Practical Uses of Faith
Faith is not a belief to be taught or a mystical state of grace. It is something we do. From the earliest usage in many cultures, faith was considered an action. We act on faith when we deliberately envision good results in the face of uncertainty.
The practice of having faith enables you to name what you want and overcome to obstacles in achieving it. Faith keeps you from being paralyzed with fear of failure or rejection. A common misconception is that faith eliminates fear. It doesn’t. Faith allows you to act despite fear. If you practice faith on the everyday challenges that make life interesting, you’ll develop confidence in your ability to move forward into the uncertain future.
In your imagination, try tackling some of the things you’d like to do. Think about what scares you from making the attempt, then add a small statement of faith. Here are some examples to start you out:
“I’d like to ask her out. I’ll be embarrassed if she says no, but I’ll survive.”
“I want to start my own business. I may not be instantly successful, but I’ll learn as I go.”
“I’ve gained back my lost weight, but it’s worth trying again. This time I’ll get support.”
This approach results in the kind of self-awareness that lets you seek the company of others who are self-assured and optimistic even when facing their own hard times. From them, you’ll learn how to transform bad fortune and what seemed to be foolish mistakes into wisdom.
Trusting Others
Trusting others means relying on others’ honesty and commitment to keep their promises to you. This is where you apply the first two types of trust. You will know when it’s safe to trust someone else when you can read and trust your own feelings and have faith in a positive future. Trust is centered on the desire to trust others and to build satisfying relationships. Insecurities about how much you should trust are planted in your experiences since birth. The following questionnaire helps you reflect on how much you trust other people.
Self-Discovery Questionnaire: How Much Do You Really Trust Others?
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 upsetting.
In your journal:
Keep a note of your score, since you’ll want to return to this questionnaire later to find if you are increasing your self-trust.
Do you believe people are upset with you, even when they say they aren’t?
Do you feel insecure in telling others your goals, for fear they will judge you as incapable of achieving them or think you’re conceited?
Do you avoid expressing preferences (food, driving safety, sexual pleasures) to your friends or partner, believing it will cause conflict or hurt their feelings?
Do you pretend to be “fine” about something that bothers you, even when honestly asked?
Are you reluctant to talk about how you handle money, even with professionals?
Do you announce your mistakes with great alarm, even exaggerate them?
Do you apologize for yourself more often than others seem to?
Do you fear others secretly judge or demean your appearance (body, speech, clothes)?
When people leave an abrupt message to call them or say, “I need to talk with you,” are you afraid you did something to make them mad?
Do you believe you don’t know how to have truly intimate relationships?
Scoring: Use your responses as pointers to areas to explore, rather than as another black mark on your character! Scoring gives you a baseline for this set of questions only. You’ll want to retake this test midway through the book, then again at the end.
31 to 50_Your distrust of others is very high, limiting the depth of intimacy.
20 to 30_You want to trust others, but may experience more distrust than you admit.
0 to 19_You either trust people immensely, or you don’t let them close enough to hurt you.
It’s Never Too Late
So many of us believe that something is deeply wrong or broken inside of us. It is the only way to explain why people have hurt or rejected us. It follows that we also believe that our early experiences have destroyed our capacity to trust.
I know this isn’t true. I once believed that my early hurts and betrayals were my fault. I thought they had to be kept secret for me to be loved and accepted by good people. My inner voices repeated the opinions of my worst teachers. There was another sense deep within me that doubted that the people who were mean and selfish knew the real me. I was attracted to kindness and tenderness, and moved toward those who were trustworthy and loving. And so I learned to trust and to love. Soon after, I learned how to become trustworthy and to receive love.
Revisiting early stories is scary, as is facing the feelings from those times. This book will give you the tools and support to change your story from one of betrayal to a life based on trust. It will help you to reconsider the beliefs that keep you from trusting yourself, having faith in a positive future, and choosing when it is wise to trust others.
Preparing for the Next Chapter
If you sometimes feel that there is an emotional tug-of-war inside you, you are not alone. We all have different selves, experienced as conflicted feelings or voices. In the next chapter, you will be introduced to the three core selves within you and within everyone.
You may have felt some echoes of early betrayals and pain while reading this chapter and taking the tests. The next chapter will help you understand and embrace the amazing way we have all learned to survive the hurts and come out on top, wanting to improve our ability to love and trust.
Chapter 2
Your Three Core Selves
Why do I sometimes act like a child?
Everyone has three core selves: the Child, the Protector, and the Adult. Their interrelationship works in harmony during ordinary moments. When you are feeling relaxed and in balance, it is because the Child feels safe, the Protector is tucked away calmly surveying the scene, and your Adult self is in charge. When trust feels threatened, you will acutely feel the separation among the three. Self-confidence is in short supply, and fear directs your actions.
The purpose of this chapter is to help you understand and align your inner selves after an upsetting event. This will give you a sense of being peaceful and capable. When you can count on connecting freely with your inner selves, you’ll be grateful for the influence that each brings to your life.
This exploration will help you do these things:
Learn how each of your core selves affects you mentally, physically, and emotionally.
Discover what causes your core selves to split apart and learn how to tell who’s in charge.
Practice reconnecting with your Adult when trust has been broken.
You’ll be introduced to the first foundation skill, the Trust Check-In, at the end of this chapter. This is a powerful tool, one that puts your Adult back in control after upsetting interactions.
Who Are the Three Core Selves?
The Child can be playful, seeking belonging and tenderness with others. A sense of belonging meant survival during your early childhood. The desire for it continues throughout your life. When relationships feel threatened, the Child within you experiences self- doubt, shame, and fear.
The Protector steps in when the Child feels scared. It is quick to anger and pushes away anyone who may be causing harm. It also acts as an inner critic to avoid revealing too much. The Protector will even consider suicide when emotional pain seems intolerable. Your Protector is in charge when you feel strong anger, self-hate, or despair.
The Adult has the responsibility to make life work. No one can stay in their Adult all the time, but you can learn to return to your “right mind” more quickly after a split occurs. When you are feeling confidence and compassion, your Adult is in control. The Adult needs the Child and Protector to keep life in perspective.
The Needs and Goals of Each Self
<
br /> The balance of the three core selves defines much of your personality. In chapter 7, you'll have the opportunity to delve more deeply into your own unique patterns of reaction and thought. For now, here is a summary that will help you understand the way most people experience their three core selves.
How the Child Self Is Shaped
Everyone is born with the instinct to reach out in the presence of tenderness and pull away from discomfort and pain. Emotions are unformed in infancy, and sensations are limited to variations of fear and contentment. The infant or toddler senses the danger of being alone when the mother leaves the room, and erupts into crying for help. When a parent returns and holds the child, all is right with the world.
As language and motor skills grow, children take in everything they see and hear, and model their behavior on those around them. If others tell you you’re good, you’re good. If they tell you you’re bad, you’re bad. Unfortunately, there can be too many versions of “you’re bad” from parents, teachers, and siblings. Consider this list:
“Grow up! Stop being such a child.”
“Don’t be such a baby—it doesn’t hurt that much.”
“Stop crying or I’ll give you something to cry about.”
Children are not intellectually capable of discriminating between negative and positive. This confusion plants the seed of “there must be something wrong with me.” This belief gets locked in early and influences everything that comes later.
Even adults who seem to glow with self-confidence have moments where they doubt their competence and worth. Most children idealize adults as models of self-assurance. As children, we long to grow up, start our periods or grow a beard, and drive a car. These symbols connect to the fallacy that “when I grow up, I’ll be sure of myself and not care what anyone thinks.”
Growing up and becoming self-reliant requires tolerating ever-increasing time alone. Having to live without constant support and attention is a big part of what makes becoming an adult so difficult. We learn this consciously as we mature, but that doesn’t mean we can tell our nervous systems to be calm when faced with the possible loss of someone we care about.
How the Child Self Shows in Adults
Our sense of belonging can be quite fragile. Something as minor as being told your pants are unzipped or being teased about a mistake can render your Adult self incapable of holding on to self-confidence. This is evidence of your helpless Child appearing.
Reassurance by others won’t instantly turn off this defensive reaction. The Child feels panic about an event that the Adult could otherwise recognize as a temporary embarrassment. The perception of the Adult is swamped by the Child's need to escape from the pain of rejection. This experience is compounded when someone is angry or neglecting us and can bring up old fears of being unlovable.
When you are unable to stand up against people who are unfair, your frightened Child is dominating you. It can be especially disconcerting when you feel competent in other areas but cannot break free of the feelings of powerlessness in important relationships. The Protector springs to the rescue when the Child is overwhelmed with fear and helplessness.
How Your Protector Serves You
We have an innate part that responds to any threat to survival. This developing self pays close attention to the people who are sources of tenderness and pain. Existence depends on increasing our ability to keep out of harm’s way. To do this, children need to learn to fit in and follow instructions. The Protector comes alive during the “terrible twos,” and we start to practice self-reliance around three years old. Our fragile confidence must be defended against the pointed criticism: “What is wrong with you?”
There is a blessed limit to how much criticism children can take. Children learn to survive the blows and nonstop lectures on their flaws, and the Protector secretly begins to gain influence. Many figure out that anger and hate counteract fear and make them feel powerful.
Knowing when you are angry and hurt is framed in “right and wrong” and “fair and unfair.” The Protector acts as judge against anyone who scares or hurts the Child. It may want to destroy—at least in imagination—anyone who tries to harm or humiliate the Child.
The Protector holds the will to survive and makes it possible to separate from others. The Protector holds the inner strength that allows you to survive incredible pain, abuse, and ridicule. Inner dialogue often runs to the extreme:
“I’ll show them!”
“I’ll be perfect. I’ll never make another mistake.”
“I won’t let them see me cry, even when they hit me.”
“I’ll run away or kill myself, and then they’ll be sorry.”
As you grow, the Protector develops new ways to keep you safe, denying pain and minimizing your feelings. Other techniques to numb bad feelings are added as you become more independent. Overeating, drugs, and forbidden relationships give a sense of immediate relief, regardless of the eventual negative consequences.
The Jobs of the Protector
Your Protector reacts to possible rejection or hurts. It also performs these functions:
The Protector remembers the bad stuff. The Protector locks away upsetting memories, often for years, until something triggers their release. These are called flashbacks:
A rape victim sees someone who resembles her attacker, and faints or becomes ill.
Survivors of sexual abuse become panicked or numb when touched without permission.
Adults yelled at as children accuse their partners of yelling when they speak strongly.
The request to “have a talk” causes acute anxiety to those who were frequently shamed.
Until memories are given a safe place to be explored, the Protector continues to react to triggering events. If you sense something may have happened to you but are afraid to find out, be gentle with yourself and know it is fine to go at your own pace. Someday you’ll know it is time, and you’ll find the person who can give you the guidance you need.
The Protector seeks instant comfort. We often first acknowledge the power of our Protector when feeling powerless to make positive changes. Here are some examples:
feeling stuck in an unhealthy relationship
when you can’t stop overeating, smoking cigarettes, or abusing drugs and alcohol
having angry outbursts that hurt those you love
experiencing anxiety or phobias that limit the courage to reach out and express yourself
You may wonder why you fall back into old destructive habits when you experience emotional pain. This automatic response is triggered by the powerful need for the Child to be comforted. If your Adult self cannot reassure and address the fears of the Child, the Protector will jump in to stop the pain. Unfortunately, the Protector cares nothing about long-term consequences and will use the most immediate means to soothe fears of rejection and prevent you from making a positive change. These instant comforts are often unhealthy. In chapter 6, you will have a chance to explore how you may fall into this pattern and learn new ways to work with your Protector.
How the Protector Keeps You Safe
There are four primary responses to stress: fight, flight, freeze, and faint. Your Protector learned to react to pain by observing the ways you were treated as a child:
If you identified with a parent who raged, you may be hot tempered and often scare others with your anger.
If you escaped hurts by running away, you may now avoid conflicts by refusing to talk.
If you were told to “sit down and shut up” and were then lectured at, you may freeze if anyone gets upset with you.
If you were beaten or molested, you may leave your body under stress, going into a kind of trance.
It is possible for the same situation to evoke fight, flight, freeze, or faint in different people. Recognizing the response you learned as a child helps you to calm the Child and understand the Protector. You probably have experienced each of these responses at various times, but everyone has a predominant style and the
following questionnaire will help you find yours.
Self-Discovery Questionnaire: How Do You Protect Yourself?
Recall a recent situation when you thought someone was angry or rejecting. Examples: when you felt unfair blame, when you perceived disrespect, when you had a feeling you had been betrayed. Use a scale of 0 (”Not me!”) to 5 (”Are you reading my journal?”) to reflect how well the following responses describe your reaction to that situation.
Fight
__ I get angry so fast, I can’t control it. I might break something or hit someone.
__ My heart instantly hardens. I feel cold, unloving.
__ My whole body gets hot. I want to jump up and scream.
Flight
__ I’m out of here! I might even leap from a moving car if it’s bad enough.
__ I want to just walk away. I think I never want to see the other person again.
__ I can’t stop talking. My mind is going a million miles an hour.
Freeze
__ My mind is a blank. I can’t think of a thing to say.
__ I feel punched in the stomach, unable to move or talk.
__ My heart is beating fast. My mouth is dry. I feel like a robot.
Faint
__ I can’t remember what the other person said.
__ My body feels like Jell-O. My knees buckle and I can’t stand up.
__ I just wait until the bad part stops, then act like nothing has happened.
The Courage to Trust Page 3