over empathy kills self-trust

Hinzugefügt: 2026-05-26

[00:00:01]Hey guys. Oh my goodness, I'm sorry. I'm still chewing. I don't know why I decided to start it while I'm still chewing.

[00:00:08]Mhm.

[00:00:09]Okay.

[00:00:10]>> [clears throat] >> I have an intense topic today.

[00:00:14]I have been reflecting about it a lot.

[00:00:15]I'm like swore off talking to anyone all day because I was like, I need to just sit with this and understand it better before [snorts] I tried to outsource whatever I'm feeling.

[00:00:29]So, yesterday I had like a crazy crazy day of just like being way too much in my head, just doubting myself, just doubting other people, having way too much anxiety, and placing too much value on other people's opinions other than my own. And I I I just like couldn't have a good time yesterday at all. I'm going to eat this again cuz I'm hungry.

[00:00:48]Okay.

[00:00:49]So, today so video is about trust. What does trust look like for myself? Like what how can I embed this within my daily life? What happened to my trust? Why can't What do I What does trust even look like? Like these are my I have four main questions, okay? Wait.

[00:01:09]I have to get out the journal because I was journaling about this. So, first question, what is trust in myself?

[00:01:14]Second question, can I make can I move through difficult emotions on my own? What does this look like and how does how does this interweave itself with trust? Third question, what happened over time that dismantled the system of trust within my life?

[00:01:30]Fourth question, how can I move forward build that trust again? Okay, so I kind of just like start with This is my This is my understanding. I start with like what what is trust? Like what does that look like within myself? Um and what how does this thing manifest in my life?

[00:01:47]So, what is trusting myself? Belief that I'm capable of facing situations with an idea of right and wrong and in between.

[00:01:55]It is my sense of core values, not overestimating hope or creating false narratives of people and places.

[00:02:02]Third, it's self-respect to walk away from harm or the self-respect to understand when to keep trying.

[00:02:10]And these are the fourth These are the three things that I'd like to have. Um I'm not saying I inhibit these by any means. Um but I think I have like a great understanding of what right and wrong is. Um and I I know I could probably name like core values, but it's hard for me to not create false narratives based off of these core values within my head because I find myself having a very strong idea of who I am, like of my character. And so I named that like I'm an honest person, I'm reliable, I'm hopeful, and lastly I'm I'm an empathetic person, um which I starred that one because I think I want to talk about that one a little bit later about how empathy can be a little bit dangerous um within the realm of self-trust. But um I I don't find myself like inhibiting all of these core values of what trust is. And obviously this is what led me to finding out that I'm like don't really trust myself as a person currently.

[00:03:11]Um and so some things that I am not, I do not think I'm a strong person. I don't know if other people would describe me as that either. I feel that I'm very emotionally swayed easily. I'm also very opinion like my opinion can be swayed very easily as well. Um and maybe this reflects that I don't have a great sense of self, but then I just like argue that I feel like I I do understand myself to an extent. I just can't trust myself, and that's obviously the topic of this video.

[00:03:41]And so I'm not obviously physically strong, I'm not mentally strong, emotionally strong, and I have a hard time dealing with like what the actual truth is because I feel like since I have such, um, consistent forms of anxiety within my life, very very much is generalized anxiety, it's hard for me to not question other people's behavior, not question my own behavior as well, along with other people's morals and my own morals. Um, >> [clears throat] >> so, having this, um, generalized anxiety along with distrust, um, doesn't make up for a good equation for myself currently. And so, this is kind of where the starting line is at.

[00:04:22]Like, why this is my why and what is trust question. And when I went to Webster Dictionary, Merriam-Webster herself, trust is assured reliance on the character, ability, strength, or truth of someone or something. So, like I said, I'm lacking in the strength department, clearly. Um, I don't know if I have assured reliance on the character. I'd like to say that I know my character pretty well, but acting upon my character or acting from my character seems to be a little bit more difficult in the current state. So, um, >> [clears throat] >> how can I believe myself and believe my own persona character if I'm doubting others and vice versa? So, how am I going to trust other people if I can't trust myself? How are other people going to trust me if I can't trust myself?

[00:05:09]Ugh, it's just [snorts] like a hard, really hard negative feedback loop to try to reason through.

[00:05:14]Um, and so, I kind of found out that, well, not kind of, I kind of reflected that since I have this anxiety that helps me not trust myself, I think I overestimate or overindulge in what I do know how to do, which is empathize with other people. And, um, this is, like I said, a little bit dangerous because when I do find myself over-empathizing, I find myself breaking through or dismantling a lot of the boundaries that I have set for myself. So, this one lady said, "Empathy without boundaries turns into self-abandonment."

[00:05:53]You should not tolerate bad behavior.

[00:05:56]And you cannot tolerate bad behavior and still choose yourself and trust yourself in the end.

[00:06:01]Um and so, empathy will not benefit someone who does not want to change. And so, this is definitely manifesting in a lot of people's relationships, including mine.

[00:06:10]Um I find myself forgiving other people very easily and trying to understand where they came from, understand have a better perspective onto their trauma that they went through, on their quirks, their likes, their dislikes, their fears, their trials and tribulations, and how I can end up making excuses for them and forgiving them for some of the actions that they have caused, when in reality I'm just breaking the trust that I had within myself, that I have um these morals that I abide by, but I'm willing to break them so easily for other people because I empathize with their situation. And not to say that empathy is a bad thing at all. I think Sorry, is there like food in my teeth?

[00:06:49]Okay. Empathy is great. It's just when you over-empathize, that's when you are abandoning that part of yourself. Um and compromising it for other people, when in reality you can hold space for some of the things that people tell you that are difficult and still walk away and trust yourself and have the strength and the compassion for yourself. Um and put a priority on your emotions and your life without, I don't know, being rude to someone else, if that makes sense.

[00:07:25]Like, those aren't the only two options that exist. Like, you can still empathize with other people and still respect yourself. And I think that's difficult for me because as I grew up, I was always taught to, you know, like take the high road, you know, like understand what other people or try to understand what other people are going through, you know, make space for the difficult situations that may be happening without your greater understanding. Like, I think that was very much how I was raised, but I think we do need to put an emphasis on the other part of that, which is you can have the space for those for those things that people tell you that are difficult, but you can also hold the space for yourself and have the self-respect and self-trust that these bad things can these things can happen and you can still respect yourself enough to walk away and to stay true to those boundaries for um for yourself. And I think that's really hard for me because I do find myself abandoning certain values and certain characteristics that I hold true um for other people because I hope that they will change or hope that they will become a better version of themselves.

[00:08:34]And that is to a fault because um I have gotten burned many times doing that. So, um I don't know. It's It's hard for me to be I It's hard for me to set those empathetic boundaries, I guess. And that leads into not trusting myself and, you know, the character picture that I'm that I'm creating for myself.

[00:09:00]Um And so, this leads into my second question. Can I move through difficult emotions on my own? What does this look like and what does this not look like?

[00:09:08]So, it was a lot easier to come up with things that it did not look like, um especially because I am definitely not acting in accordance to the things that I should not be doing, um the because they definitely misalign with some of the values that I hold. So, like some of the values that I hold is like I want to be empathetic towards other people.

[00:09:25]Like, I want to treat everyone with kindness, but then I go and against that because I'm not treating myself with kindness by letting some of these bad behaviors continue to repeat within my life. And so, like for example, I was in a very um abusive relationship, physically, emotionally, mentally, sexually, and I just continued to let that behavior happen. Not to say that I'm blaming myself for it, but I wasn't acting in accordance to my values, and thus that pattern happening over and over and over again has led to a low self-trust boundary barrier, and that is manifesting a lot within my daily life because I can't find the strength or the emotional capacity to treat myself with kindness sometimes because I I find myself trying to over-empathize with other people.

[00:10:18]And so, um how can I move through these difficult emotions?

[00:10:24]And how do What does this look like? So, what I find myself doing is seeking external validation too quickly. I like find myself immediately texting my friends and being like, "Am I in the right? Am I in the wrong for this? Like, what do you guys think?"

[00:10:36]And I just outsource a lot of this emotional dread, emotional density, when I really should be looking inward because once I find myself over-relying on, you know, X person, and then that leads to a very codependent relationship where I can't form my own opinions and form my own thoughts. Thus, I don't have any trust because I don't have any thoughts of my own.

[00:10:59]And so, I shouldn't outsource some of these um feelings because it leads to a lack of stability, and it leads to misconstrued definitions of love, and it's just a different understanding or a different perspective on to what your relationship be should be with yourself.

[00:11:14]And so, instead of over-relying on other people, I need to kind of make a difference between what over-reliance looks like versus what support looks like within my relationships because I think we can definitely find support within other people and within our friends and within our family. I'm not saying that we shouldn't ever talk to anyone about some of these difficult situations we're going through, but I just need to look more deeply into what that support should look like and explore certain types of discomfort without the instant gratification of hearing what my friends think. And I just really need to like sit through it all and understand the ups and downs within my perspective before finding out what other people's or even validating what I even thought beforehand.

[00:12:01]Um so, yeah.

[00:12:05]It's good to look inwards and that external validation and external perspective can take a toll on that sense of self-trust that you have. So, third question is what happened over time that dismantled the system of trust?

[00:12:17]This was definitely the hardest because you have to look This is like the hardest thing to do because you have to look back and you really have to weigh certain situations and, you know, not brush them off as like, "Oh, it wasn't really a big deal." You have to like really sit down and face what happened.

[00:12:33]And especially the actions that you held towards other people and not [clears throat] blame other people for it because in the end the values and beliefs that you have impact the actions that you make and the actions that you make can hurt or harm other people and hurt and harm yourself and ultimately hurt and harm your sense of self-trust.

[00:12:52]So, I think that a sense of self-trust is very contingent upon the hope that you have of for certain situations. And like I said earlier, I'm a very empathetic person. I'm a very hopeful person. And so, when these situations didn't turn out the way that I wanted them to, that hope and that sense of self-trust became very questionable because I was like, "Well, you know, I had such high hopes for what this relationship would be and how this person would act towards me, but they didn't end up acting that way towards me." And so, they So, my beliefs must have been wrong Um one way or another, and that's when I end up like doubting myself because maybe things didn't work out romantically, and I was over-reliant, and I lost parts of myself, and I over-adapted to someone else, and I put their needs in front of my own too many times where I lost what I actually needed from a healthy relationship. And another part of this is being a people-pleaser. And so, this also you also I also find myself over-adapting to the needs of others just to either make a situation very neutral or make it very positive. And when I am over- pleasing or putting too much emphasis or weight into someone else's perspective on me, I'm essentially just letting go of the morals and values that I have for myself because I am putting too much external pressure or external weight on how other people view me versus how I want to be perceived and and how I want to be seen within the world.

[00:14:34]Um and you just end up adopting other people's beliefs and then letting go of your own. So, this is like slowly chipping away at some of these core values that I had for myself. Um and mostly the the most um I don't know, not important, but the most prominent part that I see um dismantling my system of trust is just becoming overly codependent on my significant others, and not even putting up with a lot of toxic behavior, but just letting it happen um and not I don't know, having the sense of trust within myself to get out of these situations um at more quickly than I did, and I hate to even just like blame myself for that because I know a lot of these relationships work in very heinous ways where they're meant to keep you trapped in certain cycles emotionally. And so, I don't know, it's hard for me to have empathy for myself in that situation because I can so easily have it for another person in in said situation when they're going through um toxic or traumatically um relationships, but I don't know, when I look I don't know why I can't I I don't know why I can't have that same empathy for myself. And maybe it's because I don't trust myself enough that I you know, I should have known better. I don't I don't really know. I don't really want to dig into that right now.

[00:15:57]Um but yeah, I think over time my sense of trust just got broken down because of the relationships that I had and the hope I had for other people and my ability to easily people please and empathize with other people's situations that I ended up losing parts of myself, which sucks.

[00:16:18]Um and fourth, how to How am I going to build this trust again within myself, goodness. So, I kind of separated this into the thoughts that I will try to change within myself and the actions that will be a result of the different perspective of thoughts. Perspective of thought, God, what do I I don't even know what that means. Anyways, um I need to make a good distinction between listening to my emotions and blindly trusting them. This is a huge one for me because I end up believing everything I think and so, sometimes my brain is mean to me and um my anxiety takes over and so I end up believing all of these anxious thoughts when in reality, that's not how it exists in the world and that's not how this person has shown up within your life and this is not how you need to show up within your life because your brain lies to you or at least my brain likes to lie to me a lot.

[00:17:12]And so, I need to make a distinction between, you you blindly trusting some of these mean scary thoughts that I have. I should trust the nice ones, for sure. I should not trust the mean, scary, um, malicious ones, but I do need to make a distinction between listening to my emotions and sitting with them versus immediately acting on them or even immediately believing them.

[00:17:33]Um, I need to decrease the reassurance seeking. So, this means, like I said, I need to not depend so heavily on that external validation towards my friends and towards other people. I need to be able to trust that I can handle the emotions on my own because I have the tools to be able to trust myself again.

[00:17:49]I just need to make these small little actions and small little belief changes that I am capable and I I I can be a strong person. I'm just not very strong right now and I need to just slowly build up these small pieces within myself. Um, I need to start with small actions and promises kept over time. So, like that Japanese theory of becoming like 1% better every day. If I just pick, let's just say I want to pick like a small thing. Like I want to like today, I didn't want to talk to anyone, um, any of my significant others. Well, not plural. Anyone who could potentially disrupt that sense of trust that I have within myself. So, that's my small promise that I want to make to myself today. I will stick to things that I find comfort in and I should not give in to the people-pleasing narrative of making other people happy you know, by talking to them right now cuz I just need to focus on myself. And so, that's like a small action or a small promise that I can keep for myself. Um, I need to observe how I feel after I honor my instincts versus ignore them.

[00:18:53]And this is a really good one because I am very into the instant gratification or the instantaneous forgiveness of a bad action that someone has caused or an action that I don't specifically agree with. I'm just like, "Oh my gosh, it's okay. We'll just like get through it and I I stupid to dwell on it, um, because we don't have much time and and I should just forgive you because it's not a big deal.

[00:19:15]Really. Um but I just need to find a longer path into or a more delayed path into forgiving other people, and I don't know, finding out how I feel if I take the hard path versus the instant gratification easy way out path. Um because I don't know, I don't find myself taking the hard way out most days um because it's difficult. Because taking the hard way out and talking about your feelings and honoring the right decision is difficult. And so I need to really sit with how I feel after I make those hard decisions and give myself a pat on the back for doing so because it's difficult. And I don't know, a slap in the face for doing the wrong thing.

[00:20:01]Like I don't know. How am I supposed to Oh, it's so hard.

[00:20:04]Um and then, you know, differentiate between self-confidence and self-trust.

[00:20:09]This kind of goes back into like trusting my emotions blindly.

[00:20:13]And listening to my own emotions. Um I I just I just overall I need to set better boundaries for myself. Like that is like the one thing that I think I need to get from this whole year and this lack of self-trust that I have. Where did my boundaries go? Why am I so easily breakable?

[00:20:38]Or what Why What is making me Why Why am I I don't know. I don't know how to reframe it to be nice to myself. Why Why am I letting go of my boundaries so easily for other people? Is it because I'm so desperate to be loved or to be seen? Like I just I want to act in accordance with my values. And to act in accordance with my values, I need to listen to my emotions better. I need to look within. I need to not people please as much, and um I don't know, find that trust. Find that trust because I lost it somehow. So, I don't know. I don't know if this was helpful for anyone, but I hope everyone's having a good week, and oh lord, [gasps] it's it's a nice week.

[00:21:23]It's like 80° here, so I'm excited to just like sit and chill because my job is over.

[00:21:30]And I don't know, I need to just reflect some more. So, thank you guys for listening, and I'll see you later.

[00:21:38]Bye.