I will not stay, not ever again - in a room or conversation or relationship or institution that requires me to abandon myself.

To trust yourself means that you are no longer content to lodge your soul in the circumstances that have long stopped serving you.

I'll not abandon myself. Not ever again. Me and myself: We are till death do us part. We'll forsake all others to remain whole. I unbecame a woman who believed that another would complete me when I decided that I was born complete.

If I'm ever to reach any understanding of myself and the things around me, I must learn to stand alone. That's why I can't stay here with you any longer.

My religion is to trust myself.

Trust yourself. It’s Sugar’s golden rule. Trusting yourself means living out what you already know to be true.

I don't want any promises, I won't have false hopes, I won't be romantic about myself. I can't live in their world any longer, she told herself, listening to the voices back of her. Let them tell their stories to each other. Let them go on explaining how things happened. I don't care. At least I can know the truth about what happens to me, she assured herself silently, making a promise to herself, in her hopefulness, her ignorance.

Trusting yourself means living out what you already know to be true.

I promised to myself that I will never again obey anyone or any authority, government, gods or angels in anything else than in what I accept as the right or the best possible thing to do.

I cannot destroy my current self so that my future self can survive. Officers, let me proclaim courageously to you once more: “Rather than prostrate myself before the wielders of power, I prefer to die and be true to myself. If this displeases you, you may take me anywhere you wish. I am not afraid of anything you may do to me.” This is the way I have felt in the past and it is the way I feel now.

I trust in God; I drink, mate, and use protection. God knows why we have come to Earth, and He knows when we are going to leave. There are many people I know who have taken care of themselves, but they left. There are people who don't take care of themselves, get sick, and recover.

TRUST IN ONE’S ORGANISM A second characteristic of the persons who emerge from therapy is difficult to describe. It seems that the person increasingly discovers that his own organism is trustworthy, that it is a suitable instrument for discovering the most satisfying behavior in each immediate situation. If this seems strange, let me try to state it more fully. Perhaps it will help to understand my description if you think of the individual as faced with some existential choice: “Shall I go home to my family during vacation, or strike out on my own?” “Shall I drink this third cocktail which is being offered?” “Is this the person whom I would like to have as my partner in love and in life?” Thinking of such situations, what seems to be true of the person who emerges from the therapeutic process? To the extent that this person is open to all of his experience, he has access to all of the available data in the situation, on which to base his behavior. He has knowledge of his own feelings and impulses, which are often complex and contradictory. He is freely able to sense the social demands, from the relatively rigid social “laws” to the desires of friends and family. He has access to his memories of similar situations, and the consequences of different behaviors in those situations. He has a relatively accurate perception of this external situation in all of its complexity. He is better able to permit his total organism, his conscious thought participating, to consider, weigh and balance each stimulus, need, and demand, and its relative weight and intensity. Out of this complex weighing and balancing he is able to discover that course of action which seems to come closest to satisfying all his needs in the situation, long-range as well as immediate needs.

I will relinquish my possession of this self of mine, abdicate, give over willingly what I never wanted at all; whatever it wants of me it can have.

As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live.