Why should anyone bother to expand the ability to trust more deeply? Because when you trust wholeheartedly, it brings tremendous comfort and joy, even while you know it may not last forever.
Naming and Confronting Your Fears
This book outlines the hard work to confront the fears that limit trust. You can learn how and when to trust, even if you have been repeatedly betrayed. How? By admitting how much you fear being rejected if truly seen.
Almost everyone has found a way to hide their feelings, flaws, and dreams. Hiding your authentic self may be a means to avoid rejection, and seen as the only way someone could ever love you: “If others looked beneath my mask of confidence, they wouldn’t want to know me.”
Your instincts may tell you that your parents didn’t love you for who you really are. How could someone love you if they
abused you?
frightened you?
ignored or neglected you?
criticized and shamed you?
abandoned or rejected you, or died?
Self-doubt lingers even after we learn that our parents weren’t perfect, and the problems they experienced weren’t our fault. Parents who weren’t loving and trustworthy could not teach a child to love and trust. This is why it is an adult task to learn to trust ourselves, and then to extend that gift to others.
In an ideal world, trust should be the standard, and betrayals would be unusual. Trust would rarely need to be discussed, because people would be honest. There would be a shared awareness of a greater good being served, and we would follow the rules we were given as children:
Tell the truth, even when it hurts, for “honesty is the best policy.”
Keep your promises, since “a man is only as good as his word.”
“Think before you speak,” because every word has power, and you can’t ever take it back.
“Look before you leap,” for every action has consequences to others as well as yourself.
Treat others as you would like to be treated—the Golden Rule of love applied to all.
We were exposed to these guidelines in an imperfect world and taught that good people obeyed them. We were punished when caught being unable to do so ourselves. Later we found out they were constantly broken by parents, teachers, and friends. Although the rules are based in common sense, they aren’t in common practice.
We also quickly figured out that the rules were seldom enforceable, and many peers considered us foolish if we insisted on sticking to them. We were taken advantage of if we held to them ourselves: no one can win a game if everyone else is cheating. The immediate gratification of being accepted meant playing along.
A conflict between what we see and what we feel plays havoc on newly developing beliefs. This confusion is carried into adulthood and makes trust one of the most important riddles we have to solve.
If you are not sure what trust is, you’re part of a very big club. We all hunger for the ability to trust others and to be seen as trustworthy. Let’s begin with looking at what trust is.
What Is Trust?
Trust is a concept that rarely has a shared definition within the same family or intimate associations. Don’t feel left out if you’ve never thought about what it means to you as an individual. Trust is not one-dimensional:
Trust is a feeling.
Trust is a choice.
Trust is also a skill that can be learned.
Trust is the heartbeat of every significant relationship, with yourself as well as with others. We still want to trust despite disappointments in the past. Nothing flows without trust and love has no place to grow. You might be more aware of what trust feels like to you by its sudden disappearance. The scramble to regain trust shows what we feel we’ve lost and how important it is to feel understood.
The first step in learning how and when to trust is knowing when you are feeling trust.
Trust as a Feeling
There is a sense of safety and comfort when trust is present, and little inhibition. When asked to describe feeling trust in a relationship, people often recall being relaxed and calm: “I feel like I’m in the present moment, with no worry about our future together. There’s no need to think about past problems.” The return to trust after a disagreement feels like “we’ve erased the old resentments and can start fresh.”
Self-Discovery Exercise: What Does Trust Feel Like?
Feelings are physical sensations that you have learned to identify. “Sadness,” “happiness,” and so forth are names we’ve given physical sensations. You’ll learn to recognize the feeling you call “trust” by doing this exercise. It will be a touchstone for other exercises in this book, so do it now. It will take about ten minutes.
Note: Please read through the whole exercise before doing each step. This will reduce anxiety about what might be coming, and you’ll get more from the process.
In your journal:
Make a short list of people whom you feel you can trust absolutely. Include people from your past, as well as today. If you find no one who fits this definition, please don’t despair or quit. Just think of the person whom you trust the most or a beloved pet. Either will work.
Step 1. Choose one person and vividly recall a time when you were together. Feel what you think of as “trusting.” Close your eyes and relax into the experience. Notice the way your body feels, including temperature, tension level, and the internal workings of your stomach, lungs, and heart.
Step 2. What makes you feel safe in the presence of this person? Ask, “What thoughts do I have about this being? How do I think he or she feels about me? How do I view our future together?” Follow these questions with “How does this person invite me to feel such trust: Is it a voice tone, words spoken, the way attention is given, a feeling of being important?” Add unique events that caused you to be certain you were safe.
Step 3. How do you feel about yourself when you are with this person? This is an important element of trust. Ask, “What is my view of my qualities and worthiness while with this person? What do I like about the way I am treating and speaking to him or her?” Mutual trust brings out the best in both of you, so notice how you feel about yourself as well as the other person.
Step 4. Write anything that feels important to capture. This is your grown-up impression of trust, and it will help you notice what elements of trust are present or absent in relationships you’ll be exploring while reading this book.
Trust as a Choice
Choosing to trust can be so automatic that you don’t even recognize when you made the decision. At other times, especially after heartbreak or betrayal, it feels impossible to trust anyone ever again.
You may be feeling a little anxious right now. You might have been taught that you had to trust, or pretend to trust, in order to avoid fights and hurt feelings. Placing blind trust in someone is dependency, not real trust. Consider the following scenario:
You are offered a ride to an event by a brand-new acquaintance who is a friend of a friend. You want to give the impression you trust the driver’s skills, sobriety, responsibility, and the safety of the vehicle. But did you ask the driver about her driving history, how much she might have been drinking, or when the brakes were last checked? Probably not, because you don’t want to seem rude and it would make you look controlling.
This is an example of pretending to trust, when you are dependent on someone without evidence of their being trustworthy. We do it in many different ways, seldom recognizing the opportunity to say no. How well do you handle this type of experience? When you go to a new doctor, do you worry more about appearing to be a good patient, rather than making certain their advice is appropriate for you? Many people are afraid of offending their doctor and neglect to get a second opinion, despite the dangers of proposed surgery or a lack of improvement with a severe problem. This isn’t genuine trust—it is a form of dependency where the other person is the adult and you are the embarrassed child.
Conflict is often is difficult for adults to handle wel
l, yet we are quick to criticize teenagers for getting into cars with other teens without screening them. “Why didn’t you call me first?” Avoiding embarrassment can become life-threatening when you need to have the “safe sex” conversation with a new lover. One woman explained, “I didn’t want him to think I didn’t trust him when he told me about his negative HIV test and vasectomy.” She didn’t really trust him, but was afraid he’d reject her if she dared to care about her own life. “I trusted him enough to get naked and go to bed, but not enough to ask him to use a condom.”
Some of the most dangerous interchanges in our culture are about driving, illness, and sex. We don’t have permission or a common language to support that “trusting is always your choice.” When you can fully embrace that you have the right to choose whether or not to trust someone, it is possible to make mutual agreements that suit each situation.
Pretending to trust hides the secret feeling that you are a frightened child sneaking into serious adult relationships. This can affect your role as a working person, as the adult child of parents who are critical and demanding, and as a friend.
You may have been rewarded for putting on a happy face, acting as if you love making sacrifices and aren’t bothered by a lack of reciprocal respect. This could have caused you to seethe with inexpressible feelings or blow up, only to then sink back into the old situation. Telling yourself that “it doesn’t matter, this too shall pass,” didn’t remove the pain. The events may have passed but the feelings of hurt and distrust lingered, ready to reignite the moment that the pattern is repeated.
You can change this without becoming an angry, demanding person if you learn to use your fears as a guide to what you really want out of your relationships. To do this, you will need to concentrate on developing the skills that no child can learn.
Trust as a Skill
There are two foundation skills that will increase your confidence about when, whom, and how much to trust. These skills give you the ability to define what you are feeling, and to find out what you want after experiencing a break in trust. The two trust skills are
The Trust Check-In: Privately acknowledge your thoughts, feelings, and needs without judgment or acting them out.
Finding Out What You Want: Ask yourself what you want from a situation, and what you are willing to risk to achieve it.
The Trust Check-In skill is introduced in chapter 2. Chapter 4 presents the second foundation skill: Finding Out What You Want. You’ll have many opportunities in this book to practice these skills, to get more experience, and to gain awareness of how to apply them. Practicing these skills will challenge you to risk embarrassment and rejection. They will also contradict unhealthy habits and means of avoiding conflict.
It’s tempting to seek the comfort of avoidance, even while you watch it suffocate some of your most important relationships. If you don’t know what to do to make a relationship better, you may settle for what you have. This is a child’s view of relationship; you didn’t ask for the parents who raised you or for the various experiences that make you unique.
Although you might have been one of the lucky ones who saw trust consciously practiced by the grown-ups around you, no one can become adept with these skills as a child. No child can confront an adult who is self-absorbed and mean and tell him or her to be nice.
Types of Trust
The different types of trust we’ll be exploring are self-trust, faith in a positive future, and trusting others. Each can serve you in many situations. One might be quite solid within your experience, and another might not have brought you the hoped-for sense of security. All can be strengthened to help you trust with increasing wisdom and confidence.
Self-Trust
To say “I trust myself” means you take care of your own needs and safety and are a loving force in your life. It requires a combination of the following beliefs:
“I know what I am feeling and thinking, and can express it thoughtfully.”
“I follow an ethical code that sustains me, even though it’s difficult at times.”
“I know when it is my job to take care of myself first, then to reach out to care for others.”
“Mistakes are often the best lessons. I can’t avoid them, but I can pick myself up and try again.”
“I listen to all opinions and then decide for myself without needing to be right.”
“I know what I want and go for it in ways that don’t limit others from doing the same.”
It is scary to be truly honest with other people until you know you can count on yourself and know that you will survive if you have to be alone. Keeping your promises to yourself, as well as to others, is fundamental to building self-trust and achieving the independence necessary to feel like a real adult.
Self-trust supports your ability to explore new choices and tackle big challenges. It means opening to a bigger definition of who you really are and what you are capable of doing. The development of self-trust comes slowly. We are born without any internal dialogue about who we are and what we are worth. The people who surrounded us in early childhood gave us a dialogue that was repeated until we knew no other truth.
If you were frequently shamed, deliberately betrayed, or suffered significant loss in childhood, an inability to trust your feelings and perceptions may linger into adulthood. This can cause simple misunderstandings to trigger self-doubt and limit your ability to be open in your most important relationships. Changing beliefs about your worth is essential to developing high levels of self-trust.
Self-Discovery Questionnaire: How Much Do You Trust Yourself?
This questionnaire will help you identify your current balance of self-doubt and self-trust.
In your journal:
Keep a note of your score, since you’ll want to return to this questionnaire as you go through this book and find out if you are increasing your self-trust. Jot down the questions that are particularly meaningful or distressing.
Give yourself a score of 0 to 5 for each question, where 0 means it doesn’t apply at all, and 5 reflects a feeling or behavior that affects you often enough to be troublesome.
Do you berate yourself for having strong feelings (anger, fear, loneliness, or sadness) whether or not you show them to others?
Do you worry there is something secretly wrong with you, even if you don’t know what it might be?
Do you often sacrifice your own needs for others?
Do you doubt that you are as capable or “good” as others think you are?
Do you hide your mistakes or minimize them?
Do you feel out of control about food, spending, drugs, or alcohol, but are too ashamed or afraid of failure to seek guidance or join a support group?
Do you think “I’m probably being selfish” when you consider asking others for a fair share of work or money, or extra help during times of stress?
Do you believe that others are more honest and open about what they think and feel?
Do you long to do something big (write a book, go to school, change your lifestyle) but seldom speak of it or explore what it would take to proceed?
Are you afraid you are failing this questionnaire?
Scoring: This questionnaire points to areas you might want to strengthen; it is not another means to pass or fail. Your first score gives you a baseline for this questionnaire. Complete it again a few times over the course of reading this book to see how you are changing.
31 to 50_Distrust of yourself is destroying your self-confidence.
20 to 30_Shows honest self-doubt; you could use more confidence.
0 to 19_You are very independent and self-confident.
Self-trust is not a steady state of self-confidence, immune to fears of failure and rejection. Self-doubt may tempt you to rely heavily on others’ opinions. Learning to respect yourself will help you throw off old patterns of self-loathing. This will quiet the internalized voices of those who did not encourage you to believe in yourself.
The reward for becoming
a more self-loving and responsible person is the opportunity to attract others who are learning to trust and like themselves. By increasing trust in yourself, you gather the courage needed to explore the second type of trust, faith.
Faith in a Positive Future
Faith in a positive future means a willingness to go forward, despite the risk of failure or loss. Faith in the face of uncertainty is based on a sense that there is something intrinsically good about life, people in general, and your own future. It is not dependent on a single situation, person, or belief. Faith appears when you offer your heart to the truth, opening to a kinder reality, even after terrible things have happened.
This form of trust is an expanded view of self-trust, and it is so individual that no example from others can perfectly match your experience. Sharon Salzberg has studied this topic from a personal and Buddhist perspective. In her book Faith, she offers this description: “No matter what we encounter in life, it is faith that enables us to try again, to trust again, to love again. Even in times of immense suffering, it is faith that enables us to relate to the present moment in such a way that we can go on, we can move forward, instead of becoming lost in resignation or despair. Faith links our present-day experience, whether wonderful or terrible, to the underlying pulse of life itself” (2002, XIV–XV).
Each of us has a measure of faith. We wouldn’t be able to function without it. Driving on the highway requires faith that others are following the rules. Faith is such a basic orientation that most don’t think of it as trust but more as a sense of knowing that everything is okay. We know we must die, yet are confident we’ll awaken in the morning when we go to sleep at night. Faith is often taken for granted when we are not facing hardship.
When our faith in a greater good is challenged by a personal tragedy, we long for a reason and the faith that allows us to go forward. Victor Frankl, the psychiatrist who survived concentration camps and wrote Man’s Search for Meaning, refers to this effort. Rabbi Kushner’s When Bad Things Happen to Good People is a response to his reclamation of his faith after his son’s death. The determination to return to a positive outlook demonstrates the level of faith that someone holds.
The Courage to Trust Page 2