Trusting Others in Relationships

Trusting others is really a process of getting to know and trust oneself. When we begin to listen to our inner gut instincts and follow the directions that our senses give us, then we can begin to trust our own emotional selves rather than having to put trust anywhere else. Many people will write about how to build trust with others in relationships, but few write about the process of building a personal relationship with oneself in order to hold the capacity for trusting others. Many discuss this topic as though we want to be able to trust someone else, but the foundational building blocks come from first empowering an individual to trust oneself to make good decisions.

You can learn to trust yourself more by paying attention to what your senses are telling you about a person or a situation. Your body is built with an internal warning system that was developed over the course of human evolution to give you signals when something feels like it’s wrong. The feeling that something is going wrong or about to go wrong causes fear. We have to learn to deal with our internal fears about everything before we can trust ourselves and then someone else.

You likely feel a loss of control when you encounter something that activates the autonomic nervous system. The autonomic nervous system regulates many of the internal organs through a balance of two aspects, or divisions. In addition to the endocrine system, the autonomic nervous system is instrumental in homeostatic mechanisms in the body. The two divisions of the autonomic nervous system are the sympathetic division and the parasympathetic division. The sympathetic system is associated with the fight-or-flight response, and parasympathetic activity is referred to by the epithet of rest and digest. Homeostasis is the balance between the two systems. Because fear activates the autonomic nervous system, it creates physical responses in the mind and body that tell you to run away, fight, or stand still. When we become activated in our awareness, this system can become hyperaware causing one to feel a sense of foreboding over whether or not they will be able to deal with life’s difficulties. Sensory perception reminds the body of previous times that it felt fear as a normal response to the body’s memories of those things that caused fear. This is because of the natural way that the nervous system has evolved in man. The parasympathetic nervous becomes activated during fear response as well because it is a part of the autonomic nervous system. This means that regulatory functions (e.g., appetite, heart rate, and sleep) are affected when we become fearful. A person will experience disruptions in the body as a way of informing us that we are experiencing something that causes fear.

Sometimes the things that cause us to go into a fearful state are not obvious right away. It takes us time to build the right internal wiring system that allows us to process fear appropriately. When we learn to deal with fear, we’ll have a healthier body overall. Being overweight, having low energy, experiencing a lack of motivation, and having irregular sleep patterns are all symptoms of fear. It’s extremely important to pay attention to what the body is telling us. During this period of time, one may experience panic attacks, daydreaming, nightmares, and signs from the universe that seem to point to the right answers. Getting to understand your fears will help you figure out the cause of the fear, which will then help you work out the conflict so that you will begin to trust your emotional responses to fear much better.

Picture a stressful situation that usually causes you a lot of fear. When you sense danger, your body reacts. You experience things like sweaty palms, butterflies in your body, goose bumps, and other symptoms when you face your fears. The way to get through this is to face the things you fear most directly. You must face the inner conflict head on. Courage is the ability to continue to act despite the fear that you feel. You will build courage and confidence when you begin taking action steps to move through the fears that you have. This takes a great deal of self-discipline and introspection as you get in touch with the ways you react to fear. When you have a handle on your reactions to fear, your emotions feel much more under your control so you will be able to face the same conflict in the future with greater trust in yourself to do the right thing.

Experiences in life helps to build trust within ourselves. When we have a firm foundation and a firm sense of self, we can become more able to assert our boundaries. We no longer have to test the individuals in our lives to see if they are trustworthy because we able to sense whether they are using the internal guiding system we’ve created and learned to rely on. If we pay attention to what we feel and don’t suppress or ignore any warning signals that we may receive, then we are more able to say no when something doesn’t feel right. When we live by honoring ourselves and our needs, we can then communicate our needs and build trust with an individual honestly. As long as an individual doesn’t continue to act in ways that make us feel uncomfortable, then that person is trustworthy. When in doubt, always trust what your body tells you to do in any situation. Trust that you already have the power to know exactly what you need. All you really need to do to remain healthy is observe and listen. You will be fine when you trust your own reactions to the things that cause fear in you. You will begin to learn the right way to react to all threats that you feel. In time, you will gain all of the trust that you’ll ever need right inside yourself.