The Biology of Trust, Self-Trust, and Resilience

Dr. Birdi Sinclair Author

Build trust, self-trust, and resilience with science-based healing steps and personal growth tools for overcoming challenges. - Dr. Birdi Sinclair

Let's jump right in!

How Social Systems Shape Us, And How to Get Grounded in Your Own Values

Trust, self-trust, and resilience are words we hear often. They are sometimes tied to advice about bouncing back, being strong, or opening up to others. Beneath these words is a fascinating reality: they are deeply woven into our biology. Even more, our experience of trust is shaped by the social worlds and systems we move through every day. How does trust, self-trust, and resilience work inside us? How do social systems influence them? How can you get grounded in your own values no matter what life brings your way.

Trust: The Science of Connection and the Hormone of Belonging

When you share a hug, a heartfelt conversation, or laughter with a friend, your body quietly releases a chemical called oxytocin. Known as the “bonding hormone,” oxytocin helps you feel closer to others, more relaxed, and more willing to trust. It floods by eye-contact, physical touch, sharing spaces, chemical signals between us, and more. 

This hormone plays a major role in forming bonds - with family, friends, pets, or your community. When oxytocin flows, you feel safer, more connected, and maybe even responsible for each other in some way.

When those connections are broken, it can be very difficult for our body to "let go" of someone, and we can feel stuck in grief, loss, and other confusing feelings while our bodies make sense of the change.

Hormones like these send messages to our brain, our nervous system, and we recognize when something is working or not working out well, we compare with past experiences, and make decisions on what is safe or not safe for us going forward. 

Inside the Brain: Deciding Who to Trust

Trust isn’t just a feeling; it’s a complex process happening in multiple parts of your brain at once:

• The prefrontal cortex (right behind your forehead) gathers clues from what you see and hear: Is this person’s smile genuine? Do their actions match their words?

• The amygdala (part of the limbic system deep in our brain) acts as a watchdog, sensing any danger or threat. It forms our emotional memories, and processes emotions - especially fear and aggression.

• The striatum, part of your brain’s reward system, “lights up” when trusting someone leads to positive experiences. It acts as a central hub where instinctive and planned movements converge, and it plays a crucial role in learning, motivation, and habit formation.

Together, these regions answer: “Is it safe to open up to this person?” When your brain says yes, and your experiences back that up, trust becomes easier and more natural.

Experience Matters More Than Genes

While genetics play a small part in how naturally trusting you might be, day-to-day life experiences influence you far more. Growing up with caring, consistent relationships teaches your brain that trust is safe. Even after hurt or letdowns, new positive experiences can rebuild trust. It’s important to remember that it is never too late to learn to trust again.

Self-Trust: Listening to Your Inner Wisdom

What Is Self-Trust?

Self-trust is the quiet confidence that you can depend on yourself, on your decisions, feelings, intuition, and strengths. It’s believing you are resourceful enough to meet life’s challenges and wise enough to understand your needs.

Self-trust helps you take risks, explore new possibilities, and bounce back after setbacks because you know you’ll find your way, even if the path isn’t clear right now.

How Does Self-Trust Grow?

Self-trust develops through many of the same systems that help us trust others:

• Oxytocin supports feelings of calmness and connection within yourself, especially when you treat yourself with kindness and care.

• Your prefrontal cortex helps you learn from your experiences, building a track record that says, “I can rely on myself.”

• Trying, failing, and trying again—especially in supportive environments—teaches your brain that you are capable and trustworthy.

Why Is Self-Trust Sometimes Challenging?

If you were often dismissed, criticized, or told your feelings didn’t matter, your brain may have learned to doubt itself. But because your mind and body are designed to heal, treating yourself with patience, curiosity, and warmth can begin to rebuild self-trust, no matter your starting point.

Sometimes, we make decisions that didn’t “follow our gut” and we sacrifice what we most value, need, or believe. This is another kind of betrayal experience that it is never too late to heal.

An Empowering Way to Grow Self-Trust: Soulful Pauses

One overlooked but powerful practice is to take soulful pauses - brief moments where you stop, breathe, and listen warmly to yourself before acting or deciding. Using these pauses regularly is like training your brain gently to know, “I can meet my feelings and thoughts calmly, and I can make choices that honor my inner wisdom.”

This practice is neither rigid nor mechanical; it’s an invitation to deepen your connection with your own rhythm, gradually building trust in your inner guidance.

Place your hand on your chest, or clasp your hands together (like holding your own hand) and immediately you will notice a soothing sense that slows down the busy brain or stuck feelings. Allow a sense of knowing, core values to shape your next thoughts with care, clarity, completeness. “What do I most need, or most need to know at this moment?”

Resilience: The Body and Mind at Work - Stress and Recovery Isn’t Just Surviving

When life throws challenges your way, be it a hard conversation, loss, or change, your body sounds the stress alarm by releasing hormones like cortisol. This alarm gets you ready to respond. Resilience isn’t about never feeling this stress; it’s about how well your body and mind settle back to calm afterward.

Resilient people aren’t born with superpowers. Their brains and bodies learn to recover, calming the stress response quickly, making it easier to face challenges again. The good news is, we’re hard-wired to want to learn this, so leaning in is easier than you might think.

The Secret Weapon: Connection

One of the strongest shields for resilience is connection. Feeling safe with a family member, friend, community member, or nature helps quiet your stress system through calming chemicals. Good relationships and a sense of belonging - even to the natural world, are like a reset button for your nervous system, making it easier to bounce back from stressful situations.

The Brain’s Ability to Learn and Grow

Your brain is always adapting. With every challenge faced and recovered from—with support and time, you build stronger resilience muscles. This brain-changing ability, called neuroplasticity, means you can become more resilient throughout your life.

How Social Systems Shape Trust, Self-Trust, and Resilience

Marginalization and Exclusion

Being left out or treated unfairly, because of your race, gender, ability, appearance, religion, or class, is called marginalization. Exclusion doesn’t just hurt feelings; it changes your brain’s wiring to be more guarded and less trusting. Bullying, discrimination, and microaggressions keep stress hormones high and the brain alert for threats, making it harder to trust others and yourself. A big job of the brain is to keep us safe. When we feel continually unsafe, the brain gets mixed signals of what we need, and keeps us vigilant in the uncertainty.

Bullying and Trauma

Bullying and traumatic experiences can set the nervous system into “threat mode” long after the event, keeping emotions on edge and trust fragile. Just like in marginalization and exclusion, self-trust can be impacted deeply, as shame and doubt take root, making it harder to believe in yourself.

Culture, Religion, and Social Expectations

Culture and religion can be powerful supports or sources of conflict. They offer community, identity, and shared values, but rigid or judgmental norms may cause inner conflict, exclusion, or questioning of your self-worth and choices. Navigating these complex influences involves honoring what supports your growth while gently questioning what feels limiting or misaligned.

"When our brain thrives on belonging and connection, each of these social systems gone wrong creates a recipe of shame, doubt, frustration, confusion. We might turn on ourselves and others as an attempt at self-protection, 

but that’s not the answer."

So What Do We Do? Becoming Grounded in Your Own Values

You can find grounding, a solid footing even in difficult social landscapes, by deepening your connection to your core values, which leads to self-awareness, trust, and resilience. It’s a path to unfreeze your protective blocks that shrink you and create harsh self-talk.

What Is Being Grounded?

We hear this often and may even know instinctually what it feels like or feels like to be around someone who is grounded, but not know how to create this sense on purpose. Maybe we think it’s a woo-woo term and not based in science. Ah, but it is!

Being grounded means:

• Knowing what matters most to you, like kindness, fairness, curiosity, creativity, honesty, faith, or other principles.

• Returning to these values as a compass for your decisions, relationships, and self-care, even in tough times or when outside voices pressure you.

• Knowing what feels like a steady feeling within your body - this is a biological morse code to guide you in important matters to your survival, belonging, and next steps.

How to Ground Yourself

Notice Your Feelings and Stories:
Stay aware of moments when you feel proud, safe, or authentic, and moments when you feel small, ashamed, or pressured. These feelings reveal what’s important to you through that shorthand biology of messengers.

Name Your Core Values -
Reflect or journal on:

• What qualities do you admire in others?

• When have you felt most yourself or happy?

• What principles matter to you deeply, no matter what others think?

Inner peace is real, and a biological foundation. Forgotten about it? No worries - we can remember and build on it. 

Practice Small Acts of Trusting Yourself

Instead of thinking in terms of limits or rules, focus on empowering steps:

• Taking a moment (soulful pauses) to listen to your feelings before deciding.

• Expressing your needs honestly and gently.

• Treating yourself with kindness in hard moments, including redirecting self-talk to your world view and values.

These acts say, “I believe in myself,” and gradually build resilience.

Find Supportive Communities

Seek friends, mentors, or groups who honor who you are and your values. Trusted relationships provide nourishment for your trust and resilience to grow. This doesn’t mean you have to cut people out of your life, but it does mean be clear on the company you keep in your closer circles and activities.

Shape Meaning in Your Culture or Faith.

Embrace traditions that uplift you. Feel free to reinterpret or set aside teachings that don’t feel right. It doesn’t mean you are dishonoring those you care for. Your spiritual journey is yours to own, with kindness and respect for your whole self. Define what Sacred means to you.

Healing, Growing, and Reclaiming Your Strength

It’s not your fault if you struggle with trust due to social exclusion or trauma. These are wounds, not personal flaws. Wounds can heal well with care, attention.

Your brain and body can heal and adapt. Supportive relationships, new safe experiences, and gentle self-kindness help your nervous system calm, allowing trust and resilience to grow.

Celebrate every choice that aligns with your values - small or large. When trust feels distant, returning to these inner truths provides an anchor or a steady compass.

Everyday Practices to Grow Trust, Self-Trust, and Resilience

Try This:

• Pick one core value you identify with. Write it somewhere visible or set a phone reminder. Each day, notice one moment you lived this value, even in a small way.

• During stressful times, take a soulful pause: stop, breathe deeply, and ask, “What does my inner wisdom tell me here?” Listen without judgment.

• When you feel safe, share your story or feelings with a trusted person - or start with writing it. Connection strengthens resilience. It doesn’t even really matter what they do with it. It matters that you have the experience of sharing through doubts, shame, without feeling like your safety depends on hiding. There’s a difference between hiding and privacy.

• Remember that setbacks are natural. We all feel doubt, shame, confusion, frustration, etc. Each time you recover, you build resilience pathways in your brain.

Key Points to Remember

• Trust, self-trust, and resilience are deeply rooted in biology but shaped by social experience.

• Marginalization, exclusion, bullying, trauma, culture, and religion affect how easily trust and resilience grow - but they do not determine your fate or your identity.

• Grounding yourself in your own values offers a compass in complex social landscapes.

• With kindness, connection, reflection, and soulful pauses, you can grow these strengths throughout life.

Trust, trusting yourself, and resilience are part of being human. Your brain and body are always ready to help you heal, grow, and thrive - one gentle step at a time.

Let yourself be guided by wisdom, kindness, and your own truth.

If you’d like, reflection questions to consider:

• Who in your life has helped you rebuild trust?

• When have you felt proud to stand by your values, even quietly?

• What helps your body feel safe or calm after hard moments?

Answering these can deepen your connection to your inner strength, nature, and community.

Thank you for exploring this journey of trust and resilience. Your story and your growth make the world better just by being you.

Would you like to take the Quiz I created for you? Values, Strengths, Self-care, oh MY! - You will receive a freely given detailed guide based on your results, science, psychology, and spirituality! 

Enjoy! and let me know what you get for your results - Fun!

In kindness, Birdi

Categories: : Self Trust, Soulful Pauses