Do you often feel burned and blindsided by others’ actions? Are you confused by why you sometimes feel too trustful, while at other times you feel too doubtful or guarded? Are your relationships superficial or short-lived – and is your business or personal life suffering as a result?
Not a lone week passes without a client uttering the “T” word in my office. Trust is crucial for building relationships and living a fulfilling, connected life. Being too trusting without discernment leads to chaotic relationships and disappointment, while not trusting others enough robs you of the joie de vivre and success. Read how to know if you have trust issues, and what to do about it.
1. You trust too easily. Have you ever met someone and thought, “Wow, that person is totally awesome! I can’t wait to jump on board with their plan/path/opportunity! I want to hang out with them now, tonight, tomorrow… forever!” Indeed, people that share our values and exude energy, compassion and motivation enthuse us. Be cautious, though: if you find yourself doling out too much trust, you may suffer from the rose-colored glasses syndrome. While positivity is good, optimism will blind you if you don’t peek over the tops of them specs once in a while. Many see the human race as ‘basically good’ (myself included). But don’t confuse potential with reality. Don’t rush acquaintances into your inner circle. Step into relationships with some degree of healthy skepticism. If it’s a good thing, it’s sustainable.
2. You feel walked on by others. As a result of viewing others with that pink tint of optimism, we place those people on a pedestal, establishing distance and creating a power disequilibrium. Disappointment is inevitable when we develop unrealistic expectations of that person on that perch. Our rosy goggles may hide warning signals about the reality of the person’s behaviors. In psychology, we call this the ‘confirmation bias.’ Your expectations can encourage you to interpret cues in a way that would confirm your beliefs about that person, disregarding cues that contradict your expectations. The end result? You feel duped.
3. You are suspicious of others’ motives. Feeling conned and misled may push you into a phase of total mistrust. Here, you are in protective mode and connect only superficially with others. While this is safe, it is not rewarding. This habit is commonplace for those who have suffered some significant personal violations such as abuse, trauma, or neglect. These incidents can spur a pattern of unbiased, overall mistrust. Those subjected to such problems often have lived in invalidating or dysfunctional environments, especially during vital periods of development. Extreme wrongdoings against the person who was victimized can lead the person to generalize this mistrust to all relationships and situations in their lives.
4. You don’t trust your intuition and judgment. After a while, vacillation between these two extremes—trust and mistrust—may make you dizzy. Perhaps you have never trusted your intuition with people. Your life experiences (especially in the early years) and how you coped with them (i.e. denial, minimizing, withdrawing) determine how well you trust yourself and how you learn to see the world. You may have grown up with your perceptions being discounted or dismissed in some way, diminishing your ability to trust those insights.
5. You think or act in extremes. When you lose your ability to trust your judgment and perceptions, you probably think in all-or-none terms. If you find yourself saying or thinking these words often, you are black-and-white thinker:
- Should/should not
- Right/wrong
- Good/bad
- Can’t
- Have to
Without believing you can properly judge a situation, you will feel forced to categorize people as a way of predicting how they will behave. It’s a way of protecting yourself, and it’s a normal reaction. Thinking this way, however, weakens the wealth of individual differences in values and character traits, and you may end up judging others unnecessarily.
The Good News:
Be assured that trust issues can be broken, once and for all. Here are just a few tips:
- Differentiate between the WHO and WHAT – Understand the difference between who someone is as an individual, versus how they are being right now and what they are doing. We are a whole lot more than our behaviors. And we all venture outside of integrity at times. People ARE basically good, yet there may be instances where their actions do not always align with their values.
- Explore beliefs – We develop beliefs from our experiences during fundamental years and during traumatic episodes. Explore beliefs like, “This world is an unsafe place,” or “If I don’t engage fully with everyone, I am a bad person,” and so on. Then begin to challenge them and take small risks that counter them. Gather evidence contrary to your beliefs.
- Explore coping defense mechanisms – We develop ways of emotionally dealing with the hardships of childhood by doing things that work temporarily (i.e., minimizing, denying, protecting, distracting, escaping). The problem is, they don’t generalize across the spectrum of relationships or situations as we move into different environments in adulthood. Our coping styles made total sense as a child—they worked. They just don’t now. Identifying your coping patterns is the first step towards breaking them.
- Take small risks – The key to building trust is taking small risks and evaluating the outcome. If it went well, forge ahead. If not, step back again and observe. Reflect. Decide if you want to take another. The same goes for your self-trust. In risking taking action based on what you perceive or think, you can grow your ability to trust yourself as well.
- Don’t expect perfection – People are human so don’t put them on a pedestal (it’s a long fall) and don’t patronize them. We all betray others at various times in our lives by not speaking up, hiding things, not being honest, or even with outright disloyalties. Because someone betrays you doesn’t necessarily mean that you can no longer trust them. They made a mistake. As long as it’s not a deal breaker, give them the opportunity to make amends. Begin taking small risks again with them. Don’t get caught in all-or-none thinking about their behavior.
- Don’t beat yourself up when you keep the rose-colored glasses on too long. Same goes for never wearing them – Old habits do die hard. Each time you find yourself again with trust issues, instead of expecting perfection, see them as opportunities to learn more about your beliefs and patterns around trust. Change takes time. Be patient with yourself.
Developmental theorist Erik Erikson penned ‘trust’ as the initial and fundamental task upon which all developmental tasks are built. Difficulties with trust can bring hardship to personal and work relationships, and even how you relate to yourself. Crucial learning curve. But know that if it IS broken, with some diligence, it CAN be fixed. For good.
