WEEKLY VLOG #7:
3 REASONS WHY I TRUST NOBODY ANYMORE
Transcript
Hello and welcome! Dear wonderful people!
I am Totally Zen Tadeja from Andromeda Yoga Atelier. Every Thursday I am going to answer a real-time question we might all be struggling with considering yoga, mental health, and well-being. If you have a question post it in the comments down below.
The vlog is specially dedicated to people who are:
- Tired
- Tired of being tired and
- Tired of explaining how tired they are to everyone else.
You can substitute the word tired with exhausted, feeling blue, stuck, busy… Whatever pops in your head. USE THAT!
Every so often the debates I have with my dear, sweet friends turn to how we are dealing and coping with trust or abandonment issues. One of my girlfriends recently made a remark: „Men are an unnecessary burden!“ While I do have to agree with her slightly that some men are often more of a burden than a cherished supporting partner we hoped for the same goes for women or people in general. And this statement made me really think about trust and today‘s question:
Why do I trust nobody anymore?
For me, trust and abandonment issues started very early on in my life and they are so deep-seated in my soul that I had to reach for professional literature and find support groups for co-dependency. If you are struggling with deep emotional trauma please don’t hesitate and reach out to a trustworthy and competent person. Trust me, I know how hard this step might be for you.
Here are my three reasons why:
-
questioning my intuition,
- being skeptical of others,
- distrusting the world in general.
1. Questioning my intuition
This translates to not trusting my spiritual and/or physical body. In my early childhood, I realized that my own truth is invalid or wrong. Maybe because I was forced to cover up shady family secrets to the world or maybe because I had cortisone injections administered forcefully as a kid… I do not blame anyone for anything, BTW, or hold any grudges against the people who hurt me. Nonetheless, I learned that my feelings and reasoning must be wrong. I also felt like my physical body was betraying me by shutting down my eyesight with no plausible reason… But the truth is I couldn’t escape the situation back then, I was trapped and I repeatedly lied to myself to survive my inner struggle. I felt I was alone and I questioned what I saw with my own two eyes all the time. Yoga was essential to finding my own voice again. When you explore the limit of a difficult asana in a safe environment, you realize just how much you don’t believe in yourself and just how much willpower you do hold. Now… I always try to listen to that inner voice. If you’re trying to be your best version, I only have one piece of advice: Trust your gut! Just believe!
2. Being skeptical of others
The experiences such as I described earlier made me generally very skeptical of people in my life in general. I built high walls, I got them before they got me, I tried to control every external aspect of my life… I tried to find safety through the control and guess what, it made me feel safe, but it also made me feel very alone and that is not really a way to live. Shutting down to everyone including yourself robs you of meeting so many helpful, loving, amazing, caring, wonderful people. Sometimes when the fear gets the best of me I think about all the people that have helped me out over the years before I fall asleep. In GoT jargon: „A lone wolf dies but the pack survives!“ Once you re-learn to trust and listen to yourself by actively enforcing your inner guidance you realize you are the adult now and you can trust whom you can and cannot trust. Will people still hurt you? YES! But you always have the option to step up for yourself or step away from a person that is hurting you.
3. Distrusting the world in general
Not being able to trust yourself and others is bad enough. Being constantly bombarded by news about deadly diseases, armed conflicts, terror, economic upheavals, etc. doesn’t exactly help to restore the trust in the world either. It feels like you are opening a cabinet with countless drawers each day and you have no clue what is going to jump at you next. This way of life is scary and it is exhausting… In a constant state of fear, our amygdala goes bananas and when we act out of fear, we lose ourselves. Yoga and guided meditation help me to calm my thoughts and breath. In everyday life, I especially like the mantra I came up with in my mother tongue: „Naj vse dobro pride in vse slabo odide!“ which means „Let all god stay and all bad leave.“ All these things in turn calm down my autonomic nervous system and my heart rate. As a yoga teacher, I am so delighted to see that yoga also similarly affects my students. Like there is some universal wisdom of positivity hovering above us all.
In conclusion, yoga reminds me that acting out of love and peace towards myself, others, and the entire world is a much better alternative to acting out of fear. You still won‘t be able to predict the future but you can choose that you are going to be able to handle your experience of the world with love, compassion, and kindness.
With that thought I bow the head to the heart; may the wisdom of the body and the wisdom of the mind unite together to support our collective healing and evolution.
