Should You Ever NOT Trust Yourself?

My body of work around Self-Trust has been haunting me for 10 months… especially at 2am.

Somewhere between constantly doing “milk math” to predict if we have enough breastmilk to get through another week, exhausted tears falling onto my son’s head, and wondering if he will ever sleep longer than two hours...

I found myself asking a question I’d never seriously considered before.

According to my own framework, one of the four pillars to building sustainable Self-Trust is increasing the capacity in your nervous system.

The capacity to experience something that is dysregulating (baby screaming, not being heard by a care provider, listening to unsolicited advice about how to feed your baby, etc)... and then being able to return back to a place of “relaxed readiness”.

To feel a sense of “settled” in your body.

To feel connected to the wisdom within.

This is SOUTH on the The Self-Trust Compass: REGULATION

Increasing your capacity for nervous system regulation is critical to trusting yourself because it is really difficult to trust your intuition when your nervous system is dysregulated.

I write all about this in my book (You Can Trust Yourself) and even shared the entirely of the REGULATION chapter here on Substack if you want to go deeper.

But as a quick refresher, here are the 5 Areas of Regulation I encourage people to start with:

• Fuel (food + water)

• Movement

• Sleep

• Sunlight

• Connection (nature + others)

Well, any mom who has a “low sleep needs” or colic baby is gonna take one look at that list and have a few choice words for me.

That innocent looking bullet point, right in the middle.

Sleep.

I’d also like to take this moment to apologize to all my past clients who struggled with sleep. I tried to get it. I really did. But I didn’t.

I’m so sorry.

Outside of situational times in my life where my sleep was a little wonky, I have always slept really well. For as long as I can remember, it’s been easy for me to fall asleep and then, I just sleep for 8 hours until I’m well rested and eager to start my day between 5 and 5:30am. Without an alarm.

Yes, there were daily habits that supported it - morning sunlight, movement, dealing with my emotions - but because they were already woven into my life, I never thought about them as “sleep hygiene”.

I took that area of REGULATION for granted when it came to trusting myself.

Cut to:

Ten months ago, I had a 29hr labor before my incredible baby boy was born.

Plus, his birth was preceded by the worst three months of sleep in my entire life (until that point 🙃)

I chose to deliver him at home. It was the right decision for me. I’m grateful I made that decision.

AND.

As soon as the last stitch was stitched, everyone was exhausted and ready to return to their own beds for slumber.

Ooooof. Nothing like a taste of my own medicine.

But what happens when you have a baby who has colic, body tension, tongue ties and an insatiable appetite?

What happens when every time you close your eyes… scary images flood your mind?

Well, what happens is pretty obvious to moms who’ve come before me…

You don’t sleep.

At first, not at all.

But eventually, you begin to sleep in 2hr increments.

Soon, a fleeting 3hr stretch feels like injecting hope directly into your veins.

All the things we tried to get our Little Man to sleep will be reserved for another post. Or better yet, just ask ChatGPT, your 10 mom friends, and every sleep expert on the internet and that is the list we tried.

I tried it all.

Multiple times.

Okay, not “all-all”. I didn’t try the two things that were recommended most often (cry it out and having him sleep in a different room). But I tried all the things I was okay with doing for me and him.

And I learned even more how much I value not judging others.

Birth and postpartum have reminded me over and over again to not judge the decisions of any other mother. We all end up at the choices we make for good reason.

And I could easily make a case for all the decisions that I didn’t choose.

I can’t remember how far into not sleeping it was that I started to think about the impact this deprivation was having on my own Self-Trust.

But I remember talking with a friend about a challenging decision point I was at, and I told her how much I wanted to hear what she thought about it. I’d realized just how much my months-long sleep deprivation was affecting my ability to trust myself.

I desperately needed to hear from people I’d trusted before the lack of sleep took over my entire being.

I wasn’t fully outsourcing my decisions.

But I was intentionally prioritizing other people’s thoughts and opinions in ways that have felt foreign for over a decade.

This experience has given me so much perspective. And still the question remains…

• Fuel (food + water)

• Movement

• Sleep

• Sunlight

• Connection (nature + others)

I’ve been leaning HEAVILY on the other four areas for the past ten months.

Fuel, movement, sunlight, and connection have been DIALED IN.

And still, there have been times when I just know that I’m too tired to make a decision. I’m literally too exhausted to trust the next right step.

So instead…

I trust myself to wait.

I use what little discernment superpowers I have left to trust what decisions can wait. I allow myself to put off decisions that aren’t time sensitive (even if they feel urgent).

And if there truly is a choice point that requires a decision, I lean on:

• Past Me

• Future Me

• And the people in my life I trusted before sleep became elusive

I’m reminded of what I preach to others:

The Self-Trust Model is not intended to create more islands of hyper-independent people navigating life alone - consulting only their inner compass for all life decisions. We’re pack animals after all. We’re social and relational creatures. Connection is our lifeline.

Now, I don’t want to jump the gun here… but I’ve gotten two nights in a row of “good” sleep… so WATCH OUT WORLD!! 💁🏻‍♀️

(“Good” sleep = only 3-5 wake-ups/feeds overnight)

This restorative sleep did things to me I can’t fully explain yet.

It reconnected me to “myself”, to my creativity, to my hope, to my humanity.

And to my innate wisdom.

To trust.

🤯

Now, I still have so much time to be humbled about my many decisions as a parent. And especially about any beliefs or ideas regarding how things will go in the future.

It’s still so early to tell if the “good” sleep will even stick.

But my little boy was in such deep, restorative sleep last night.

It was categorically different from the “fragile” sleep state he’s had up until now. As his mama, I KNOW it was different. And the way my heart and soul swelled seeing the heaviness of his sleep. 🥹

What I did to help support his sleep did not come from any baby sleep expert, night nanny, IG influencer, sleep book, pediatrician, or even another mother.

It came from a Knowing within.

And while the past ten months have at times felt like a personal attack on my Self-Trust, I realize now it didn’t actually break.

This time has simply shown me what happens when one of the foundations is missing.

The wisdom never left.

It was just drowned out by doubt and exhaustion.

My answer wasn’t to push harder.

It was to wait.

To borrow wisdom.

To lean on connection.

To care for my foundations.

To trust Past Me… and know my inner compass is still in there.

And while your favorite pediatric sleep consultation may be right in asserting that “sleep begets sleep”...

All of this has taught me something else too…