Are you a poor judge of…yourself?

Have you ever been to court? Have you ever stood in suspense as the judge contemplated your sentence? I have. And it blows. There's a sense of fear and dread, followed by this weird emotion of "whatever! I'll deal with whatever comes down the pike!" all wrapped up into one discomforting package.

Note, in these unfortunate scenarios our lives are in the hands of someone we, most of the time, assume to be a capable/just/scrupulous judge. We trust that all his/her education...test-taking…and board joining has qualified them as a trustworthy adjudicator of our destiny. We innately want to trust that, by nature, they'll make the right calls.

It's one thing trusting a courtroom judge. It's quite another trusting your own inner judge. Many women I work with will say that they used to attribute honor (or if nothing else they didn't question its dependability) to their internal judgment of other people/circumstances. Until...their judge failed them…misarabley.

I hear it time and time again, "I thought he was a good guy safe/honest/harmless…respectable. I had no idea he was capable of what he did to me… now, I can't trust my own judgment.

When I can't trust myself and myself is all I have to gauge situations, how can I trust or truly connect with anyone else?"

Below are a few signs that you may have lost the trust of...yourself:

You avoid intimate relationships altogether
Friendships, in general, are hard work
You're watching other people live their lives while you feel paralyzed
Depression (life seems like one let down after another)
If a relationship is going too smoothly, you can't help but do something to mess it up
You've been getting counseling for years with little results
You feel alone, different, abandoned, confused, hopeless, betrayed and you don't know why

It seems in therapy if I were to take the activities of most of my days and sum them up, I would say that the majority of my time is either spent connecting people, keeping them connected or disconnecting them from each other. All equally have their challenges. People oftentimes unknowingly use wounds from their past to erect huge walls of defensiveness, exaggeration, perceived hurt, anger, or misunderstandings. All roles people play without even knowing they signed up for the part.

After spending thousands of hours counseling, I've come to the conclusion that a lot of people just aren't good stewards of their time in that they waste an inordinate amount of it on what could have been if they would've solved some basic relationship struggles. I've heard it said that the average person spends 25 years sleeping and another 25 years working in their lifetime. I believe a huge portion of people spends the rest of their time sorting through relational clutter. For instance, because of past hurts from a boyfriend, girlfriend, parent, uncle, neighbor, etc., a lot of people get twisted up in interpreting situations based on outdated material.

Next, we'll discuss how to change this...

Need therapy in Colorado Springs, CO? Call or text 719-433-1407