How to Trust Yourself When You're Terrified
It’s Thursday afternoon and I’m standing in a rental house at over 6,000 feet, looking down at my watch.
My resting heart rate is in the 90s.
Mine is normally 54. I wear the watch now, so I have the data, and the data says something is off. I stand up, over 100. I walk across the room, over 100. I live basically at sea level, so this is a completely normal adjustment to altitude and I know that.
My body does not care what I know. 😳
Saturday I’m supposed to hike 23 miles through the Tetons. Four thousand feet of climbing, over 10,000 feet at the top, 11 miles in and 11 miles back out.
I said yes on Wednesday, on the plane, texting a friend who assumed I was flying west to rest.
By Thursday night I’m out. My mind has already written a whole storybook about why staying home is the loving choice. 📖
Maybe you know this move.
Maybe you said yes to a trip, a class, a promotion, a hard conversation, and the second it got close you started quietly building your exit. And the backing out isn’t even the worst part. The worst part is what you make it mean... that you can’t trust yourself, that you’re the woman who always folds.
You’re not. Your mind is a smoke detector. It can’t tell the difference between a burning house and a 23-mile hike. It smells change, and it starts screaming. 🙀
Tony Robbins, one of my teachers, teaches that certainty is one of six core human needs. We all have it, we just rank it in a different order, and mine shoots straight to the top the second my heart rate does.
A racing mind before a big stretch means one thing. Your mind is protecting you, not predicting you.
Three things get me from Thursday’s no to Saturday’s trailhead.
✦ Trust Yourself by Borrowing Someone Else’s Certainty
Thursday night I look at Dave, my husband, with my eyes all watered up, and I tell him I don’t know.
He says, you got this. I’m not going to lead you into something dangerous. It’s one step in front of the other.
I have no certainty of my own in that moment. So I borrow his. In personal development it’s called borrowed certainty, and I love it. 🤝
And yes, this is real science. James Coan, a psychologist at the University of Virginia, put married women in a brain scanner and told them a mild shock was coming. Holding her husband’s hand, a woman’s threat response calmed way down. Even holding a stranger’s hand calmed it some. Your brain settles when any steady hand shows up.
One woman on Friday’s live (I go live on Substack every Friday at 11:30am Eastern, come hang out) says she agreed to photograph a wedding and instantly came up with a hundred reasons she couldn’t do it. Then she invited a second shooter to back her up. That’s the whole move.
Ask yourself:
Where can you bring more certainty into this?
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Who could come with you, or be on the other end of the phone?
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What backup could you add so it isn’t all on you?
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What do you already know is true about what you can do?
And if borrowing feels like cheating... it isn’t. You’re trusting yourself enough to trust another. That’s still trust. 💛
This is a lot of what coaching is, too. When a woman is spinning in overwhelm, fear, or worry, we look for one thing together: what can she do right now to know she’s safe.
✦ Once You Decide, Move Within 48 Hours
Friday I commit. And my mind immediately negotiates: yes, and let’s do it Sunday instead of Saturday.
More time to acclimate, I tell myself. Very responsible sounding. Except my sister-in-law, blessedly, is watching the weather, and Saturday is the window. Dave says nope, Saturday.
Thank goodness, because my mind isn’t asking for more time. It’s pushing the scary thing out just far enough to talk me back out of it.
Transformation works like a loop. Something stirs you, you make the decision to change, and a window opens. Step through it and the change locks in. Let it pass, and the loop closes behind you... and you don’t get to pick up where you left off. You have to build the certainty to make that whole decision again, from zero. ⏳
So once you decide, move within 48 hours. That’s long enough for your nervous system to settle into the yes, and not long enough for your brain to write another storybook.
Can’t finish the whole thing in 48 hours? Take one action inside the window. Send the text. Pay the deposit. Tell somebody out loud.
✦ Find the Comfy Inside the Uncomfy
Saturday we sort ourselves out on the trail. Dave’s brother leads, Dave second, me in the back, and I love it back there. My own pace, nobody breathing down my neck, somebody always in eyesight. I can’t spare the breath to talk, so when Dave turns around to check on me, I give him two thumbs up and keep climbing. 👍
For five straight hours of ascent, I hold my heart rate in the 140s. Uncomfy, and not so uncomfy that I shut down. The 150s? I’m sucking wind and planning my own funeral. The 140s I can hold all day.
Somewhere on that climb a mantra finds me. I’m a master adapter. I repeat it in rhythm with my steps, and every round hands me a little more certainty. The words aren’t magic. I’m telling myself who I am, over and over, and my body starts to believe me. 💓
You don’t have to make the whole thing hard. Find the one piece you can make comfortable, your pace, your position, your person, and let it carry you through the rest.
Two quick things. Don't compare yourself to anybody else, self beat up has never once helped a woman trust herself. And stretchy is different from unsafe. Discernment is part of the growth. If what's underneath your fear is real trauma, or you're truly not safe, reaching for the support is love speaking, and you're not meant to carry it alone. 💛
✦ Let Your Mind Be Wrong About the Rest
I was certain the ascent would break me.
We reach the top and I say, is this it? Are we here? Dave points, and the Teton range is right there, so close my jaw drops open. I live for these moments. I do. 🤯
Then we start down, and it’s the last mile and a half where I completely lose it. I knew the descent is where accidents happen. I still underestimated it by a mile. Maybe two.
And the things I feared? My knees never blew up. The altitude never wrecked me. At 10,000 feet I was blissful.
F.E.A.R. is false expectation appearing real. You’re grabbing at a future you haven’t lived yet, so of course your guess is off. You’ve never been there. 🕊️
So the next time you say yes and then want out, borrow the certainty you can’t find, move inside 48 hours, find your own pace inside the discomfort, and let your mind be wrong about the rest.
That’s how you trust yourself when you’re terrified. Not by waiting to feel ready.
By walking in for the view. ✨
xo, Dr. Sue
P.S. Certainty is something women hand each other, and inside Soulfull Path we do it every single week. Want to meet your own pattern first? The midlife personality quiz is a fun place to start. And if you’re tired of talking yourself out of things alone, come find your people. Join us here → 🌱
