"You should have known better."

"You screwed it up."

"You're going to make a mistake again."

These are the nasty things anxiety can say to keep you from trusting yourself.

When you live with anxiety, trusting yourself can feel impossible. In this episode, Jessica explores how anxiety makes you doubt your judgement and convinces you that you can't make good decisions about your life — and how to start rebuilding trust in yourself through compassion, reflection, and learning from the past.

Episode Overview

Anxiety and self-trust can feel like opposites. When you’ve made choices that didn’t turn out the way you hoped, it’s easy to believe you can’t trust yourself — and anxiety is more than happy to take over from there.

In this episode, Jessica explains why anxiety steps in when you start doubting your decisions, how it convinces you that worry equals control, and why that cycle keeps you stuck. Through gentle reflection, she guides you toward seeing your past choices with more understanding and less judgment — and reminds you that your current self has more wisdom, experience, and agency than you think.

What You’ll Learn

• How anxiety convinces you that you “can’t be trusted”
• Why anxiety believes it’s protecting you — and how it actually blocks clarity
• The difference between learning from the past and living in the past
• How to release old evidence that keeps you from trusting yourself
• Steps to rebuild confidence and decision-making, even when you still feel anxious

Key Quotes

“Anxiety jumps in and says, ‘You can’t trust yourself — I’ve got this.’ But anxiety doesn’t actually help you make better choices.”

“You were just making the best choice you could with what you knew at the time.”

“You can be trusted. You can sit down and make decisions about your life without anxiety running the show.”

Main Takeaway

Anxiety tries to protect you from making mistakes — but it ends up keeping you stuck in fear. You can trust yourself again. The key is compassion: recognizing that you’ve grown, learned, and changed, and that you’re capable of making thoughtful choices in the present moment.

Connect with Jessica

Instagram: @jessica_richards_counseling

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If You Liked This Episode

If this conversation helped you see yourself more clearly, please follow the show and leave a review. It helps others discover that it’s possible to stop listening to anxiety and build self-trust — even in a wild world.

*Disclaimer* This show is for information and inspiration. It is not professional mental health counseling or medical advice. If you're struggling, please reach out to a mental health or medical professional.