Got TRUST issues? Here is how you can cope without therapy.

More and more people these days are finding themselves unreasonably scared of trusting other people, overwhelmed by frustration, regret, sadness & shame due to their past. If you suffer from anxiety, dread making friends or avoid getting too involved with people because of your trust issues then you know all too well about the nightmarish prospect of getting into a “relationship”.

Trust issues are dreadful. When things go wrong some people toughen up and raise their guard, some come out of it broken and a few develop Pistanthrophobia which is ‘fear-of-trusting people’. No matter where you fall on this scale of damage you will surely benefit from this article.

Wait, Is this article about LOVE?

Absolutely NOT. It is about trust. All relationships romantic or otherwise, are built on a foundation of trust. If you cannot trust others, then you don’t get to enjoy the perks of having a reliable person in your life, losing out on countless opportunities and experiences that make life worth living.

How will this article help me COPE?

Awareness is the first step towards healing.

- Dean Ornish

In this article, I make a humble attempt to speed the coping process for you, by educating you a little about trust issues so that you are well equipped to deal with it and make friends.

Why is making friends so important?

The magnitude of your mistrust is only known to you. Trust issues must be taken seriously because if they go untreated for a long time, and by untreated I mean, if you do not find people you can put faith in, then it can cause a permanent shift in your attitude. Negativity, pessimism and doom can settle in the mind making you incapable of leading a fulfilling life. You can end up being trapped in your own head condemned to perpetual sorrow.

Life has more to it than just surviving. You make your choices and those choices build your life. When you relate your future to your present choices, you will see why it is important for you to make bold and better choices that give meaning to your existence.

Why is trust so difficult to get right?

The problem starts with not knowing where to draw the line. People strike a conversation to be polite and end up caring too much about folks they hardly know. Over a period of time keeping up with these casual acquaintances starts to feel taxing and all of a sudden, they find themselves expecting too much of the wrong people. Having never known true friendship or care in return they regret the time and energy that was lost.

Mistrust and its perils

Mistrust has a tendency to strike deep roots, making it very tough to acknowledge and next to impossible to deal with. Ignoring it is a perfect recipe for disaster. The pest of mistrust isn’t easy to weed out. Bereavement, failure and even inadequacy for that matter can be battled but losing trust is different. Something very fundamental within you, shifts. The longer you let the pot of mistrust simmer the more toxic the mind becomes.

Nobody is born with trust issues. It is an acquired response to a repeated stimulus of heartbreak. Often broken trust makes people fortify their heart for the fear of being deceived once more. But common sense is both highly underestimated as well as very effective in driving irrational fears away. You need not dig a hole, crawl into it and stay there for the rest of your life.

An unbending notion of ‘be-a-rock-or-you-will-be-crushed’ does more harm than good. Suspicion crawls into the mistrusting heart so often that soon trusting seems catastrophic. But you must learn from past experiences and proceed to the next chapter in life for where love can’t blossom, hatred grows.

It is perfectly fine to want to be happy again, in fact that is the point of this article, but caution is necessary, not because the world is a rotten place but because your haste can be detrimental to your judgement and there are chances that you will end up with a heartbreak again, bitter as ever, never willing to give anybody a chance.

Thank you for patiently reading about my philosophy of trust. Below are the simple yet most undervalued factors in making friends:

1. The Art of Listening – It is most likely that you are in this mess because you missed out on fundamental personality traits of people who hurt you in the past and now you are blaming it all on your poor judgement. Tell you what? That is not true. Had you been aware of the glaring short comings of these people you would have made the right choice. Don’t fret. You can make better decisions this time. Listen to people talk. You are not obligated to strike a deep meaningful conversation on the first day. Do not feel stressed about making a good impression. As long as you keep your calm, the world will never know about your fears and insecurities. In spite of your paralysing fear of being betrayed, try not to speak your mind. Simply gather as much data about people as you can before getting involved. Bear in mind that being a patient listener in a conversation can help you eliminate people who are not aligned with your thought process and will never be. People drop all sorts of clues when they talk. If you are attentive enough you can separate the ‘keeping kind’ from the ‘general crowd’ in your first meeting itself.

2. The Art of Eliminating – Elimination is key to quality. Trustworthy friends don’t grow on a special tree, they are just regular people like you and me. To find them you need to come out of your comfort zone, you need to take a chance. Being patient helps in refining your search. It will take time and effort. The process is tiring and every now and then you will be tempted to go back into the shell and give up, but nothing worth your time comes easy. You must learn to let go. Sometimes folks simply want to vent their frustration and are not looking for anything too serious as a friendship, sometimes differences are too many to come to an agreement over anything, some folks offend you, some challenge you when you are not ready and the list is long. In short there are so many reasons people can feel wrong for you. In that case you must put them in your ‘casual acquaintance list’ and quit being bothered by them or expecting anything from them. The shorter your list of friends is the better off you will be.

3. Conversation – You learnt about the Art of Listening and Eliminating but if you keep doing just that then you will develop a reputation for being a loner. If you are looking for a sensible and long-lasting company then you need to make a conversation. You don’t have to wear your heart on your sleeve and don’t burden your brain to come up with impressive conversations. Just a casual, latest-movie or favorite-food kind of conversation will do. Nothing too personal. This comes naturally to people who are in a better place than those who are heartbroken, but for you these things are going to have to be mechanical. Humans function quite automatically until something goes wrong with the mind. Once trust breaks it becomes extremely overwhelming to be confident about anything. You doubt yourself thousand times, assuming that you have a faulty sense of judgement and so these guidelines help.

4. Know yourself – You know your depression, your trust issues, your past, and them who broke your heart but most of all you need to know who you are as a person. What are your dreams? What are your weaknesses? What are your views? What do you wish your future to be like? What kind of person do you want to be? What would you like to improve upon? Before you begin the journey of finding you a trust worthy person, just be sure to know yourself. Really analyze what you could change about yourself if you were given a chance.

5. Value Time – There is nothing more regretful than wasted time. When you lose precious time and energy for a certain someone who has no care for yours, it stings. Give your time to people very sparingly. Let them earn it. Likewise, you also earn their valuable time and do not force yourself on someone. As a rule, only let down your guard for people who value you, your time and your thoughts. These are the people you can share your opinion with. When there is a mutual understanding and mutual respect between people then that is the foundation of a long-lasting and valuable bond.

6. Take Action – You have come a long way, you have done everything, you have been patient and attentive, scrutinized a lot of people and presuming you have a handful of them who cherish you for who you are and wish to take things further, what do you do? First off, don’t be alarmed and run in the opposite direction. Take action. Go give them a CHANCE!

“It is never too late to start over. If you weren’t happy with yesterday, try something different today. Don’t stay stuck. Do better.”