, they ain't gonna get here till 15 minutes. Your nervous system is doing the same thing to you when you don't keep small promises to yourself. So let's stop rolling our eyes at each other. Let's start making it a pattern so that your nervous system could be like, okay, she's onto something. We can pause before you say yes. Not everything needs to be responded right away. We live in such a hustle culture and a culture built on urgency and urgency honestly needs to go kick rocks. Because people praise urgency. You're the fastest. Oh my God. You get everything done at this on this time, and as soon as I text you, you respond, and then you're drained. Everything doesn't require, yes, even a no is discernment. Let's start pausing before we say yes. Try to hold down that urge to be like, yes, I can get that done for you. Yes, I can show up. When your body is telling you no, if your body is bracing, like you could feel that in your neck. Your shoulders, your arms. Slow down, slow down for yourself, and that goes into checking in with your body instead of your fear. I'm gonna say it again. Checking in with your body instead of your fear. Your body holds wisdom. It knows better than anyone else what it's feeling right now. It's stress, it's hurt, it's bracing for something. If you are bracing for something that is an automatic no, if it doesn't land in your stomach, well, hmm. I don't think that's right for me. If your heart is racing, it's not right for you. If you're getting clammy and you feel you're temperature rising, or maybe you feel the blood draining from your face, or you're getting lightheaded or whatever, may be your body is screaming at you, no, it's not for me. But in the other aspect, if you're feeling more relaxed. If you're feeling a little bit more lighter, like your chest doesn't feel tight, you feel really assured. When I say assured, it's, it's just, it lands peacefully. You're not nervous. Even though nervous is okay, but you're not doubting yourself. It just lands and you're like, yeah. That feels light, that feels good, that makes me feel good about myself. If it don't make you feel good about yourself and your body's not giving you the validation, it's not for you and it's out of fear. And I want you to let your be valid without an explanation. You are not obligated to over explain. Over. Explain is a survival tactic, not a thriving tactic. To build trust in ourselves. We have to trust our nos. We know why we're doing it. Not everything deserves an explanation. Take your time. Nos are scary, but nos are good for you too. Just as you should start saying yes to you, you should start saying no to others. And I don't mean blocking out your opportunities, your blessings, your people isolating yourself. No isolation is not thriving. We do need community, but you do need to stop over committing yourself. It is akay. I get it. To have a tribe, we must be okay with inconvenience, but every time should not be an inconvenience because if they're not inconveniencing themselves for you, then this is not balance. Let's not get behind catchy phrases and then it's being worked against us. No, even though there is some inconvenience, there is mostly respect and understanding and love. For each other. So make sure that the people in your circle are also, at times, inconveniencing themselves to be there for you. And if it's a no, we need to start looking at our circle again. But coming back, self-trust doesn't come from big decisions. It comes from consistent, quiet, self honoring. You are asked, and like I said, quiet self honoring will keep going such as this can look like you're asked to do something. And like I mentioned, instead of immediately agreeing, you're going to say, let me get back to you. Let me hold off on that. Let me marinate on that. Thank you for reaching out for me. You know, thank you for thinking of me. I appreciate it. I wanna think on that a little bit and I'll, I'll circle back with you. Oh, gimme a moment with that. And I promise I'll get back because we don't do avoidance here. We are gonna come back. I'm not a therapist that treats, that, teaches that my clients know very well. If you try to avoid something, I'm not having it. I'm be like, Hmm, that's avoidance. How can you come back at that more assertively? We're not about to be passive and we're not gonna be passive aggressive, and we're not gonna be aggressive. We're going to be assertive. And then also, like I mentioned earlier, notice what your body is saying. If your mind says Just do it, but your body is saying, hold off. Choose to listen to your body. Instead, like I mentioned, it holds wisdom. Or if you do make a decision, don't immediately go ask three people to confirm it. Let it land. Let it sit with you sometimes also, everybody ain't gotta be in your business. The glow up happens in the quiet moments. It happens in the sacred inbetweens that we talked about back in September, because that's self-trust in motion. I'm just saying. It's not always gonna be loud. It's not always gonna be dramatic. It's not gonna have the lights and the confetti and the fireworks. It won't be this big aha. Oh my God, I saw it. But it will be in the quiet shifts, the quiet moments where you're like, whoa, I'm doing this so much more differently than I used to. I didn't even ask anybody about this. Change I was implementing in my life. I just went and did it and I've been doing it and I didn't even question it. I didn't say, oh my God, what if they think bad about me? What if this is stupid? Lemme go ask them. They know better. I know better. I know me. And that's, it's just different. It feels different. I do want to say this too. Re building self-trust doesn't mean doing everything alone. Like I said earlier, we are not isolating up in here. Rebuilding means learning who feels safe enough to witness you without overriding you. Imma run that back. I'm gonna run it back. It means learning who feels safe enough to witness you without overriding you. There's a difference between being supported and being steered. I want you to have support. I don't want you to do this work alone because rebuilding self-trust, reconnecting to yourself and rediscovering you, it's scary sometimes diving into the depths of yourself and wondering if you'll get back out. You do need to people to remind you of who you are. They the ones that are safe around, the ones who are safe to be around. Are going to have always seen who you were truly meant to be and who you were in their eyes. Despite the self-doubt, they are always gonna be there to support you. And if it's silly and and detrimental, they're gonna call it out. They, but they're gonna call it out and it's gonna be still with love, but they're not gonna be like, hijacked the wheel because at the end of the day, this is your life and they cannot steer your life. Only you can do that. They can have opinions, but it doesn't make it facts. They're opinions. They become a fact when you truly believe it and it comes up a part of you. Now, if it's true that you have that, you usually the late one, then that's a fact. That ain't no opinion. If you always late, you late. But if they've noticed that dang girl, you always doubting yourself. But you do know you. You know what you want. You do amazing work. Shine on that step in that be that. But how you get to be in you again, feeling like you again or whatever that version of you that you are longing for and that you've left behind. It's always gotta be you that finds her, your friends, your family, your love. They can walk beside you. They just can't steer. Your healing gets to include safe people. You're allowed to heal with other people, but please understand who is safe enough to witness this moment, this journey, because like I mentioned, it is super vulnerable. Take a breath here. I want us to take a moment to come back to ourselves and we're gonna do some reflection because Shay loves some reflections, doesn't she? I got three of 'em. 'cause I guess good things come in three. I want you to ask yourself, oh, hold on, pause. If you are driving, y'all know, I like to make this, you know, I like to make this disclaimer. Do not write. Don't jot down, don't look at your phone, don't put it in your notes. If you are journal girly in, you're operating a moving vehicle. You're just gonna have to replay this and come back to this moment. We are not doing this. I don't do liability. So process out loud as if we're in session together. Okay? Process out loud. Say it out loud. What you're thinking when I ask these questions. Everybody else, get your journals, get your phone, do whatnot, or process out loud. Okay. Disclaimer, done. Okay. Ask yourself, when did I stop trusting myself? When did you stop? Trusting your thoughts, your body, your feelings, your experience. When did I stop trusting myself? And that's a past question. 'cause I want you to go through your past. Think about all those different interactions you have had in your life that eventually. Quietly got you to say no to yourself and that you were wrong and you don't know any better. When did we stop trusting ourselves? The next one, I want you to take a moment and think about it in the present. What signals do I ignore most often? What about you are, are you ignoring? What are you overriding in order to be there for everybody else? What are we just saying? I'll get there eventually. I'll get to it soon. Oh, I got this. No worries. What are you saying some of those things to most often. And then lastly, future. What would it look like to honor myself in one small way this week? Process out loud. Say what you're saying. Think about it. And there's no pressure. I just want you to notice I'm not asking you to heal all trauma right now. I'm not asking you to heal all stress. I'm not saying this so that you could be like, oh my God, there's so much to fix about myself. You're not broken. Remember, your nervous system is doing exactly what it was built to do to protect you when it has encountered danger after danger, hurt after hurt. It starts to build any type of resistance, whether good or bad. To it so you don't continue to hurt that way. But this type of protection leads us to self abandonment, self neglect. So think about those three questions and my love. You know, I love to give you guys affirmations and here is the affirmation for episode 23. I trust myself to choose with care. My needs are valid and I am allowed to listen inward. I trust myself to choose with care. My needs are valid and I am allowed to listen inward. You are. Self-trust isn't something you force. It is something you rebuild slowly and through safety, through choosing yourself in small moments through listening instead of overriding through honoring instead of abandoning. You don't need to have it all figured out. You don't. You just need to start coming back to yourself and that that's enough. So enough. Thank you for spending this time with me. I'm honored that you got to process out loud with me. I'm honored that I'm even a part of this moment. Even if I don't hear it all, I'm still honored that I was able to give you just a moment in your time to face yourself. Talk to yourself and think about ways we can disman, dismantle, self abandoning. Self neglect and start rebuilding happiness, joy, liberation, trust, love. You get to rebuild and you get to rediscover that. Be beautiful goddess inside 'cause you are always enough. Thank you for this time and as always. If you want to connect with me, you could find me at Instagram at Shift Happens with Shay. You've got some answers, questions. Well, I guess not quite answers, but if you have questions for me and you want some insight, no, that does not mean we are starting a therapeutic relationship, but I'm happy to help in any capacity that I'm able to, and you can email me at info at Shift happens with shay.com. You can also like and subscribe and comment below if you're watching this on YouTube. I greatly appreciate it, um, and I hope you enjoy this. I hope it landed where I needed to. And if you are on my website, Asher Happens with share.com, look up our next gatherings. I am, uh, well actually when this is posted, I will have already done coming back to self discovery. Um, I am happy to give those replays. They are going to be $25. That's just how it costs. But all this, my whole coming back to you series it. We will reconvene in the summer. So I will have coming back to Joy, coming back to Boundaries, coming back to Radiance, and then we will end with coming back to power in September. These will all happen June, July, August, September, and I hope to see you there. But anyways, thank you for this time. I appreciate you. You are more than enough. Bye y'all. Muah. Thanks for spending this time with me On Shift Happens with Shay. Be sure to subscribe and check the link in the description for more ways to shift into healing.