Why You Struggle to Trust Yourself or Life — A Trauma & EMDR Perspective
How attachment trauma shapes your sense of safety — and how EMDR can help you rebuild trust.
These last 19 months I’ve been blazing a new trail. I decided to follow a restlessness in my heart. I relocated from London to Lisbon with two small children, one of whom was only 2 weeks old at the time. I didn’t know anyone. Indeed, dare I admit, I had never even visited Lisbon before, although I had heard nothing but praise for it. I had no support network. I had to re-establish myself professionally after maternity leave and at the same time I was pursuing acting training on the side.
Why am I sharing all of this with you? To set the context for why “trust” has been very much alive for me.
Let me refine that word. In Gestalt Therapy theory (my foundational training), everything is articulated as a process. Therefore, to be more specific, my process around trusting has been very much highlighted. And to be even more specific, it has been about my trust in my desire to move abroad and start a new life. It has been about my trust in “life”—that it will work out. It has been about my process of trusting others.
I’ve learned a lot through this process, which has at times been very challenging and led to visceral, gut-wrenching fear along the way. I wanted to share some of my insights with you, to help you along your way. I see this theme over and over again in my clients who come to me to work on their attachment trauma. CPTSD has impaired their ability to create the kind of life they want and the relationships they long for.
The Connection Between Attachment Trauma and Trust
So what is the connection between attachment trauma and trust? Specifically, our trusting process in relation to desires, life, and others.
Another way to consider this question, from a Gestalt Therapy perspective, is to ask:
How did I learn not to trust my desires?
How did I learn not to trust my thinking?
I’m not going to pretend that this article can cover every aspect of this in depth, but here are some experiences that I have had, and my clients have had, that contribute.
Your desire might be to have a solid and happy romantic partnership. Your desire might be to become a successful writer. Your desire might be to feel less depressed and more motivated.
Where Our Relationship to Desire Begins
Whatever the desire, the crucible of our relationship towards our desires is our attachment relationships.
When we were babies and infants, our needs and desires were the same. We had lots of them: a desire to be fed, to be warm, to be held, to be soothed. And we were unashamedly vocal and passionate about getting them met.
Hopefully, for most of us, the need to be fed and cared for was met. This might lead to an out-of-awareness belief that carries into adulthood: I can get the basics met. I can function. I can survive. I can earn enough (perhaps just enough). I can get a good enough job. I can get someone to love me, even if there are quite a few ways the relationship doesn’t meet me.
It is in the trusting of our heartfelt longings and wishes that we stumble.
And why? This again goes back to our early relational experiences.
When a Parent Is Emotionally Unavailable
Likely, you had a caregiver who was unavailable in some way.
Sometimes this idea leaves clients stumped. They say, “But my mum was always around, she did everything for me and my siblings.” Or, “If anything my mother loved me too much. She would worry about my wellbeing and be extra attentive to every little thing.”
The point is that, as adults, we might not connect with the idea that our parent was unavailable. Of course we don’t. As children, we didn’t have concepts and words. We just had experiences. And we organised ourselves around them, adjusting our behaviours and forming beliefs about ourselves.
An unavailable parent can look like a parent who blows hot and cold. They are warm and loving and then distant and cool depending on their mood, which fluctuates. An unavailable parent is one who struggles to share their emotional inner life in an appropriate way. For example, “Mummy is sad today because it is the anniversary of grandad’s death.” An unavailable parent is one who dissociates regularly. They may dissociate into rage or seem like a different person. They may dissociate through drinking or other addictions. They may be unavailable because they are consumed with their own anxiety and cannot be present with their child.
I want to emphasise, if you are a parent yourself and starting to doubt your own availability, that we are all more or less available. Very few parents have Buddha-like presence all the time. As we know in attachment theory, it’s about good enough parenting. About being mostly available. Of course there are times when, due to work stress or bereavement, we are not.
Why We Stop Trusting Our Desires
A belief can form that I can’t trust my desires because I don’t always get them, especially if this is a repeated pattern.
When our infant nervous system consistently receives the message that our heart’s desire (our parent) is not available, we begin to stop trusting our desires.
The process goes:
I reach out for what I want
My desire is met with absence
I stop trusting my desires
This does not happen at a thinking level. That is why we cannot think our way out of this behaviour. We need to come into awareness of it.
Gestalt Therapy talks about awareness as being multi-faceted. It is an embodied experience that includes connecting with our bodies and the emotions stored there, and processing that. This is something attachment-informed EMDR is particularly effective at.
How EMDR Helps Reprocess These Patterns
In EMDR, we work directly with these early, often pre-verbal experiences. Using bilateral stimulation (eye movements, tapping, or sound), the brain is able to access and reprocess stored emotional and somatic memory. Rather than just understanding the issue, there is a felt shift. The nervous system begins to update. This can be online EMDR or in-person. Both work equally well.
If I don’t trust my heartfelt desires, then it feels hard to trust myself—and any projects that are aligned with me.
Believing that I am unworthy of getting my desires means I sabotage them, which then compounds the belief that I can’t trust my desires.
Self-sabotage makes sense if you have an underlying belief that you are bad or unworthy. For example, only half believing that you are worthy of a pay rise, so you don’t ask for it with conviction. Then you don’t get it, and it reinforces the belief.
Experiment
Take note of your body—your tension and your energy.
Journal on: “If I fully trusted all my desires, then what?”
Now take note of your body. Note the level of tension and energy. What has or hasn’t changed?
Why It Can Feel Impossible to Trust Life
If, as an infant, we had a caregiver who was consistently absent or abusive, we don’t develop a sense that we will be “caught” when we fall.
If we don’t have that experience within our family—which is a microcosm for the world—then we don’t expect that from life either.
We may experience life as a jungle, or as a fearful place where we need to constantly manage risk. Or at best, as indifferent. “Shit happens and then we die” might be the underlying attitude.
We cannot easily connect with the idea that life will work out, that relationships will work out, or that even when things seem to be going badly, we will ultimately be okay.
Trust in something greater—such as the universe, God, or source—may also feel difficult or inaccessible.
That said, trust in life doesn’t have to come from spirituality. It can also be supported by different frameworks, such as Stoicism (focusing on what we can control), existential approaches (creating meaning), or nervous system work (building internal safety).
Feeling a sense of underlying optimism that life will work out can feel almost impossible.
But this isn’t about whether your belief is right or wrong. It’s about whether it is serving you, and how rigidly you hold onto it.
In attachment-informed EMDR, we process early experiences of not being supported or “caught.” Through reprocessing, the nervous system begins to recognise that those experiences are not happening now.
Over time, this builds the capacity to tolerate uncertainty without collapsing.
Experiment
Before you journal, take note of what is happening in your body. Where are you holding tension? What is your energy like?
Journal: “If I trusted that life was working out for me, then what?”
Now take note of your body. Note the level of tension and energy. What has or hasn’t changed?
Trusting Others: Too Much or Not at All
Trusting others is a process. There is a continuum, with one end where we don’t trust at all, and the other where we trust completely.
It makes sense not to trust someone straight away. Ideally, as the relationship develops and there are positive experiences, we move along that continuum.
However, when attachment trauma is present, we can become polarised.
We may trust too quickly. Parts of us may feel helpless or powerless, and trusting someone quickly can be linked to wanting to be rescued.
On the other hand, if we experienced caregivers as unsafe or invalidating, we may struggle to trust at all.
Even if our parents were not overtly abusive, they may not have been able to respond to our emotional needs in a way that felt attuned or validating. The nervous system encodes this.
So it becomes difficult to take in support from others.
We may spread our needs across multiple people rather than allowing ourselves to rely deeply on one person.
Rebuilding Trust Through EMDR
In attachment-informed EMDR, we process the experiences where trust was broken. Through bilateral stimulation, these memories are integrated.
Over time, the nervous system begins to recognise that not all people are the same as our caregivers.
We gain perspective.
A more adaptive belief can emerge: I can choose who to trust.
Experiment
Take note of your body.
Journal: “If I chose to trust [someone], then what?”
Now take note of your body. Note the level of tension and energy. What has or hasn’t changed?
Conclusion
For those who have experienced attachment trauma, to trust or not to trust is not simply a decision. That ignores the fact your nervous system was primed over and over again not to trust. If you learned that your needs wouldn’t be met, that people weren’t reliable, or that reaching for what you wanted led to disappointment, then of course trust doesn’t come easily now.
But what was learned can be reprocessed. Through awareness, embodiment, and approaches like attachment-informed EMDR, your system can begin to update.
From there, trust is no longer something you have to force. It becomes something that feels possible.
If you recognise yourself in this, this is something we can work with.I offer attachment-informed EMDR therapy online worldwide, as well as in-person sessions in Lisbon.
You can book a free 15-minute video call here.