can I really trust myself?

can I really trust myself?
Tuesday February 05, 2008

Dear Alice,

I do respect your work a lot, the way you make it accessible also. I can say I do trust you.
But to make it short: I don’t trust myself anymore; sometimes yes, and moments later I vacillate and wonder.

You say : trust the body. My experience of it is that indeed the body is linked to emotions, and then onto the mind.
I am not on drugs, of any kind, legal or not. Not a drinker either other than an occasional glass in the evening.
Yet I can say that what I do experience lately as far as intensity (thoughts, emotions) is so enormous that I am questioning its validity. Intense fears leading to extreme caution and also to extreme sorrow. Fear that I fear too much. Fear of betrayal. Huge.

My question is: is it possible after all that my reactions, my emotions therefore my thinking are reactivated by past events, some very old, indeed extremely traumatic and violent; and that these past extremes make me consider things of today in a light which is disproportionate in size to what they are really now?

This feeling of insanity is very scary too.

Alice, you may want to tell me, why do you ask me? Why don’t you ask yourself ? Why don’t you trust yourself?
Yet please I ask you; please tell me.

With my love, J.

AM: You write: “Alice, you may want to tell me, why do you ask me? Why don’t you ask yourself? Why don’t you trust yourself? Yet please I ask you; please tell me.” I can’t give you an answer because I don’t understand your questions. Probably you can’t trust your feelings because you are not willing to admit your truth. The drugs may help you for a while not to see but your feelings and your body seem to guide you.