Trust… it’s an issue.

What a strange thing trust is. Strong enough to move mountains when it’s there, powerful enough to crumble them when it’s gone. Gain with so much effort and slowly over time but lost in a second and so hard to win back since now doubt lurks around every corner dripping “what if” in the mind and poisoning it. I went from one extreme to another with it. From trusting blindly in everyone that I met to looking at everybody with suspicion. Both of those are problematic in themselves but I keep on turning the issue in my head and I can’t seem to decide about where the happy medium is. What is the appropriate stance to take on the issue?

I read the Attributes by Rich Diviney, and after a bit more research I ended up on his website which listed four elements to trust. Competency, consistency, integrity, and compassion. These apply to my issue as I need to see that you have what it takes to get the job done and that you will match what you say you are going to do with your actions if anything changes and you are unable to, I want to see that you are going, to be honest, and open about it. I also must see that you have a good moral compass and backbone so that you will do the right thing because it is the right thing to do not just switch up when you think no one is watching or when the wrong thing brings you more entertainment or popularity. The last element of compassion is the sympathy and empathy side, how you talk about others in front of me matters because you will talk about me in the same way when I am not there.

We say that we FEEL that we can trust somebody but is trust an emotion? To me, it seems like one collects data and makes an informed decision if a risk is worth taking or not. If one does not have the necessary information, one trusts a gut feeling or intuition. What is intuition? While it manifests as the little rumble in the stomach telling me that something is up, I consider it to be your subconscious mind telling me that in my experience this looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, walks like a duck, and historically, it has turned out to be a duck but, there was that one time when it turned out to be a goose and there were… consequences so, an evaluation is needed to see if the right state of mind is present at this time to take the risk. If all conditions are met, then it is very much the dealer’s choice. Spin the wheel and see if we get the prize. Past experiences such as betrayal, inconsistency, and broken promises, all my past experiences scream out if I should trust someone or not.

I suppose like everything, it starts in the family. My parents always had a strong view of lying. Even now if you ask them, they will tell you it is the only reason they have ever spanked us. Spoiler alert, that’s a lie. They had this standard set up for us that we should tell them the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth but when we would then watch them not doing so or making us accomplices to it. “Don’t tell your grandma how much we spent on X thing,” “Don’t tell you’re your mom that we stopped for a beer on the way.” I child watches everything and emulates everything so, there is no conversation needed for me to see that you said one thing and you are lying through your teeth. At a young age, I wouldn’t understand why you are doing this; I wouldn’t understand there are levels to it, but you have just shown me that we can opt out from telling the truth. When and for what reasons, not sure because there was no discussion to explain the situation. Also, similar to this situation is when promises are made and then when you ask your parents, they say that they haven’t made the promise, or they said it, and they now say they are unable with no explanation sometimes even getting me in trouble for asking for reasons why. My favourite one is making a promise based on me fulfilling a commitment and when I fulfil that commitment, they moved the goalpost to make it seem that I was lacking instead of just admitting they couldn’t meet their end of the bargain.

Trust comes from consistency. Doing what you said because you said it, acting and reacting predictably. It is the sequence of patterns that lets me know that you will be who I need you to be in that moment and you will react in the way that I need you to react. If you say that you are going to help me and when I come to collect on that promise, you act like the conversation never happened and even more so, you have a go at me and try to make me feel bad for being upset, that creates an environment where I can’t express my feelings, I can’t ask for clarification to soothe myself. If sometimes my input is received with kindness and sometimes it is received with anger, I get destabilized because I don’t know what I am walking into when I have a conversation with you. You are now making me feel like you are not a safe person, you are unreliable. You are teaching me that I need to be hypervigilant because I am always at risk due to your unpredictability. My dad was quite explosive in his reactions so, I had become quite attuned to his reactions to manage my reactions and avoid starting a conflict. This is something that I take with me in every room I go into. If I stay in the same room with a person and they seem upset, I will ask them several times if they are all right. If they decide to not share and just say they are all right, I will continue to monitor the energy and look for clues. It might seem annoying and paranoid, but the reality is that I feel unsafe. Somewhere in my subconscious, I am afraid. Nothing to do with you, I suppose but, I just need a few more data points than the regular person to conclude that everything is fine.

Growing up I felt I couldn’t talk to my mom and dad about my issues and my sister was older and interested in talking to her friends and not me, but I did have a few friends I chose to trust along the way. One knew that I liked a boy, and she made a point of dating him, despite claiming that she was trying to help me talk to him. Another shared the notebook we would write all our secrets with other people to read showing that there is no privacy. The desire for popularity made loyalties shift with the frequency with which one hangs out with people. I would get pulled in close because they didn’t have anybody at that time or they needed my help but as soon as they could spend time with other people and they could get something off them, they would talk behind my back to them. I had a friend call me and instigated me to talk about other people in the group while they were listening in on the conversation. This pattern repeated itself and I believed that I was overreacting in the early stages, that I was imagining things, and I thought that I was a bad friend for even considering anything wrong. Life showed me that if anything, I was too trusting. Worst of all, I ignored the evidence to avoid being alone.

With my first boyfriend, I found out that he was cheating on me with someone from his class. He was in the high school football team, and they were participating in a tournament, and he told me that I needn’t come. I found out after we broke up that all my friends had seen him at that tournament and not even one of them told me about it. They thought that I would have a go at them if they said anything. I don’t learn though and after a while he comes back and wants to get back together. Turns out he was now cheating with me on the girl that he had left me for. This was the start and there were some manipulators, users, and liars on the way.

There have been other scenarios, like being upset with me because I was upset with him, which made no sense but meant that no responsibility was taken, and I was made responsible for ruining the mood. Another one of my favourites was discussing something and agreeing on a plan and when it was time to follow through, I got told “I didn’t say I promised.” Are we adults here or are we playing Simon says? I am sure that if I made a promise and I didn’t keep it, I would never hear the end of it and I would get told that I am not a team player, but Peter Pan over here is telling me that rules don’t apply to him because he had his fingers crossed behind his back?

If you ask me how I am doing, really doing and I tell you about my feelings and you try to shut me down, I will not trust you with my feelings again. You can’t hold space for me and that is fine, it is not your responsibility, and we just discovered the boundary of our relationship. Not all conversations are for all people. What I would ask though is that you don’t feel surprised you have been taken out of the loop and I don’t lean on you. I tried to give you access to my inner life and you couldn’t handle it. Sometimes, I even get avoided afterwards or promises are made to meet up that never materialize. I won’t call you up on it, but I know that I can only trust you up to a point. There are levels of friendship and there are levels of intimacy.

When you have been lied to so often, it is hard to know who to trust. Of course, I would like to have good, deep connections with everybody, but I have let people in before and they chose to let me down. I kind of started to think somewhere along the way that there must be something wrong with me because it seemed that I was the easiest one to discount. I am the easiest one to leave behind and sacrifice. Without wanting it, I start isolating myself and it gets better in terms of having time to think about everything, but it is not real healing, it just keeps me from being triggered. I started trying to open up more and letting people in, but I remember that being vulnerable and sharing things about myself, didn’t really make people want to be vulnerable back but instead gave them ammunition to manipulate me. I started letting people approach but keeping them at a distance because if they can’t come close they can’t hurt me. I can’t allow myself to get attached fully to anybody because they are going to leave anyway so, just see them as passers-by.

Trust issues are viewed as being a red flag and people tell you to stay away from folks who have them. I feel alone, I want to connect to people but I am afraid that they will leave me so I approach them with care, and they leave because I am afraid which then in turn makes stronger the idea that I should be afraid of people. The truth is that while you might scare me, the person that I am doubting is me. I made so many wrong decisions in the past and I stayed in that place of pain regardless of how bad it was sometimes. It was like getting electrocuted and continuing to hold on to the wire. Even when other people tried to break the circuit and save me, I told them not to worry about it because they didn’t know this wire as I did.

I have had good experiences too. People that I have shared parts of myself, slowly and awkwardly and they accept them and take care of them. They said they were going to show up for me and they did. They said I can lean on them, and I can tell them my troubles and they have created space for me to feel safe and be able to share and they were able to hold that space for me. When they couldn’t, they were open and honest about it, and they allowed me to return the favour and be there for them in need. It takes two to tango and I must be accepted in just as much as I allow other people in.

I am trying my best to fight against everything that my experience has taught me. I suppose the biggest fear is that if someone hurts me, I don’t believe that I can recover from it. I have worked on making my sense of self stronger, raising my self-esteem, and my self-compassion. It’s a mixture of believing in myself more and allowing myself to get it wrong sometimes. I suppose the only way of not making mistakes is not even trying in the first place and staying a hermit. I have also learned to listen to my body and listen to my anxiety. If it keeps getting triggered every time around a person I just listen to it and let that person go. I am trying very hard to get in the habit of saying what I need and asking people for clarification. Accepting that some friendships have expiration dates, it is best to be grateful for having had those people for a while and letting them go to the next chapter of their lives. I can understand that people can make mistakes and people can change but I now know that people only change if they want to so if they want us to get back to a place of trust, we can rebuild as long as the change is real and goes beyond the speech level.

Even this is an exercise in trust. I have told you things about me and I have let you into my reality. What you do with this information is up to you. You can use it to hurt me, or you can use it as an opportunity to share something back and show that faith in humanity can be restored one act of kindness at a time.