How to Make Decisions When You Don’t Trust Your Body Yet
When your signals feel unreliable, but choices still need to be made.
There was a stretch where every sensation felt questionable.
If I felt worse, I wondered if I was imagining it.
If I felt better, I wondered if it would last.
I didn’t know which signals were real — or whether I was interpreting them correctly.
Lack of trust didn’t mean my body was unreliable — it meant my confidence in reading it had been shaken.
This made decision-making feel risky in a way I hadn’t expected.
Why trust erodes before it rebuilds
Confusing symptoms chipped away at my certainty.
So did being told nothing was wrong.
Eventually, I stopped believing my own experience.
I trusted explanations more than sensations — even when they didn’t match.
When trust breaks down, it usually follows confusion — not intuition.
This erosion happened alongside the fear of being wrong, which I wrote about in What to Do When You’re Afraid of Being Wrong About Mold .
Why waiting for confidence kept me stuck
I told myself I’d decide once I felt sure.
Once the signals felt clear.
But clarity didn’t arrive on demand.
Confidence didn’t come first — it followed movement.
Waiting for certainty delayed action without restoring trust.
This mirrored what I experienced earlier when I was too sick to make big decisions, something I explored in What to Do When You’re Too Sick to Make Big Decisions .
What helped me decide without demanding belief
I stopped asking my body to be right.
I asked it to be consistent.
Did something reliably increase strain or reduce it?
I followed repetition instead of confidence.
Consistency mattered more than certainty.
This approach built on learning how to listen without reacting, which I described in What “Listening to Your Body” Actually Meant for Me .
How trust slowly returned
Trust didn’t come back all at once.
It returned through small confirmations.
Noticing that certain choices consistently felt steadier.
My body earned my trust back by being predictable.
Trust rebuilt through experience, not reassurance.
This was only possible once I stopped pushing through and allowed stabilization, something I wrote about in How I Knew It Was Time to Stop Pushing Through .
FAQ
What if my body still feels inconsistent?
Mine did too.
I looked for trends over time, not moment-to-moment clarity.
Is it okay to decide without trust?
Yes.
Trust often followed decisions — not the other way around.
How do I avoid second-guessing?
I chose decisions that were adjustable rather than final.