What is trust, and where do I get it?

Somehow I think it's somewhat useful..applying in all kinds of relationship.

What is trust, and where do I get it?” Adopt the curiosity and open mind of a student, and join me in exploring…

Perspective: Trust 101

I assume that you feel mutual trust is one essential for healthy relationships. To help improve your co-parental teamwork, let’s explore what trust is, where it comes from, and what you co-parents need to trust about each other, for all your sakes.

What Is Trust?

Compare your definition to this:

“Trust is the changeable state of feeling safe enough from current and future spiritual, mental, emotional, and physical discomfort.”

We also seek to trust that expected discomfort will be, and/or will become, tolerable. For example, do you trust your body to heal itself from most injuries and illness? Alternative mind-body-spirit states are anxiety (worry), fear, dread, or terror; uncertainty, doubt, or ambivalence; or general “tension.”

As our lives unfold, we grow to trust or mistrust...

our own perceptions, judgments, worth, and competences;

the behavior, motivations, and abilities of other people and groups,

human and environmental situations, and...

Higher selves, Guides, and Power/s.

Your dis/trust comes from the unconscious reflex of predicting whether some condition or experience will cause you significant discomfort or not. Such automatic predictions shape each of your family members’ daily expectations and decisions, as you all seek to fill your immediate needs. Trusts determine the degrees of honesty within and between you.

Trust What?

Our framework here is your evolving an effective co-parenting team over time. Your co-parents need to evolve trust in many things about each other for group harmony. If you have an ex mate in your life now, note the extent of your trust in her or him about these primary attributes:

Honesty and genuineness: “I trust Martha to not keep key information from me, or to shade the truth.”

Reliability: “If Jerry says he’ll be here at 6:00, I can count on him to be on time.”

Responsibility and motivation: “My experience is that Max steadily wants to be the best dad he can be. I admire the way he admits his mistakes without whining or blaming other people.”

Good judgment: “I usually feel Rena’s decisions are wise and good for the kids and us.”

Cooperation: “I really appreciate that Jose is a team player. He rarely puts his own needs ahead of all of ours.”

Stability and resilience: “I’ve never seen Cheryl lose her cool under fire.”

Moral, ethical, and spiritual values: “Noriko really lives by the Golden Rule. She’s an inspiration!”

Genuine caring, empathy, and respect: “I can’t think of a time that Jason hasn’t wanted to know what I need and feel.”

Asking for, and accepting, help: “Jenny promptly says when she’s overwhelmed, so I know when she’s OK.”

Acceptance and safety: “I feel real comfortable around Louise. I always feel safe with her to just be me.”

Motivation to compromise: “Sharon and I have our disagreements, but she’s usually willing to meet me half way without grousing.”

Self motivation and respect: “Nick’s never been a parent before. He decided to learn about it, and has been going to a weekly class at Mills Center.”

Role clarity: “I admire how Lawanda makes it a point to be clear on what she’s responsible for.”

Can you think of other core categories that teammates need to develop trust in? Could you have defined all these before you read them? Can your other co-parents? Taking the time to notice specific trust factors like these can help you clarify and resolve vague or general distrusts in yourself and with other co-parents. It also can help you teach your kids about trust.

Option: use the factors above to evaluate your trust in (a) yourself, (b) your partner (if any), (c) each parent (past or present); and (d) your best or oldest friend. What do you notice?

To re/grow missing trust in your co-parents, it’s useful to know…

Premises about Trust

See if you agree with these ideas:

Trust in someone or something (“x”) ranges from none to total, now and over time. A useful awareness is whether you trust “x” enough for now. If not, you’ll probably live in stress, or act impulsively or thoughtfully to regain your comfort level.

The degree of trust you feel in “x” will vary, depending on which subselves usually control your inner family (personality).To survive painful low-nurturance childhoods, kids automatically develop several Guardian subselves like the Cynic / Doubter, Skeptic / Pessimist, Controller, Conservative, Catastrophizer, and Idealist / Optimist.

People dominated by fearful subselves tend to trust too little. People dominated by a Good Child and/or People-Pleaser subself often trust too easily. One of six wounds that most of us survivors need to heal in adulthood is learning to discern who and what is safe to trust, and learning to trust our own trusting. Do you now?

Trust that has built over years can be lost gradually or in a heartbeat. If that happens between people like ex mates…

Trust can be intentionally re/grown between two people who value themselves and their relationship enough, and who commit to doing that - if (1) their true Selves are solidly in charge (Project 1), and they can communicate effectively (Project 2). Do you agree with this?

Because trust relates directly to primal security and often personal worth, many of the terms we use to think and speak about dis/trust are “hand-grenade” words: i.e. they can evoke emotional “explosions.” Recall your reaction if someone you respect said “You’re a liar,” “You betrayed me,” “You distort things all the time,” or “I don’t trust you to be on time, or to do what you say; you’re irresponsible.” Many of us are taught as kids to unconsciously generalize “I don’t trust you about (something)” to “You’re BAD (shameful, unlovable).”

Chronic false-self dominance breeds double messages (“I love you; you're disgusting”) which promote semi-conscious confusion and mistrust, over time. Therefore major distrust in yourself or another may be a symptom of a deeper problem: a reactive, leaderless personality.

Dishonesty is a clear sign that a child’s or adult’s ruling subselves don’t trust that it’s safe to tell the truth. Denials and repressions (self-dishonesty) occur because subselves feel admitting the truth will cause too much pain or emotional overwhelm (“I’m not obese and addicted to food, I’m just big-boned.”)

If people in your family tell “lies” or avoid disclosing their truth, it suggests they don’t trust that (a) their own reactions, and/or (b) yours will feel safe enough. Shame, guilt, anxiety, rejection, and conflict are common reasons we all fear telling some truths (right?). Do you have any “dishonest” (i.e. distrustful, scared) people in your family? For more perspective, see this article.

A final premise about trust…

Most dis/trusting is unconscious and reflexive, until you intentionally focus your conscious awareness on it. So awareness and focusing is necessary to intentionally raise your trust in someone or something, including your own perceptions and judgments.

Your version of premises like these form your "trust policy." Psychological wounds + unawareness + and compulsive "busy-ness" hinder most people from being able to compose and adjust their trust policy intentionally. Has that been true of you?

Where Trust Comes From - or Doesn’t

You acquire the state of trust from (a) repeated experience [“I know (trust) the sun will rise tomorrow.”] or (b) faith (belief without experience or proof). The protective reflex to distrust blooms from your being too uncomfortable (scared, hungry, tired, sick, hurting, lonely, angry, confused, overwhelmed, disoriented…) as an infant and a young child. Do you think most newborn animals and people naturally trust most aspects of their world, until physical and emotional discomfort teaches us caution?

Your reactions to repeated experiences are the seed and soil for growing trust in the categories above. From these we also unconsciously come to trust how we'll feel and "be" with each other child and adult. “I always have a good time with Angel, and get bored with Marvin.”

Besides painful personal experiences, another root of unconscious dis/trust can come from your early caregivers, hero/ines, and teachers. If your impressionable young mind constantly received messages like "Don't trust anyone / females / Asians / people in uniforms / lawyers and politicians / college grads / addicts / divorced men /..., you absorbed selective or global distrusts that become second nature - unconscious judgments uncritically adopted from someone else's experiences, biases, or ancestries.

The core distrust too many of us learn within months of our birth is "I don't feel safe / good here [with these huge (parent) gods]. I can't expect (trust) that anyone will really care about me or fill my needs." To survive, young kids deprived of key nurturances automatically grow Guardian subselves who insist "Don't trust anyone. Do it (Life) yourself!" That defensive, skeptical attitude and related behaviors are self-nourishing, and usually arrive intact in early adulthood.

So: your mosaic of trusts or distrusts cause a mental/emotional state that you grow selectively from (a) early instruction, and (b) a lifetime of general and special experiences. "Experiences" include inner conflicts, and relationships with your ex mate, key supporters and authorities, and your Higher Self and Power.

Trust is a primitive natural survival instinct. It's function is to forecast with certain life forms and situations, "Am I safe enough from pain or harm here?" Safe measures our quenchless need to fill a hierarchy of primary needs. You and I feel safe when our immediate needs are met well enough, including our need to feel they'll be met well enough in the near future.

So what do all these abstract concepts mean in your life and home? If you did the trust inventory at the start of this article, you should have no trouble doing this brief…

# Status check: T = "true," F = "false," and? = "I'm not sure," or "it depends."

I feel a mix of calm, centered, energized, light, focused, resilient, up, grounded, relaxed, alert, aware, serene, purposeful, compassionate, and clear, so my true Self is probably leading my other subselves (personality) now. (T F ?)

I can explain the difference between disrespect, distrust, resentment, and dislike to an average teenager. (T F ?)

I fully accept that each bioparent and stepparent of each of our minor or grown kids is a full members of our multi-home family now: i.e. their needs, feelings, and opinions as valid and important as my own. (T F ?) If you don’t, you have a membership conflict. Work on co-parent Project 3.

I understand the idea of family nurturance, and I agree that our kids need us co-parents to build an effective co-parenting team for them. (T F ?)

I see long-term value for all of us in raising my trust in one or more of our co-parents now, and I want to work at that with an open mind. (T F ?)
My partner (if any) would thoughtfully answer each of these as “True” (T F ?)

If you distrust your partner as a competent co-parent, see this article. The rest of this article refers to “the ex” as your target person. Substitute “the stepparent” or their name, if that’s whom you distrust.