Episode 35: Learning To Trust Yourself Again After Loss

After the death of a spouse, many widows don’t just lose the person they love — they also lose their sense of safety, predictability, and trust in themselves.

In this episode, we explore the invisible ways grief impacts self-trust and why loss can leave widows feeling hypervigilant, emotionally unsteady, fearful of future pain, and disconnected from their own inner voice.

We discuss:

• Why widowhood disrupts your relationship with safety and certainty
• The nervous system’s response to trauma & loss
• Hypervigilance, overthinking, and emotional preparedness after grief
• Fear of future loss, attachment, and vulnerability
• The impact grief can have on parenting fears and emotional safety
• Why grief can make it difficult to trust your emotions
• The quiet ways self-trust slowly begins rebuilding over time
• Learning to stay connected to yourself inside uncertainty

This episode is a compassionate conversation for the widow who feels exhausted from carrying fear, second-guessing herself, or wondering why she can no longer trust herself as she did before. 

Big hugs, and lots of love.
-Lauren

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Follow along on Instagram: @imsorrywerefriends

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:06

Welcome to the Widows Collective, where grief meets hope, healing, and community. I'm Lauren Lentz, grief coach, fellow widow, and the heart behind this space. There is life before loss, and then there is life after. If you're here, it likely means your life has been turned upside down by the death of your person. Maybe you've just found yourself in this new world that feels unrecognizable, or maybe you've been walking it for a while, trying to figure out what healing looks like now. I want you to know you are not alone. This podcast is a gathering place for widows living in the after. Together, we'll name the ache, honor the love, and share tools, truths, and stories that help you feel supported along the way. My hope is that every episode gives you a sense of community, comfort, and permission to meet yourself exactly where you are. Hello and welcome back to the Widows Collective. I have done some reflecting this last week, and it feels like just yesterday that I was terrified to even record these episodes. I remember in November of last year when I first put this podcast out, being nauseous the night before I submitted my first episode, just thinking that I wasn't sure anyone would even tune in to listen or that what I had to say might not land. And here I am beginning to wrap up the first season of my podcast with over 4,300 downloads in the first 35 episodes. And it fills my heart in a way that I can't fully express. When I started this space, I simply wanted it to be somewhere widows could land and hear the parts of grief that often go unspoken out loud, a place where they could feel less alone in the thoughts, fears, emotions, and contradictions that can come with life after loss, and to find moments, glimmers of light inside of the darkness. I hope that is what you have found here. Before I close out this season, there were two more conversations I knew I wanted to have because I feel that they are deeply connected to the widowhood experience. First, learning to trust yourself again after loss. And second, more specifically to the widowed mother or father, the fear that their child or children will be ruined from this experience and not knowing how to support them through that. But before we can really talk about parenting after loss, I think we first have to talk about what grief does to us internally, because I think one of the most invisible losses we experience after the death of a spouse is the loss of trust. Not just trust in other people, but trust in life, plans, the future, your body, your intuition, your decisions, yourself. And I've touched on pieces of this before throughout the season, but I wanted to dedicate an entire episode to it because I think this experience can often be the undercurrent of so much of what widows struggle with after loss. Before loss, many of us move through life carrying unconscious assumptions. Assumptions like tomorrow is coming. The people we love will likely still be here. Life will unfold somewhat predictably. And if we make good choices, things will most likely be okay and turn out in our favor. We don't consciously walk around thinking those thoughts every day, but our nervous system quietly builds life around them. And then death shatters that foundation. Suddenly, the nervous system realizes everything familiar has shifted and there's no returning to the way things used to be. And I think after that, many grieving people stop trusting their ability to predict life, which means they also begin struggling to trust themselves inside of life. When your world changes sometimes overnight, that sense of certainty stops feeling real. And that changes the way many of us move through the world afterward. Often society incorrectly assumes that grief is only emotional pain. But in addition to all of the other ways grief affects you, it also changes your relationship with safety. It changes how relaxed you feel, how trusting you feel, how much control you think you have, how safe it feels to hope or love or exhale. And often this happens so quietly that grieving people don't even realize it's happening. They just know they overthink more. They're bracing more, they fear more, they second guess themselves more, they feel less emotionally steady than they used to. And so today I really want to unpack why that happens to help normalize what is actually going on. One of the reasons grief impacts self-trust so deeply is because loss disrupts our sense of predictability. The death of a spouse is deeply disorienting. Suddenly, there is a very real awareness that life can change instantly. People can disappear, plans can collapse, and safety is far more fragile than we once believed. And when something that life-altering happens, the brain naturally begins trying to prevent future pain. That is what our body and our mind, our nervous system is meant to do. They're wired to protect us and keep us safe. So after loss, many notice that they are hyper-aware, hyper-vigilant, over-analytical, constantly scanning for danger, constantly trying to anticipate what could go wrong. The mind starts asking, how do I make sure this never happens again? But the problem is there is no formula that guarantees safety. And I think this is where self-trust can start unraveling. We may begin looking backward after loss and questioning everything. Should I have noticed something sooner? Did I miss signs? Could I have prevented this? How did I not know? Can I even trust my judgment? Even when the loss was completely outside of their control, it's an important part of grief to understand that the brain often searches for certainty by searching for fault, because fault creates the illusion of control. If the brain can convince itself I missed something, then it can also convince itself maybe next time I can prevent pain. But that can become an exhausting place to live internally because over time this second guessing spreads into everyday life as well. Suddenly simple decisions feel overwhelming. What next step should I take? What financial decision is the right one? What parenting choice? What direction? What move should I make? And underneath all those decisions is often fear. Fear of making the wrong choice, fear of future regret, fear of more pain, fear of not being able to survive another loss. When we start fearing all these things, we can stop trusting our own inner voice. And it's not because we are incapable or weak, but because loss fundamentally disrupts the nervous system's relationship with certainty. So when something unimaginable happens, the brain often starts believing nothing is safe or predictable anymore. And that belief can absolutely change how we move through life. It can make us hesitant, sometimes even frozen, overly cautious, emotionally guarded, constantly preparing for impact. Many grieving people may not even realize they're living this way. They just think, why can't I relax anymore? Why does every decision feel so hard or heavy or complicated? Why do I suddenly need reassurance all the time? Or why do I feel afraid to trust good things? But those responses make sense after trauma. Once the nervous system experiences catastrophic loss, it no longer experiences safety in the same unconscious way. And there is grief inside of that too. The grief of no longer feeling innocent inside of life. The grief of realizing I now know things can change in an instant. That awareness changes people. Sometimes it can even be angering to think that the naive way in which we may have once looked at the world has been stolen from us. When we come to know in a very real way that the worst thing can happen, our body adapts by staying on guard, always scanning, always preparing for what might come next. And because of that, even when life feels softer again, peace doesn't always register as peace. Sometimes it can feel unfamiliar or even unsettling. Sometimes it can even feel suspicious, if you will. Like, am I missing something? Like when is the next bad thing coming? Is it safe to feel happy again? What if it gets taken away too? This can be a really lonely part of grief sometimes. We want peace while also simultaneously bracing for disaster. We want joy. We don't want to struggle anymore, but we have such a hard time even relaxing into it. We want connection, but we might fear attachment. It creates enormous internal tension. And this isn't intentionally. This just happens unconsciously, deep within. We can begin living in a state of emotional preparedness, preparing for more bad news, loss, disappointment, change, possibility of rejection, another thing falling apart even during calm seasons, even during times where life feels lighter again. Because the nervous system learns just because things feel okay today doesn't mean they will stay okay. And this can be why many widows struggle to fully land in the present moment after loss. They're not intentionally doing anything, it's their body and mind feeling a need to stay alert. I also think it shows up strongly in relationships after widowhood. Not necessarily because someone no longer wants love, but because vulnerability begins to feel even riskier. You may want closeness while also questioning what if I trust someone again and lose them too? What if I choose wrong? What if I miss red flags? What if I can't survive another heartbreak? And so sometimes we become incredibly self-protective emotionally. It can also show up powerfully in parenting after loss. Many widows carry enormous fear about their children's safety. So we start thinking, what if something happens when I'm not there? What if I can't protect them? What if I lose them too? Did I miss something I should have been watching for? Am I being too relaxed right now? Should I be more alert? What if this is the moment something goes wrong? And underneath all of those questions is how do I keep myself and the people I love safe? And could I survive another unbearable loss? And when you sit with that for a moment, of course that's a really heavy thing to carry. And it deserves so much compassion and grace, especially while grieving. Because it can all feel so heavy and uncomfortable. We become incredibly hard on ourselves, trying to move out of the discomfort and rebuild self-trust more quickly than it can actually return. A loss, this magnitude changes us deeply. So if you've noticed more fear, more second-guessing, more overthinking, more difficulty relaxing, more fear around future planning or around attachment, more fear around not knowing what will come next. This isn't a problem with you or the way you're thinking. It's an indicator that your nervous system and mind have adapted to living in a heightened state of uncertainty and protection. And adaptation is not a weakness, it's not a failure, it's not a sign that you're regressing. Over time, though, this hypervigilance doesn't just impact how safe the world feels. It also impacts how safe we feel in our own emotions. I also think we quietly lose trust in our emotional experience after loss because grief can feel so unpredictable. I like to say that it's like emotional whiplash. One day you feel grounded and steady and capable of functioning again. And then the next day, something just completely unravels you. And it could be as small or as simple as a memory or their favorite food in the aisle you're walking down at the grocery store a random Tuesday afternoon, and you're right back inside the ache again. That emotional unpredictability can feel frightening sometimes, especially when you are desperately seeking stability again. So we begin questioning ourselves internally. Can I trust my emotions? What if grief keeps knocking me over like this? What if I can't get back up off the floor? Why does this still hit me so hard? Am I ever going to feel emotionally steady again? Because grief moves so differently from day to day, many widows begin feeling like they should be further along whenever difficult waves resurface. But grief resurfacing does not mean that you are not taking baby steps forward. And emotions moving do not mean that you are unstable. It means you're human. It means you experienced something that shifted the trajectory of your whole life. Grief is not linear. It evolves and it revisits and it revisits over and over at different places inside of our experience of grief, which is why it can kind of feel disorienting and confusing when you're revisiting something that you have in the past, but it's from a different state of your grief experience. Maybe your brain has turned back on in a way that it hadn't before. And so now you're feeling things more deeply. Maybe you're having more visceral sensations in a way that you thought you would have in the beginning, and now it's a year and a half later, and you're experiencing this. This is how grief works. There's no check boxes here. So how do we start to rebuild a sense of trust after loss? And I want to be really clear that rebuilding trust after loss does not mean becoming fearless or unafraid. It does not mean never feeling anxious, never questioning yourself, never feeling triggered or fearing loss again. Grief permanently changes our awareness of vulnerability. So the work isn't about trying to get back to a place of complete certainty. It's about slowly learning how to stay connected to yourself inside of uncertainty. And those are two very different experiences. And this goes beyond grief as well. Trust after grief may look less like nothing bad will happen, and more like if hard things happen, I will find my way through them. Before loss, many of us trusted life because we believe life was predictable. After loss, trust becomes I cannot control life, but I can learn to stay connected to myself inside of it. And when you begin to relate to trust in that way, it can be incredibly powerful. But I also want to acknowledge something here. Because this on the surface can sound simple when we say it out loud, but lived experience is much more complex than that. Even years later, there can still be fears that feel very real and very present in the body, moments that still feel difficult to imagine surviving, triggers that instantly transport you back into fear or helplessness or panic. So it's not about reaching some enlightened place where fear disappears. It's about slowly building a different relationship with yourself alongside the fear. And then this does not happen all at once. In fact, sometimes if you aren't paying attention, you may not even notice that it's happening. But if you pause and you look closely, you may begin to see small ways trust starts rebuilding over time through listening inward, honoring your limits, allowing rest, noticing that you are reminding yourself that you are safe in this moment, getting through difficult days and realizing you're still standing, changing your mind about something without self-punishment, making decisions perfectly and learning you can adjust when needed, realizing your capacity instead of constantly forcing yourself beyond it, recognizing I can feel fear and still take steps forward. In life, we often wait to feel confident before we trust ourselves. And widowhood can amplify that. We wait for certainty to return before we begin trusting ourselves again. But confidence is usually something that develops after action, not before it. Sometimes self-trust rebuilds through evidence and not evidence that life is controllable, but evidence that you can adapt, you can recover, you can support yourself, you can soften after hard moments, you can survive uncertainty and you can feel grief and still continue living. There is something incredibly important about beginning to listen inward again after loss. Slowly asking yourself what actually feels true for me? What feels supportive? What do I need today? What feels draining? What am I saying yes to out of fear? Or what am I saying no to out of fear? What would it look like to trust myself a little bit more here? Because the self-trust is often rebuilt through relationship with self, through noticing yourself and listening to yourself and responding to yourself with care instead of criticism. I notice criticism over and over again. And I am very similar in this way. I mean, there's a reason why there's a saying that says we are our own worst critics, right? We can start speaking to ourselves as though we should already know how to navigate a life we've never prepared for. So it's important to remember that this is unfamiliar terrain. Of course, there will be uncertainty. Of course, there will be moments of fear. Of course, there will be seasons where you feel less grounded. That doesn't mean anything about you, that you're failing, that you're not strong enough, that you're not capable enough. It means you are learning how to live inside a reality that changed you. And I think part of healing is also learning that flexibility is necessary. Changing your needs is not failure. Needing support is not failure. Moving slowly is not failure. This is part of being human and grappling with a loss that has made you rethink everything in your life. And maybe trust also grows every time you meet yourself with compassion instead of inside of judgment and shame, which can be really hard to do. So if you've been feeling disconnected, questioning your decisions, struggling to trust your instincts, or feeling like life no longer feels emotionally or physically, environmentally safe, I want you to know that nothing about that means you're doing this wrong. It makes sense after the kind of loss you've lived through. Trauma and grief change the way trust feels in our body and in our mind. And rebuilding that trust is rarely an overnight, loud, obvious thing. It's usually soft and quiet, sometimes even unnoticeable in the small moments where you start to see you're choosing yourself. You're pausing, you're adjusting, you're adapting, you're continuing, even while fear is still present. And maybe that's what this really comes down to. Not becoming someone who is unaffected by loss, that's not possible. But someone who's slowly learned I can hold grief and still hold myself and trust myself too. Trust is built by constantly returning, by constantly staying connected to yourself as you move through what life brings you. I hope this landed somewhere in your heart today. And if it has, or if you think that it will for someone else, please share or write a review, like the podcast. Thank you so much for being here with me today. And until next time, big hugs and lots of love. You've been listening to the Widows Collective. I'm Lauren Lentz, and it means so much to me that you spent this time here today. If you found comfort or connection in today's episode, I invite you to please subscribe, leave a rating, or share it with someone who might need a little support. You can also follow me on Instagram at I'm Sorry We're Friends and join my email list at LaurenLentz.com to explore my one-to-one grief coaching, group program, retreats, and other tools designed to help widows navigate loss with understanding and guidance. I hope you'll join me next week for another conversation where we'll continue exploring grief, healing, and ways to reimagine life after loss. I'm sorry you're here, and I'm so grateful that you are. Thank you for being a part of this community. Your presence is an act of courage and self compassion, and I'm honored to walk this path alongside you.