The Web address of this
four-page article is
http://sfhelp.org/Rx/wounds/distrust.htm
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This is one of over 150 articles focused on healing psychological
building
family relationships, breaking the [wounds + unawareness]
and
divorce. This intro-duction describes the Web
site's purpose and the best ways to use its resources. Each article
is part of a mosaic of ideas, so the more
you read, the more sense they'll all make. These articles augment, vs.
replace, other
professional help.
Before continuing, reflect: why are you reading this -
what do you
+ + +
The scope of U.S. social problems
like divorce, addictions, obesity, welfare, crime, homeless-ness, abortions, and
"mental illness" suggests that well over half of typical American adults are
signifi-cantly
and
This
is one of a series of Web articles
about
for and
two to six common psy-chological
wounds. Typical lay and professional people aren't aware of what causes
these wounds (a low-nurturance childhood and social denial), or what the
wounds
to them, their descendents, and our society. This article focuses on
understanding and reducing the wound of "trust disorders."
Contents
This
four page article provides
practical options for...
identifying and
reducing "trust disorders,"
improving
self-trust and trustworthiness, and...
regaining lost
trust in/of other people.
The article starts with initial
readings and way to learn your "trust profile." Then it answers...
Part 1 - Q&A About Trust
Part 2 - Trust Rebalancing Options
Read These First
To
get the most from this article,
you'll need to know these basic concepts...
-
an
introduction to normal personality subselves -
slides
or text;
-
common
questions and answers about subselves;
-
common
behavioral traits of true-Self and false-self
personality-leadership;
-
an
overview of six common false-self
(psychological) "wounds;"
-
an
introduction to wound reduction ("recovery") -
slides or
text; and...
-
an overview of the [wounds +
unawareness] cycle that may stress your
family and descendents - slides
or text
After
you've studied these ideas, learn about yourself. Get undistracted and
create...
Your "Trust Profile"
Get undistracted and centered, and meditate on these statements.
T =
true, F = false, and "?" = "I'm not sure," or "It depends
on (what?)..."
-
I know all I need to know about trust
now (T F ?)
-
I can
_ clearly define trust, and _ explain where it comes
from (T F ?)
-
I can name at least 10 things I need to
trust about myself now (T F ?)
-
I trust myself enough
in most situations now (T F ?)
-
Awareness of my trust in _ myself, _
other key people, and _ a Higher Power is usually a high priority for me (T F ?)
-
I
was encouraged to trust
my _ competence, _ perceptions, and _ decisions as a child. (T F ?)
-
I
steadily trust in a benign, responsive
now. (T F
?)
-
I trust my
_ mate, _ parent/s, _ sibling/s, and _ children enough at this time. (T F ?)
-
I
know how to handle personal betrayals effectively now. (T F
?)
-
I
have never betrayed any important adult or child. (T F ?)
-
I’m clear on my options for regaining
lost trust now (T F ?)
-
I’m comfortable enough talking about trust
problems with other people now (T F ?)
-
I can describe clearly why I’m reading this
article. (T F ?)
-
My
is
of my personality
now. (T F ?)
Pause and notice
your
now.
Then review these basic ideas with the open mind of a student...
PART 1 - Q&A about Trust and Distrust
Compare these premises with what you believe so far...
What Is
trust?
Think of
an adult you totally trust. Then identify someone you distrust.
What’s the difference bet-ween those people? I propose that
trust is an automatic (semi-conscious) judgment, attitude, and expec-tation we adults
and kids make about ourselves and others, starting in infancy. It is powered
by our pri-mal need for safety - i.e. our instinctive drive to avoid
pain and injury.
People who have
consistently "sound" judgment and who have never been betrayed (had their trust "broken")
may not
worry much about trust. Do you know anyone who hasn't been let down, lied
to, mis-led, cheated, disillusioned, back-stabbed, conned, used, manipulated, or
betrayed by someone impor-tant to them? By God? By an organization? Would
some adult or child say that you've done any of those to them?
Complete trust says "I
can absolutely count on (someone or something) to be or act in a certain way
that (affects my physical, emotional, or spiritual security.)" For
example, I trust that the
sun will rise tomorrow (again) to warm and light my world, and that there will (again)
be oxygen enough for me all day.
From our
primal need for safety, our language includes
trust-related words like (un)reliable, con-fidence, (un)faithful, assurance,
pledge, promise, contract, reliance, vow, promise, (un)certainty, doubt, (un)sure, betrayal,
worry, cynic(al), skeptic(al), pessimism, and (dis)honesty. Our laws
promote
trust in each other and organizations, partly by threatening significant pain to those who
break legal or ethical promises.
Trust in ourselves,
each other, and the universe varies in degree and scope. I can trust you to
make a delicious omelet, but not to always tell me the truth about your
spending our money. I can trust myself to drive a car without crashing, but
not to always remember your birthday. Trust
and distrust are ultimate-ly a measure of faith about how we or
another will behave in a predictable or (un)desired way. Paradox - "I
trust that I can't trust you about _____"
Trust can
only grow naturally, if conditions are right, over significant time. Like love, respect, inter-est,
and bonding, it cannot be
decreed,
bought, or bartered for. "You should trust me" is a
Be-spontaneous!
One
implication is: if you and/or an adult
or child have lost trust in
the other, it may not be possible to
rebuild it "well enough" for both people. Time and motivation will tell.
What is distrust?
As we newborns
experience significant discomforts (unmet needs), distrusts begin to form. Paradoxically, distrust
is trusting that something or someone is unsafe - i.e. that...
Distrusts inhibit
and human intimacy by
blocking us from revealing our true thoughts, feelings, and needs. Chronic suspicion
and
suggest a significant trust disorder - i.e.
false-self dominance in one or all people involved.
What
is "betrayal"?
Here it means
"expecting someone (including our ruling subselves)
to fill important needs, and find-ing that they don't." The most agonizing betrayals (e.g.
parental neglect and marital
are those which send the glaring public message "I
don't care about you or your welfare."
(wounded) people are highly sensitive to such
betrayals, or have learned to be pro-tectively "indifferent" to
(numb and deny) them because
their childhoods were full of painful betrayals they didn't cause,
and couldn't understand or prevent
Where
does trust come
from?
Pause and try answering this question out loud. Then compare your idea with
this premise: in inter-personal relationships, trust comes from needs + direct experience +
hopes +
assumptions.
Needs. Our earliest
experience of dis/trust occurs in infancy. We're entirely dependent on
giant adults to know and fill our current physical and developmental needs.
If they do so reliably and effectively, we grow wordless trust that they
value us and want to help us feel safe and comfortable.
If our needs
are met erratically, harshly, or inadequately, we grow wordless distrust
about (a) our own worth, (b) the reliability and intentions of our
caregivers, and (c) the safety of the universe
As
we age, we slowly become more capable of filling many of our own needs, and
we can become increasingly selective about which other people we trust for
maintaining our safety and comfort. An ines-capable challenge is whether we
learn to trust our own abilities to fill our needs in different situations
or not (self trust).
Hopes ("faith").
Hope-based trust is faith in something without direct experience validating
it. A primal example
is hope for (faith in) an afterlife free of Earthly suffering, and reunion with
God, ancestors, and beloved friends and hero/ines.
Experience.
Your trusts also come from repeated observations over time – e.g. "In 22
years, Pat has never broken a promise to me." So if trust
is lost, we need repeated experiences, vs. verbal assur-ances, to rebuild
it.
Another implication: in some relationships we start out unsure or
distrusting, and may reverse that to some extent over time based on
accumulated experiences: “When we met, I was uneasy hearing that my future
stepson had been recently caught shoplifting, but since our re/wedding, he’s
never done that again.”
Assumptions.
Trust also comes from believing certain sources of
information: e.g.
"Pastor Lueking would never lie to me!"
“The mail carrier will never read my
personal mail.”
“I trust my doctor to
assess me accurately and prescribe the right
thing.”
We also assume the
reasonableness of some things: “I trust that Martha will never run for
President, become an exotic dancer, or shave her head.”
Can you think of other
sources of the trust (faith) that you award to living and spiritual
things and Na-tural laws?
Who causes or blocks trust?
This educational site
is based on the old premise that normal human personalities are composed of a
who behave
chaotically to harmoniously. A corollary is that one of your subselves is a
naturally talented leader – your
(capital "S"). If
less talented subselves distrust your Self, they usurp personality
leadership and can be called your
because they
inexpertly direct your thoughts,
perceptions, needs, and behaviors.
From this perspective,
the question above becomes two queries:
-
“Do
all your
active subselves solidly
trust your Self’s judgment and ability? (self-trust)”, and…
-
“If ‘you’ (your ruling subselves)
distrust another person in some ways, which subselves are distrustful, and
why?”
To permanently improve
some trust aspect of a key relationship, you’ll need to answer each of
these alien questions. They’re not simple, and merit their own guidebook:
(Xlibris.com,
2002, 2nd ed.). Let’s say summarily that…
“Growing up”
(maturing) and “personal recovery from early psychological wounds”
(family
are
trust-building processes. They hinge on accumulating experience that
all your subselves’ can rely on (a) the wisdom and judgment of your Self and
and (b) the ability of your team of subselves, to keep you safe
and “happy” enough day by day.
As a veteran
and
wound-recoverer, my experience is that each of your sub-selves has it’s
own level of trust (low > high) in your Self, your inner family, your mate (if any), key
adults and kids, and
your Higher Power. Some subselves trust more than others. That promotes normal or
ex-cessive confusion, ambivalence, doubt, anxiety, and uncertainty.
A
key implication is:
to (re)build inner trust in yourself (i.e. lower self-doubt, and raise self
con-fidence), your Self will need to
identify which subselves are distrustful, and work with them respectfully to
change their beliefs. Another implication:
rebuilding lost trust in another person requires you to...
-
identify your distrustful
subselves and learn what they need,
-
those needs
to appropriate people effectively, and then...
-
the other person wanting to change and fill your needs
and their own equally.
My experience is
that until their true Self guides her or his
the latter
is unlikely. Note what your reigning subselves are “saying” now –
i.e. notice your thought streams, images, and feelings.
What are
pseudo and blind trust?
Have you ever experienced a
from
someone? These are every-day evidences that different subselves in us have
different opinions, motives, perceptions, and goals. Another common symp-tom is
(superficial) changes, like
dieting earnestly and then regaining the lost weight over and over again.
In
the same way, some of your subselves may trust your Self and
certain other kids and adults and some don’t. That causes pseudo trust: declaring or acting like
you trust, but other actions imply you don’t (a double message). For instance, you may say
sincerely “I trust that you love and need me,” and suffer episodes of
feeling unloved and unimportant.
A widespread
false-self wound is
like denials, repressions, “forgetting,”
intellectual-izing, rationalizing, idealizing, projecting, and so on. Pseudo trust results from some
subselves trying val-iantly to protect you from the pain of facing that (a) you
don’t or can’t trust someone you want to depend on, or (b) you’re unable
to trust in a balanced, healthy way.
A similar phenomenon
is blind faith or trust:
rigidly avoiding or ignoring facts and experiences that clearly say to other
knowledgeable people “you’re trust is misplaced.” Blind faith is an example of
rigid black/white thinking,
which often indicates
Do you know anyone who
denies that a loved one is addicted, emotionally unstable, sick,
self-destructive, or criminal?
Are
there any
among the people you know? How
about “eternal
Such cases imply that there are ruling
subselves who cannot tolerate the pain of facing that trust (security) in some
precious person, perception, or concept isn’t really justified. Restated:
it’s possible to trust too much.
Recall that
one of
of
significant false-self domination is “trust
distortions”: i.e. not trusting safe people or a reliable Higher Power, or
repeatedly trusting unsafe people and getting betrayed. In each of
these cases, dis/trust and/or the other person’s behaviors are
The
primary (underlying) problem is inadequate early-childhood
and unawareness of a
How is
trust lost?
Can you recall having significant trust in a person, group,
or belief, and losing it? Do you remember how that happened? The most memorable
trust-losses are sudden traumatic discoveries, like learning that a mate is
having an affair, using drugs covertly, has a terminal illness, or is
molesting a child.
Distrust can grow from unremarkable events that accumulate
over time. We grow hunches or feel-ings that “something’s
not right here” without clear or dramatic evidence. This can come from our
trusted person’s need to hide their (shameful) behaviors, and/or our need to
hide from the painful reality that the other person is not who we thought they
were (or need them to be).
I've experienced hundreds of therapy cases where
one or both partners had gradually lost trust in the other, and/or lost faith
that their relationship could survive. Do you know anyone like that?
How
do we react when trust is lost?
Each of us develops a
strategy for reacting to lost trust. Do you know what your strategy
is? See if you recognize it among these:
Avoiding full trust in the first
place, and pretending this isn’t true.
Distrusting your own perceptions and
emotions, and/or your ability to trust appropriately.
Generalizing. “All females / males /
gypsies / (etc.)
are basically conniving, selfish, and deceitful.”
Minimizing, denying, pretending, or
explaining lost trust without much feeling. Related
false-self strategies are emotional numbing, and self-comforting via
an
Blaming someone else for our
loss of trust, and denying our half of the action. (“Your sexual affair proves
you’re a morally weak, corrupt person.”) This may be embellished by
choosing a comforting martyr or
role.
Blaming ourselves and not seeing a
partner’s half in losing faith (“If I had been a better sexual partner,
Jamie wouldn’t have had the affair.”) This can manifest as feeling guilty and/or ashamed for choosing an untrustworthy partner, or
for losing faith in them. Or your strategy may be...
Acknowledging lost trust, and not
doing anything about it – i.e. ignoring the needs that
distrust
creates, and/or avoiding scary confrontations and other choices required to
fill those needs (“Marian, if you forget to fill the tank one more time, I’m
going to ask you for your ignition key.”) A major case of this is not
our loss. (“I’ve got too much to do to be sad, these
days.”) Or...
Denying or not seeking patterns in the
trusts we form or lose, over time (“It’s too weird: I’ve picked three
dishonest partners in a row. Am I under some curse or spell?”)
Adopting and denying pseudo or blind
trust, rather than admitting an agonizing or terrifying loss of faith.
“Getting depressed” – calling healthy
grief over lost trust
and perhaps seek-ing medication or
therapy for it. Another strategy is...
“Anxiety attacks” – focusing on the
effects of lost trust (less security), rather than the cause/s, and taking
responsibility for healthy reactions.
(a) Admitting
lost trust without blame,
(b) learning from it, (c) assessing current needs, and
(d) acting responsibly and compassionately to fill them. (“Carlos is terribly
and in
He wants to tell me the truth, but his false
self often won’t let him. He’s not in a place yet to recognize and change
that. I can’t
that, and I need a partner I can trust.”)
Some combination of these, and/or
other strategies.
What do you notice
about these responses to lost trust? What I notice is that
only the
last one is
and the others imply a dominant
false self. For perspective, recall that the benefit of real trust is
security – feeling safe from pain, injury, and/or overwhelm. Your true
are competent to adapt to lost trust, and rebuild securities
- if your
other subselves will trust them to do that…
Continue
with trust-balancing goals and options. Do you need a stretch break first?
+ + +
