Trust Issues

I have trust issues, this isn't a new revelation as I have touched on this before.  My trust issues have not really ever gone away.     

I am now 40, I realize looking back that I never really let people in, mainly for fear that they would let me down, belittle me or make me feel small, or otherwise diminish me in some way. I kept people at a distance, and this impacted my ability to have close, connected relationships/friendships.

I used to think I had trust issues because of the way I was as a child, but I’ve come to realize there’s more to it than that.

Trust was a matter of what other people did, how they treated me or how they disappointed me.  As I got older, I realised my trust issues are more about me than other people.

Now, aged 40,  I may have some small wounds like everyone does from not receiving the emotional nurturing I needed when growing up. I have trust issues not because I distrust others, but because I don’t trust me. 

I knew it was bloody scary but in order to truly trust others, I would need to begin by trusting myself.  I have done the cycle of suspicion, not sharing my feelings, assuming the worst in everyone to self doubt. 

In other posts, I have touched on not being open due to trust.  I wasn’t open to people’s smiles, or their overtures, or even their kindness. I was basically checked out, and I rarely noticed when others made attempts at engagement with me.  

Life can become very isolating when you shut yourself off.   In life we need human connection to feel alive and complete as we are social creatures.  We harm ourselves when we cut ourselves off.  

I have learnt that people will sometimes disappoint us, and yes, people will occasionally do malicious things to us, but, in the end, we have to get over this.  The world, I have learned, will not stop or end.  We need to be able to move on from continuously licking our wounds so we can heal them and start living fully again.

When I was a young child, I would naturally trust, I would share my toys, my thoughts, and my heart with abandon. It’s not until I was trained to distrust the world and “not talk to strangers” that I began to lose my innocence and belief in the inherent goodness of humanity.  For  some, the trust issues develop because they do not receive strong nurturing, and this causes a wound that never seems to heal properly.
While it can be good to have a healthy dose of skepticism so as not to become victims, it is not healthy to remain closed off and shut down from the world.

I am learning to trust despite knowing that I may get hurt. 

I didn’t trust myself, and this actually made it impossible to trust other people.  I had a hard time trusting myself because I never accepted myself as a flawed and imperfect being. I could never get over my own disappointment when I let myself down. 

I lost trust in myself in many ways, but I learnt that I could build that trust back up.

I built my trust by realizing I wasn’t living up to my greatest self.  I focused on developing my personal strengths and growing as a person. Most of all, I strived to do the best I could in any given situation.

I found that if I was doing my best I could allow the occasional stumble without beating myself up or deciding that I couldn’t trust myself at all. And I could do the same for other people. If they occasionally disappointed me, I could recognize that this is what it means to be human.

Life isn't all black and white and I started to see in gray.  

I am learning, everyday to try and live a life full of integrity.  I am getting better at learning to accept others’ mistakes and flaws, even if they hurt me. I am truly trying to trust that despite what others may do, or how they might disappoint me, I will be able to get through it, with my faith in humanity in tact.