Why do I feel like I can't trust my own feelings?
Identity & Self-Worth
Emotional distrust often stems from invalidation or gaslighting; your feelings are valid information about your experience.
Feeling like you can't trust your own emotions often develops from experiences where your feelings were consistently invalidated, dismissed, or used against you. This might have happened in childhood if your emotions were regularly minimized with phrases like 'you're being too sensitive,' 'that's not how you really feel,' or 'you're overreacting.' Over time, this external invalidation becomes internalized, making you doubt whether your emotional responses are accurate or appropriate. Gaslighting in Interpersonal relationship can also create this distrust by making you question your perceptions and emotional reactions to situations. If someone consistently tells you that your feelings are wrong or that events didn't happen the way you remember them, you might learn to doubt your own emotional reality. Psychological trauma can affect emotional trust by creating intense or confusing feelings that don't seem to match current circumstances, making you question whether your emotions are reliable guides. Sometimes people learn to distrust their emotions because they've been taught that feelings are dangerous, irrational, or something to be controlled rather than experienced and understood. You might have grown up in an environment where emotional expression was discouraged or where you learned that your feelings caused problems for others. Mental health conditions like Anxiety disorder or Major depressive disorder can also make emotions feel overwhelming or distorted, leading you to question whether your feelings are accurate reflections of reality. However, emotions are important sources of information about your needs, values, Personal boundaries, and experiences. While feelings aren't always perfectly accurate or proportionate, they're usually pointing to something real and important. The goal isn't to trust emotions blindly but to learn to listen to them as valuable data about your internal experience. Your feelings might be influenced by past experiences, current Psychological stress, or other factors, but that doesn't make them invalid or untrustworthy. Practice paying attention to your emotions without immediately judging them as right or wrong. Notice what triggers certain feelings and what they might be telling you about your needs or Personal boundaries. Consider working with a therapist to explore where your emotional distrust originated and develop skills for understanding and validating your own emotional experience.