🎙️ Episode #63 Why You Don't Trust Yourself (And How to Rebuild It)

Most people think they struggle with trust because they've been hurt by other people.

But what if the relationship that's hurting the most is the one you have with yourself?

In this episode of Spiritually Kinky, I'm exploring Brené Brown's BRAVING framework through a different lens—not as a tool for deciding whether someone else is trustworthy, but as a roadmap for rebuilding trust with ourselves.

Because self-trust isn't usually lost in one dramatic moment.

It's lost in the small moments.

The boundaries we don't hold.
The intuition we ignore.
The promises we make to ourselves and never keep.
The dreams we continue postponing for "someday."

Drawing from my own journey of leaving Corporate America and learning how to consciously create a life that felt good on the inside—not just successful on the outside—I share why so many women struggle to trust themselves and what it actually takes to rebuild that relationship.

In this episode we explore:

• Why self-trust is more important than confidence
• The hidden cost of self-abandonment
• Brené Brown's BRAVING framework and how it applies to your relationship with yourself
• Why boundaries, integrity, accountability, and self-compassion matter
• How trust is rebuilt one choice at a time

If you've been second-guessing yourself, overthinking every decision, or feeling disconnected from your own inner knowing, this conversation is for you.

Because confidence isn't the foundation.

Self-trust is.

✨ Ready to stop living from survival and start consciously creating a life you love?

Join the Spiritually Kinky Community: Click Here! 

If this episode resonates with you, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with someone who needs the reminder that trust isn't something you find—it's something you build.

Until next time...

Keep choosing.
Keep creating.
Keep becoming.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:13

What if the reason you keep second guessing yourself isn't because you're broken? Isn't because you're indecisive, isn't because you need more confidence, but because somewhere along the way you stopped trusting yourself. And today I want to talk about something that completely changed how I understand trust. Not just trust in other people, trust in myself. Because if you're anything like the women that I work with, you've probably spent years trying to figure out who you can trust while completely overlooking the relationship that matters the most, the one you have with you. So welcome back to Spiritually Kinky, where science meets seduction, spirit meets structure, and creation becomes your love language. I'm Dustin Wheeler, and for years I built a life that looked successful on the outside. I chased achievement. I checked the boxes, I followed the path I thought I was supposed to follow. But what nobody ever taught me was how to build a life that actually felt good on the inside. So I spent years building a life I could survive before I actually learned how to build a life I truly wanted to live. When I finally walked away from the life that I inherited and started consciously creating the life I desired, that's when everything began to change. That journey became the foundation of the work I do today, helping high-performing women stop living by default, step out of their survival patterns, step out of the patterns that they've survived, and consciously create lives filled with freedom, fulfillment, purpose, and possibility. So if you've ever looked around the life you've built and thought, man, is this really it? Let me tell you, you're in the right space. And so I really want to dive into some of the conversations that I've been having lately because I've been listening to people talk about toxic work relationships, toxic relationships with their partners, uh breaking up with partners, and truly not knowing where they want to go in life. And so I want to tell you when I left corporate America, I thought I knew who I was. I had titles, achievements, responsibilities, people who depended on me. But what I didn't have was a clear set of values I was intentionally living from. And actually, one of the hardest moments of my life was when I asked myself the question, what values was I walking in? And it was painfully obvious when I didn't know how unconsciously I had been building my future. And most of my decisions were built around expectations. They were built around performance, they were built around approval and around success, but very little around intentional conscious values. So when I left, I wasn't just rebuilding a career. I was rebuilding a relationship with myself. And this is really, really important because I don't think that we're actually taught what this looks like. I think that we're given a lot of fluffy language, but we don't learn how to actually build self-trust. It sounds nice to say, oh, I just need to trust myself more. And in fact, I was just having a conversation with somebody last night, and he said, Yeah, I need to trust my heart more. But what does that mean? And if you've spent your life living unconsciously, and you've spent your life living from your brain voice, how do you really know what your heart is telling you? How do you really know how to start building values that you've never really walked in before? And this is one of the first like fundamental things that came in my life at this time. And it's from Brene Brown, and it's not something that she created. I believe that she got it from somebody else as well. But it really helped me begin building the bridge to my self-love, to my self-trust. And this is really what I think is missing in so many relationships, again, especially in that relationship with ourselves. Because how can we go into a relationship expecting to trust, expecting respect, expecting these values, but we're not actually embodying and practicing them in our own lives? So the the bridge that I got from Brene Brown was an acronym called braving. And really what this stands for is boundaries, reliability, accountability, vault, integrity, non-judgment, and generosity. And so in my 20s, when I had been pursuing relationships, and it was so funny because I just met a couple of really sweet, nice young women, one who was dealing with some toxic bosses, who was dealing with maybe a partner she didn't know if she could trust, and had asked me my opinion on this. And as well as her friend said something that was so monumental that when I explained this to her, her takeaway was so it really does start with me. And she had stated that she was very much into the fixer-uppers. And I lived out this pattern for a very long time in my life. If somebody needed fixing, healing, saving, believe me, I found them. And I just want to tell you if this is you, if you are caught in a cycle of choosing relationships that you need to fix, choosing relationships where the fixer-uppers, you fall in love with their potential. I want to give this to you as well, because babe, that's not an identity, that's a pattern, right? That's a pattern that you learned. That's a pattern that kept you safe. Because at one point, between the ages of zero and seven, you learned these patterns that kept you alive, that kept you safe, that kept you loved in your family, that kept you belonging. So these aren't things that are broken about you. We just don't have the conscious education to literally tell you, hey, you've been living your life 95% on autopilot with instructions that were passed down, instructions that were never yours, but there is another way. And so I found this bridge really, really powerful because first I reflected it upon myself. And this is where it got a little painful for me. Because when I looked at and I did some self-examination of okay, what are my boundaries? Do I have any boundaries? The answer was no. Um, if I did say that I had boundaries, I wasn't protecting them reliable. Was I a reliable person? The answer not really. I would say yes when I meant no, and I would say no when I meant yes, and that wasn't clearly defined that if I said yes, I would show up. If I said no, then I wouldn't cross that boundary, right? But I was a people pleaser. I had a lot of patterns of proving my worth, thinking love was transactional. And so, again, these are just some of the relationship patterns that I repeated that were an opportunity for me to look at myself and say, where am I bringing this value to the table? And if that answer is you're not, that can feel quite painful. But the good news is that you get to decide. You get to choose in any given moment. And one of the things that I really wish that somebody would have told me when I was growing up, and it seems so simple when I hear it now, is believe somebody's actions, not what they say, because somebody's actions are the highest form of communication. Now, that being said, when we're building this bridge with another individual, we may be working off of different definitions. So if there is somebody that you are wanting to pursue, building a relationship with, building trust with, then you have to define what these things mean for you, for them, so that you can build a bridge with each other. But again, this bridge starts building with you. Okay. So when I looked at these things in my life, reliability, accountability, a lot of these areas were no. And as painful as that was, I got to start defining, okay, what does that look like? What are boundaries that I want to protect in my life? What does a reliable version of me look like? Well, she owns her fucking yes and she owns her fucking no, right? When she wants to say yes, she says yes unapologetically. When she wants to say no, she says no unapologetically. Accountability. Do the people I love in my life, my relationships that I have with my family, with my friends, with my coworkers, with my team, right? Can they count on me? Can they count on me to take responsibility for my success and my failures? Vault. When somebody needs to share space with me, share conversation, share presence. Do I keep that space sacred? Or am I somebody that passes it along to other people, right? Am I somebody that talks about other people? Well, let me tell you, in the corporate world, in lots of different areas that I was in, the vault wasn't very protected. Integrity. What does an integral a version of me that's walking in integrity look like? Well, she speaks her truth. She's unapologetic, right? She she loves deeply and she stands up for her beliefs. She stands up for the things that are important to her. She stands up for her family. She stands up for her friends. Though that was integrity to me. Non-judgment, right? Do I hold space for other people and their ability to be the creators in their life? Um, yeah, you know, that is that is the next level version of me because I understand that we're all creators, right? And just because I think that something is right or wrong for me doesn't mean that's right or wrong for somebody else. It's my alignment. But can I hold that space of non-judgment to allow somebody to be the creator in their life without having to rescue them, save them, uh, all of that? So again, it's really defining what those things are in your life for you and generosity, right? Do I give without conditions? Can I give when it's in alignment with me to give? Can I give generously without sacrificing myself, without being a martyr? And so when I really started to look at this and walk through this, the practical application part is again, what do those actions look like? When you're holding boundaries in your life, what do they look like? When you're being a reliable person, how do you show up? When you're somebody that someone can count on, when you're accountable to your life, what do those actions look like for you? When you're holding the vault and you're holding that sacred space for somebody else, what do those actions look like? When you're living with integrity, what do those actions look like? When you're living a non-judgmental life, what do those actions look like? What do you do? What do you not do? When you're living generously, how do you show up? And when you can start to define these actions in your life, what you begin to notice is that step by step, when you hold true to these, right, you become a person of follow-through. You set a value that you're trying to build. Because when I talk about walking in the way of your values in my work, I'm not talking about values that you have or you don't. I'm talking about values that you build as skills because they really are skills. We have to flex the muscle. And if you haven't ever practiced how to build the values, right, it's you're flexing a new muscle. It's going to feel awkward. It's going to be uncomfortable. And I want to tell you, anytime that you're creating something that you've never created before, that are outside those unconscious set points, you are going to be uncomfortable. You are going to do things that your system doesn't like, that you don't like to do. But that doesn't mean that you don't have to do them if they are in alignment with the end result of what you're trying to create. Now, a big portion of the work that I do is giving you new GPS points, right? Because most of us are trying to drive to a new destination, but our GPS points are set to current reality from past reality. And so it's like driving a car outside of your driveway. Your map tells you to take a right and then take another right and then take another right and then take another right, and then now you're back in your driveway, and you can't figure out why you keep going in circles. So we have to update the GPS point. So before building this bridge, the end result for me was building self-trust in myself. The end result for me was becoming a person of follow-through. Because if I wanted to attract a person of value, if I wanted to attract a person of follow-through, a person of integrity, a person with boundaries, then I better be embodying those same same attributes in my life, right? So I think that this is where we miss a lot is a lot of the times our GPS points are set to what everybody else can do for me first. And that's not actually how you build trust. That's not actually how you build self-trust. And when you don't build this bridge with yourself, it's really easy to just attract those unconscious things in those unconscious relationships that are really going to reinforce that unconscious identity that believes that it's wounded. You're going to have that mirror that's going to reflect your wounds. And it's really a shame to me that we don't teach this in the education system because I, if I would have had these practical, this practical bridge to build from, it would have made all of the difference. And instead of falling love, falling in love with somebody's potential, somebody's possibility, right? I want to fall in love with somebody's actions, not what they say, what they do. And when you understand that action is the highest form of communication, number one, to your unconscious, but number two, with somebody else, you stop speaking a lot less and start acting in a way that is in alignment with what you want to create. And when you begin to do that, you really begin to understand how to attract on a whole new level. And it's because you are actually integrating and embodying it, you're not just talking about it. You're not just living it from a mental knowing, you're living it from an embodied knowing. And I think that this is really important. And when I when I shared this with especially with these two young women, it was their their minds were blown. And just the message that I got back from one of them and her takeaways, we're talking in a 20-minute span. The takeaways that she took away from our conversation, that she took away from this bridge. And when I offered up this teaching for her to say, okay, now when you're embodying these things with you, right? If these are important values to you and and you agree that these are values that will help you build self-trust and will help you build self-trust through follow-through and competence, then when you're building this bridge with somebody else, now we can begin to have a different conversation, right? Now we can begin to understand how to, when we're trying to create and develop these relationships with other people, we can ask them, what are they choosing to create? What kind of a relationship do they want? And then we can begin to have this bridging conversation and not just to say, hey, this is how I show up in reliability or accountability or integrity, but actually showing up in those values and being able to have that conversation that if these values are important for someone else to have in your relationship, asking them and having them define what their boundaries are. When they're walking in reliability, how are they showing up? When they're being accountable in their life, what do those actions look like for them? Because again, a lot of the time we think we're having the same dialogue, but we're working off of different definitions because we're not all working on the same definitions. And if somebody truly wants to build a relationship of value, a relationship of depth, a relationship of meaning with you, then this is worth having a conversation about. And if they choose that they don't want to, then that's your answer right there. Because if somebody isn't willing to build this bridge of communication, to build this bridge of showing you, not just telling you with their actions, but actually showing you with their actions that they care, that they're showing up for you in this way. Well, that's actually what creates a deep and meaningful relationship that you can rely on, that you can trust. But it doesn't happen overnight and it takes time. And another really good, I would say, measurement of this is a lot of us have been taught that trust is all or nothing. And I I believe that there can be a moment where you know you can spend a lifetime building trust in a second to destroy it. I absolutely believe that. But I also believe that not all trust is all or nothing. I believe that there are areas, especially when you're working on building a new relationship with somebody, where you are two completely different human beings with two completely sets of reality with different definitions, with different experiences that that trigger different emotions with different programming. You know, sometimes when we're trying to come together and share a life, it it can get a little uncomfortable and it can get a little uh challenging at times, right? And so I think it's really good to have this bridge of communication as well, that if these things are things that you've agreed upon in building in yourself and agreed upon with building somebody else, then when a person starts maybe slipping in an area, slipping in an area of boundaries or slipping in an area of reliability or maybe integrity, it doesn't have to be an all or nothing conversation. It doesn't have to be a you did this, now everything shit. It can be like, hey, I've started noticing that, you know, you've been saying yes a lot more, but then canceling your plans or changing your mind. And this is an area that I really value. Uh can we talk about that? And then it's not so attacking either. You can just point out, like, hey, we agreed that these. Things were important and these things I feel for me are starting to slip a little bit. Is this me or is there something going on? Is there something going on that we can get back to the values that we set together, that we can get back to the actions that we give each other to build these values with each other and to build this bridge of self-trust with each other? Now, I get it. It may sound like a lot of work, but let me tell you a relationship with yourself, babe, it's it is work. It is exploring, it is defining, it is redefining, it is spending intentional, practical time defining what some of these actions look like, defining some of these choices that you want, defining some of these things and being really fucking honest about where you're missing the mark. And if you're missing the mark, it's not because you're a terrible human being. It's not because you're broken or that you need to be healed. And it's it's not because you're innately defective, it's because we haven't been taught this kind of conscious education. And this is why I am so passionate about the conscious creation and the conscious education that I teach, because you can give somebody this bridge in five minutes and it changes their entire life because now they have a practical application of how to actually build self-trust and how to actually build self-trust or how to build trust in your relationships as well. So, because all this floofy language and marketing and AI has really flooded the world with a lot of noise, and there's a lot of pretty language out there. But if we don't define what that means to us, it stays at the surface. So we really have to be willing to dig into and dive deeper into okay, what does this mean to me? And this is why one of the things that I created in my spiritually kinky academy is the the menu of the most magical flavors that you've ever experienced. And it helps you define some of these experiences, it helps you define some of these emotions, it helps you define some of these values in a way that you can up-level the definitions and then take what aligns with you and then use it as a jumping point to jump off of. There are examples of language to help you get into them, to help you understand how to actually take the action to build them and not just this fluffy language that sounds good of, oh, I should just trust my heart more. Because, babe, what does that really mean? Right. But when you start to become a person of follow-through, when you start to say you're going to build these values and you begin to build your values in a new way, your life starts to expand in a new way. Opportunities open up in a new way. And people recognize value. People recognize when you show up in a way that's congruent to how you say you show up. And the mastery is honestly not even really having to say how you show up, except when you're having those initial conversations with somebody that's new to relationship building, but to be a person and embody a person that shows up in that way. That's the real magic, and that's the real mastery of it. And so I wanted to just give this to you guys because again, over the past couple of weeks, I've had a lot of really in-depth conversations with young women, with men that are struggling in their relationships, with men that are struggling with their breakups, and not really having a bridge on how to deepen and strengthen that relationship with yourself, except from doing the things that you think are good, not doing the things that you think are bad, getting rid of the habits that you think are bad, adding more habits that you think are good, healing yourself, improving yourself, fixing yourself. That seems to be the driving force behind a lot of people's actions, and it's just got them spinning out because that's kind of a never-ending psychological and emotional battle that was handed down that's tying up your focus, that's tying up your energy, that's tying up your effort, instead of consciously shifting your choice, shifting your focus and shifting your flow towards what you would just love to create instead of what you have survived, instead of just settling for these relationships and letting them play out where you're in it again, it falls apart. It's the same pattern, different names, different faces, but same pattern. And actually decide what is it that you're intentionally wanting to create, what do you choose? And then using how to walk in the way of values to create a you that's an alignment of the version that you want to become. That's actually how you integrate, that's actually how you embody. And as much as I love this bridge of braving, right? There are multiple, multiple ways that you can build value in your life that are going to help you be more present in the moment, help you feel more joy, more passion, more purpose, more meaning in your life, and also how to weather the storms without collapsing into them. And this is where I think our education system has really left us really wanting for teachings like this, because when you walk in the way of your values that you're trying to build, you're you're walking in alignment with your intentional choices. Even if you don't have a clear picture of what those choices look like yet, walking in the way of your values, what values you want to build will expand you to becoming the person that can hold the capacity of your desires, that can hold the capacity of your dreams. So let me know if that landed for you because I think that this is a really powerful, powerful session. And I really wanted to not only give it to you in my podcast community, but I'm also going to be dropping this in the Spiritually Kinky Academy because I think we need the reminder. And the practice isn't about just listening to it once, consciously understanding it. It's about actually practically applying it. It's about practically implementing it in consistency and repetition in our own life. And I think that this is where a lot of people fall short because they try and do this work on their own. And if that's you, you're not alone, but there is a different way to create. And this is exactly why I created my community on school. Because if this episode hit home, and if you're realizing that the relationship that you've really been missing, that you've been longing to heal, isn't actually with someone else, it's with yourself, then this is where I want to invite you into the spiritually kinky community. Because self-trust isn't built through motivation. It's built through small moments of integrity with yourself. It's built in those small steps. You don't have to take the mountain to take the mountain. You just have to learn how to take the next step. And that's why I love walking in the way of your values because it's really built through choosing yourself one action at a time, following through with yourself, listening to yourself, and building that trust and intuition with yourself so that you're not asking other people what you should do. You're not asking other people what is the best strategy for you or what's the best advice for you. You're actually learning how to listen to that version of you that you want to become and letting that version guide you. So along the way, as you take these steps and as you create these moments, what you're actually doing is you're creating evidence to your unconscious that this is who you are now, that you are a person of follow-through, and that your own voice, that your own values are safe to trust again because you're actually practicing them, you're walking through them. And what's really great is if you guys join the community, you're gonna get access to my Magnetic Flow workshop. You're gonna get access to the 10-minute manifest now accelerator challenge, you're gonna get other conversations, tools, and a room full of amazing women who are learning how to stop living from survival and are starting to create from their truth. Because, babe, true alignment isn't being positive, it's not being high vibe, it's it's not never feeling negative emotions. It's about living true to what's in alignment for you when you have your self-conscious, your unconscious, and your superconscious all working in the way of what you desire. Because right now you've been in alignment with creating a life that you've survived of repeating the same patterns over and over again because nobody ever showed you a better way. So this is a bridge that I would definitely start with if you feel like you haven't been intentionally walking in value, if you don't know what your values are, this is a great place to start building that self-trust, building that follow through, teaching your unconscious that expanding into this new version is actually safe to have, safe to hold. And what ends up showing up in opportunities is what you start embodying. So the big mirrors the small, the small mirrors the big. So when you start becoming a person that's intentionally walking in value, that's actually the opportunities. Those are actually the relationships and the experiences that you're going to attract more of in your life. So if there's one thing I hope that you take away from today's conversation, it's this is that self-trust isn't something that you find. It's something that you build. And you build it one choice at a time, one boundary at a time, one act of integrity at a time. And every single one of those moments becomes evidence to your unconscious that you can trust yourself a little more than you did yesterday. So I want to remind you, babe, you are not broken. You are the creative force within. And you get to choose what you would love to create. And whether you're here to be a little bit spiritual, or you're here to be a little bit kinky, or you're here like me to be a whole lot of fucking both, because creating is one of the fucking kinkiest things that you will ever do. Lead with love, my friends. And in case nobody told you today, I see you, I feel you, and I love you, and you are not alone.