The Self-Trust Crisis (And Why You're Asking The Wrong Question)

Hey there, Dr. Dallas Bragg here, recovery coach for gay men who want to break free from the addictive patterns of chemsex and live their best and highest life. Today we're talking about building self-trust in recovery and how you are asking the wrong questions. If you've lost trust in yourself and don't know how to repair it, hang on through the whole video. On this channel, you're going to find lots of resources to help you break free from Tina or chemsex and attain your best and highest self. Also, don't forget to look for my podcast. It's called The Aftermath Podcast here on this channel as well. I'll drop I post a long-form video just like this one every Saturday. So please turn on the notification bell and subscribe, like, share, blah, blah, blah, so you don't miss anything. By the way, if you're interested, I have a one-on-one coaching program and a new group coaching program, both called Recovery Alchemy. The link to apply is in the show notes. Through weekly one-on-one sessions, weekly group sessions, daily accountability, your life could look much differently in 6 months than it does from right now. So I don't trust myself. That's one of the most common limiting beliefs that I see among men who come to me for help. Sometimes this is a literal spoken sentence, and sometimes it's clear. It's a clear message that comes through based on their behavior, their words, their attitude. Either way, it's rooted in shame and it's rooted in resignation. And like, it's an indictment, right? It's an indictment of their character. I can't trust myself. I'm a terrible person. I'm erratic. And it's like they're fundamentally broken. There's more evidence here. They're collecting more evidence to support their damaged goods identity. Last week, a client sat across from me on Zoom and his face was just all frustrated and he's like, Dallas, I've been substance-free for 2 months, but I still don't trust myself. I'm terrified I'm going to fuck this up again. How can I move forward when I can't even trust my own decisions? And I leaned forward. He's like, what if I told you You're asking the wrong question. And he's looking at me confused. What do you mean? When you say, I don't trust myself, you're treating yourself as a monolith, one unified entity that's either trustworthy or not, black or white, all or nothing. This is the thinking of someone with addictive patterns, but that's not how our psyche actually works. The real question isn't, Can I trust myself? It's which parts of me am I struggling to trust and why? That's the reframe that changes the direction and helps you begin the process of self-trust. The parts you don't trust anymore is this first concept that I try to get my clients, and I'm gonna try to get you to understand. You're not a singular self. You're a collection of parts. Each of these parts has its own agenda, its own history, its own personality, its own way of trying to keep you safe or get your needs met. If you can conceptually When you realize this, you can step out of the identification of labels such as addict in order to appreciate true self. It's underneath all that life conditioning. So when you say, I don't trust myself, what you really mean is, there are parts of me I don't trust. Specifically, you don't trust the part who wants to engage in chemsex. And I get it. It has lied. It has manipulated. It has hurt people you love. It has led you into some dark places. It's made promises it couldn't keep. It's convinced you to Prioritize getting high over everything else you've ever valued. But here's the plot twist here. The part who wants to use has always been trying to help you and protect you. I know that sounds crazy or insane, but stay with me. The part learned that crystal could provide what you desperately needed, what you said you wanted: confidence in sexual situations, relief from shame, a feeling of belonging in spaces where you felt like an outsider, an escape From the relentless criticism in your head. Connection when you felt profoundly alone. Your meth-using part wasn't working against you. Its methods were just catastrophically misaligned. So instead of trying to eliminate or suppress this part, which never works, recovery is about integration. It's about building a new relationship with your meth-using part through awareness and reprogramming. So think about it this way. If your partner cheated on you, But you decided to stay together and rebuild, what would that process look like? Clear boundaries, regular check-ins, transparency, patience with the healing process, time to prove trustworthiness through consistent action, a willingness to understand what drove the betrayal in the first place. Those same principles apply to your meth-using part. And here's the empowering reframe of all this. Instead of, I can't trust my addiction part, Try, parts of me have conflicting goals, conflicting ways to meet those goals. Suddenly, you're not a victim of your own mind. You become the internal mediator. You're in the driver's seat negotiating between these parts. You put them back here. Now you're gonna listen to me, helping them find better ways to meet their needs to protect you. Your meth-using part is not working against you. Its efforts are just misguided, and now you're teaching it new strategies. So listen, trust is built on the evidence, right? So let's get practical. You know why you don't trust yourself? Because your nervous system has mountains of evidence that you don't keep your word. Every time you said, this is the last time, and it wasn't. Every promise you broke, every boundary you violated, every commitment you abandoned, your subconscious has been taking notes the whole time. So when you try to white-knuckle your way into trusting yourself again, it doesn't work because your system needs proof. Proof, not wishful thinking. The good news is that the evidence is something you can create starting right now. It's never too late to reprogram the subconscious. One of the most powerful practices in Recovery Alchemy in my program is what I call the 100-Day Habit. It's stupidly simple, but it works like this. Choose one small promise to keep to yourself every day for 100 days. Document it in the morning, Reflect on it at night. And when I say small, I mean ridiculously small. Like drink a glass of water before noon, make your bed, 5 minutes of breathing, send one text to someone you care about. The size of the commitment does not matter here. What matters is the consistency of keeping it. Every single day you keep your promise, you're sending a message to your subconscious. My words carry weight. I am someone who follows through. This is how you rebuild trust from the inside out. But here is the key. You need to set up your life so that failing is— failing to complete this task is nearly impossible. So don't choose something like go to the gym every day if you hate the gym or if you haven't been going. Don't choose meditate for 30 minutes if you've never meditated. Choose something very small, so accessible that you'd have to actively sabotage yourself to fail it. Here's another practice that supports this work. Make a list of all the ways You currently do trust yourself right now. There are things you trust yourself to do consistently. I trust myself to brush my teeth every day. I trust myself to show up for work. I trust myself to feed myself when I'm hungry. Start acknowledging all the evidence because when you only focus on where trust is broken, you miss all the places it already exists. Recovery is not about playing it safe. So here's what most recovery programs are gonna get it wrong. And they tell you to avoid risk. Avoid triggers. Avoid anything that might threaten your sobriety. But here's what I know after 7 years in recovery and hundreds of clients later. You don't build trust by hiding. You build it by proving you can navigate discomfort without crystal. What would recovery be without triggers? Just a rainbow walk in the park. What would you gain from that? Crystal was never about the drug. It was about what the drug did for you. The confidence, the connection, the escape, the intensity, the permission to be sexual, relief from anxiety. Now you need to prove to yourself that You can access those experiences or at least survive the absence of them without the substance. This is where calculated risk takes place and it becomes very essential. So let me be clear. I'm not talking about reckless behavior. I'm not talking about graduated exposure to situations that challenge your recovery, right? I'm talking about having support systems in place. Every time you take a calculated risk and emerge on the other side still intact, you're building a library. of evidence, experiential evidence that's etched in your neural pathways. And it says, I can trust that part. I can trust myself. So here's the framework. So step 1, you want to identify your edge. Where does safety end? Okay. Step 1, identify your edge. Where does safety end and growth begin? Make a list of situations that feel mildly, moderately, and intensely challenging to your recovery. Start with the mild ones. Maybe it's going to a gay bar sober with a trusted friend, attending a circuit party, right, with clear Boundaries and an exit plan, or having a difficult conversation without numbing it afterwards, going on a date and being honest about your recovery, something like that. Step 2, prepare strategically before taking any risk. Create a detailed safety plan. Who will be your support person on standby? What exact phrases will you use if you need to exit? What self-regulation tools will you bring? Grounding objects, mantras, breathing techniques? What's your exit strategy if the triggers intensify? Step 3, document before, during, after. Before, what am I afraid of might happen? What strengths can I draw on? During, note the physical sensations, the thoughts, the urges, right? After, what surprised me? What did I learn about my capacity? Where am I? This— where am I on this assessment? This documentation is crucial because your brain will try to minimize your victories, but by recording them, you create undeniable evidence that you can review That you are growing in capacity. Each risk you navigate successfully is going to rewrite the story you tell yourself about who you are and what you're capable of. So here's the truth about trust. The goal isn't to become somebody who never doubts themselves. The goal is to become someone who understands that doubt is just one part of you speaking, not the whole truth of who you are. You're not broken. You're not untrustworthy. You're a complex human being with multiple parts that have been trying to keep you safe in the only ways They know how. Some of those ways involve Crystal, and now you're learning new ways. Trust isn't something you either have or you don't have. It's something you build brick by brick, promise by promise, calculated risk by calculated risk, boundary by boundary. The evidence is waiting for you to create it. Start right now. I hope this helps, guys. I will see you next week. If you have any questions or wanna join in the conversation, make a comment. Thanks, Dallas.