Trust will always be an issue whenever we have a problem - distrust of our body, our partner, the world - and yet to simply decide to trust something or someone where trust was damaged is an act of foolhardiness.
If we live in a mood of naive trust, betrayal is inevitable. If we live in a mood of complete distrust, we will live a small and shrinking life.
The question becomes “How can we restore genuine trust?”
Fernando Flores coauthored a wonderfull book “Building Trust” where he shifts the focus from “You can trust me” to “I will trust you” and he outlines two possibilities for creating this process.
The first is prudence. Prudence is a mood which honours the legitimacy of distrust in the past while creating a window of trust so that it can then emerge genuinely. The fall of the Berlin Wall is a spectacular example of prudence and led to the demise of the Cold War.
The second is adult trust. Fernando writes about adult trust as an emotion where we run the risk of trusting with full appreciation of the possibility of betrayal. If there is a p
problem, we are ready to accept it without complaint.
I have found these descriptions to be very helpful in many cases.
What do you think?
Rob
I work with several clients with dissociative identity disorder. I have found that initially they do not trust that I will be there for them. After a lengthy time, years perhaps, they may come to trust that I will be there and trust that I will give them a new perspective, or help them problem solve, but they may still not fully trust anyone.