How can I learn to trust?
Do you often feel you are just waiting for the moment when he/she will let you down? At the same time are you almost looking for reasons to test him/her and trip him/her up?
How important is it to trust?
Trust is a vital part of any relationship, be that friendship or an intimate relationship. “But if I trust I am completely open and vulnerable,” you may say.
Sonya grew up in a house where she could trust neither parent. One parent punished her frequently while the other was over intrusive. As a child she learnt that the only way to be safe was to rely on herself because “others” were not safe and destroyed and devalued her.
This continued into her adult life where she struggled to form healthy friendships and she had no intimate relationships.
In fact Sonya was desperate for a real connection with anyone, but to the outside world it appeared all she did was push people away. Friends didn’t live up to her expectations.
How could Sonya be helped?
Are we ready to trust?
We can only connect with others when we have healed the part of us that does not feel worthy. This does not mean we trust absolutely anyone; in fact we become more discerning as we feel able to be more selective and less desperate for connection. We have to allow ourselves to be vulnerable and to show ourselves to others in order to have meaningful relationships.
We may therefore want to examine those around us and choose what our expectations around a relationship are. It is unlikely that one person would be able to fulfil all our needs; indeed, to expect that would be to lay too heavy a burden on that person. What positives could be put in place to counteract any negative feelings?
We need to remind ourselves about who we are in all our magnificence.
We need to list the people to whom we look for emotional support. Who is the person in your life you would most expect to listen to you? Who might give you emotional challenges?
Trusting and forgiveness
Look at your experiences so far where it has been fine to trust others. Trusting is also about forgiveness and letting go of anger. This doesn’t mean absolving someone from what they have done but it does mean releasing you from the energy of the pain of it. It can then simply become a past event. It’s sad when people talk about how school held them back when perhaps it’s 40 years since they left. Forgiving frees up energy we were using and allows us to move on in life.
It is about asserting the right to stop that situation continuing to hurt us. This is not about simply minimising or dusting over pain and anger and there are many ways of doing this in a therapy session
Can we rely on trusting others?
Finally, what if it doesn’t work out? We may trust and be let down, but that is simply part of life. It’s important to know how to recover from that setback, looking where this has happened previously and how you have been able to cope.
It is also important to be aware of which skills for looking after yourself will you need -and being aware of the ones which you already have.