Awhile ago I had an interesting discussion with a client about how trust develops.

She was talking about how difficult and scary it is for her to trust, and about her frustration with herself that she can't "make" herself trust more easily.

We began exploring what might cause trust to develop. I realize there are times when a type of blind faith or trust does occur. Most kinds of trust we experience in life are built upon the collection of data which then becomes evidence for the degree to which we can trust in a particular situation.

My client's frustration was borne of her idea/belief that she should somehow magically "just trust" people and situations. Instinctively she didn't believe that was accurate and this created a conflict between her instincts and her belief.

We talked about how it wasn't possible to "out of the blue"  or "suddenly" trust someone or a situation. 

We need to experiment and see the results of the experiments we conduct. If, in general, the data we collect illustrates that the situation/relationship is benign, we begin to develop confidence in it. To the degree the data illustrates positive, safe things about the situation is the degree to which we are able to trust it.

I think the moral of the story is that trust in something/someone can only be learned by experience; we can't decide to trust something/someone just because we might really want to, or because we think we should, or because we think it would be a nice thing to do. By the way, this also goes for learning to trust ourselves, if we have been in the position of not trusting ourselves for awhile. 

Learning to trust is a process and it cannot be made to go faster or be quicker than it needs to go. If we skip steps we will miss out on important data- data we need in order to make accurate assessments and choices.

The Bumper Sticker for this post turns out to be: Trust is Learned and Earned

Comments

[Super Egg]

ah ha!
well said 4 sure. %)

[PTC]

How can it be that one can trust their T, but not believe them? Example: I trust that my T knows what she's talking about when it comes to ED stuff, like if she were to tell me that I could eat more and I wouldn't gain weight. I trust that she knows what she's talking about but I don't believe her. That wasn't really a great example but hopefully you get what I'm trying to say?

[wendy]

I understand what PTC is saying. I had that exact conversation with my dieticians...I realized though that it was that I believed that I just might be the one that is different. Maybe I will weigh a ton on what others would be thin on. I got to where I laid the thoughts out there and that seemed to really help me hear the irrationality and move past them. I don't think for me that it was because I did not believe them, but just that I did not trust my body to respond like a healthy body would to healthy eating patterns. Some of it was body distortions, too.

I remember very early in therapy apolgizing to my therapist for not trusting her and she was so gracious and let that build over time. I remember her smiling and telling me, that so far we had not worked long enough together for me to know her well enough to trust. That took the pressure off and the "good girl" in me did not feel guilty for "testing the waters."