Self-Trust Is Not a Performance

On Healing, Ego, and the Quiet End of Being Chosen

With Valentine’s Day around the corner, there will be more blogs, more videos in our feeds, and more monetizing of healing language. More talk about self-worth, magnetism, embodiment, and the kind of inner work that supposedly makes love inevitable.

I recently read a Substack piece about self-respect, self-trust, and truth—framed as the qualities that make a woman “irresistibly magnetic.” It was well written and embodied, the kind of reflection that resonates when you’ve spent years undoing self-abandonment and learning how to live inside your own skin again.

Much of it rang true. And still, when I finished reading, I felt unsettled.

Not because the author was wrong about self-respect or coherence, but because of how familiar the underlying frame still was. Beneath the therapeutic language lived an old message: that a woman’s value is ultimately confirmed through being cherished by a man.

What struck me wasn’t the piece itself. It was that women are still writing this way—still organizing themselves around relational reward, still describing wholeness through what it evokes in a partner, still implying, however gently, that embodiment culminates in being chosen.

The language has evolved. It’s more somatic now, more psychologically informed, less overtly performative. But the promise underneath hasn’t changed: if you heal correctly, love will arrive as proof of your value now. 

As both a therapist and a woman, I can’t leave that framing unexamined.

When Healing Is Measured Outside the Body

I sit with women every week who have done deep, honest, nervous-system-level work and are still leaving relationships, still dissatisfied, or have found more peace alone. Not because they failed to become magnetic, but because they refused to keep overriding themselves.

This isn’t a rebuttal, and it isn’t a critique of another woman’s healing. It’s a widening of the conversation. I’m responding to the framing—not judging the woman who shared her story. But personal testimony often becomes a quiet prescription, where one woman’s relational outcome is presented as evidence of how healing works.

I recognize the pull of these narratives because I’ve lived them. I believed healing would culminate in being chosen. What I’ve learned—personally and professionally—is that healing often does something quieter and more confronting.

It shifts where authority lives. 

Let me say this plainly: your value as a woman has nothing to do with what lives outside you. Your value is inherent, even if you don't see it. 

And this is where the framing matters. The language celebrates inner authority and self-trust, yet the organizing logic subtly hands that authority back to someone else. Implicitly, the message becomes: this is what you embody so that you will be chosen.

Even when unintentional, that framing relocates power outward. Inner authority cannot be proven by another person’s response. The moment healing is measured by whether someone stays, cherishes, or chooses you, authority has already left the body.

When Healing Quietly Becomes Ego

It’s also worth naming how easily ego can attach itself to healing—especially early on. Insight brings relief. Relief invites frameworks. And sometimes those frameworks quietly become prescriptive: this is the way; this is how you arrive.

But healing isn’t about declaring specialness or offering a path to one person’s version of wholeness. We are not interchangeable. Our nervous systems, histories, and limits differ. Assuming all paths lead to the same destination is part of the problem.

It’s also uncomfortable but real that some narratives persist because they’re rewarded. They attract admiration, followers, and sometimes money. That doesn’t make the writer malicious. But when writing is shaped around being admired, followed, or chosen—by readers or by partners—it quietly recreates the same external orientation we claim to be transcending.

When Empowerment Turns Into Shame

Many women aren’t struggling because they lack self-respect. They’re struggling because they’ve been carrying responsibility for relational outcomes that were never theirs to manage.

They read pieces about wholeness and magnetism and feel two things at once: recognition and a tightening in the body. Because when the message is “this is what happens when you’ve done the work,” the unspoken implication becomes, “and if this hasn’t happened for you yet, you must still be missing something inside yourself.”

That isn’t empowerment. That’s shame—refined, spiritualized, and easier to internalize.

Shame thrives on comparison. It doesn’t say something didn’t work; it says I am the problem. And even therapeutic language can reinforce that when we’re not careful.

Healing Doesn’t Need an Audience

When healing is actually happening, ego isn’t center stage. People who are deeply self-trusting are quieter and less invested in how they are perceived. Self-trust is internal. It doesn’t require validation.

A regulated nervous system doesn’t need to be admired; it simply responds differently. And sometimes that difference shows up as leaving. Because that woman knows her peace is sacred, and she has learned to protect it.

She no longer confuses endurance with maturity or self-sacrifice with love. Leaving, for her, isn’t reactive. It’s preservation.

What Research Tells Us About Women’s Well-Being

When we move beyond poetic language and look at research, the story becomes clearer. Studies consistently show that single women report higher satisfaction with singlehood than single men do, including greater life satisfaction and less distress about relationship status.

Men tend to experience larger boosts in reported happiness from being partnered, while women’s well-being appears less dependent on relationship status.

Women also draw emotional stability from a broader range of sources—friendships, community, autonomy, purpose, and meaningful work—not solely romantic attachment. Some research even suggests that single women experience equal or better health outcomes than married women when strong social support is present.

None of this argues against relationship. It simply undermines the myth that being chosen is the marker of wholeness.

The Quieter Truth About Healing

Healing means you stop abandoning yourself. Not dramatically. Quietly. Repeatedly. In the moments where you would normally override what you feel to preserve connection.

Many women mistake the relief of being wanted for regulation. But those are not the same thing. When being chosen becomes the stabilizing force, the nervous system stays vigilant—tracking closeness, adjusting behavior, bracing for withdrawal. That kind of safety is conditional.

When healing is real, regulation becomes internal. You stop scanning for proof that you are valued. Peace becomes sacred—not because you are rigid, but because you finally understand the cost of losing it.

Stopping self-abandonment isn’t a mindset shift. It’s physiological.

That’s why healing doesn’t always look like staying or “finding someone.” Sometimes it looks like leaving something that once felt promising, because you can feel—clearly and without drama—that staying would require erosion.

Not too much effort.
Too much self-betrayal.

A Truer Definition of Wholeness

Healing doesn’t promise partnership. It promises alignment.

From that alignment, whatever comes next is information—not proof, not failure, not identity. Love may come. Or it may not. But it is no longer the measure.

The quiet end of being chosen isn’t loss.
It’s the moment authority finally comes home.

And from there, your life stops being an audition.