Constantly Doubting Yourself Is an Act of Disrespect 

This was really illuminating for me. thank you. I am so resistant to look at how deep my self-disrepsect goes. Its so much of whats made me do good work over the years - pushing oneself to greatness at the expense of wellbeing and balance. I experience hard-earned respect for myself in various instances, but still a lot of just outright self-abuse. I've had a brutal time making choices and skinnying down my life - truly saying 'no' to things I'm not inspired by, convinced my intuition is garbage and to let the mind make the choices. I can totally see how me writing out my thoughts or updating friends or family on my life is often used to feel like I'm on the right track, but my parents don't parent anymore. Its only me - and its up to me to build the life I want, and its only one life, and its so overwhelming the notion of making the right choices for myself. It makes me want to cry just thinking about how much suffering I've caused myself, and how much harder ive made it to feel and connect with my own instincts. Grieving and feeling those wounds helps. I've been doing that. But damn, you just showed me more layers to the onion. But even then, its uglier than just self-disrespect - there's a deep impact on ourselves and others and the world at large from our own self-disrespect. Its like comitting a little genocide when the harm builds over years and years.

This is great and it's so tough! At the moment I feel like I'm getting a lot of advice to change things at work and after a while it starts to feel like "hey, you're wrong, and the way you tried to fix that problem, that's wrong too"... I think I could do with telling myself when I get it right!

A little harsh, I don't think going for a second opinion is going to be bad. You want to trust yourself but you also don't want to be stubborn or prideful. Looking for contrary information for a limited amount of time, if only for a few minutes, is a good practice to have. Don't spiral in doubt, and don't consider yourself untrustworthy, definitely agree on that. I think the old saying applies here too, when it comes to yourself: trust by verify.

Wow, this is so well timed! This has been a theme in most of my therapy sessions lately, a lack of trust in myself and my worth. It's so hard to stop listening to the doubts - I guess kind of ironically, we believe the doubting voice but not the one that had the initial thought. What kind of things do you do / say to yourself when those doubts do come up, so that you start to retrain your mind to actually show that respect and love?

*If you don't trust and respect yourself, why should anyone else trust and respect you? Since you know others should trust and respect you... = )