How to Trust Other People After Hard Times.

Trusting people is a very important and necessary part of our lives as social animals.

Trusting someone allows us to behave with confidence in our decisions concerning the future, which we cannot be sure of.

Our attitude of trusting someone is influenced by our interactions with our parents or caregivers since birth.

Psychologist Erik Erikson’s developmental stage theory and psychiatrist John Bowlby’s attachment theory explain this.

When parents respond to their children’s needs consistently, create a safe environment, and protect their children when they are in danger, children build trust that this world is trustworthy and that they can rely on others.

Conversely, experiences such as unpredictable and different ways of being treated by parents, neglect, and physical or emotional abuse can instill in children the idea that the world is dangerous and that they should not trust anyone.

Of course, people are not perfect, and parents cannot be absolutely certain and consistent in their responses.

The overall balance, Erickson explains, is to have more experiences that are trustworthy than those that are not.

I think it is necessary to question people to some extent in order to survive in this society, and some experiences that undermine trust allows us to learn.

However, if the psychological damage is severe enough, it is difficult to build trust again.

Our attitude toward trusting someone is influenced not only by our childhood experiences, but also by our experiences as teenage students and later in society.

For example, it is very possible to become distrustful of people due to experiences of betrayal by someone you trusted, such as having someone you thought was your best friend speak ill of you behind your back, or having a colleague who started a company with you run away with all of the money.

The stronger the trust you have in the person, the greater the shock, and you no longer know who to trust.

When you lose the confidence to trust someone, you will doubt whatever you do, assume that he/she must betray you anyway, and will not allow yourself to be open to anyone.

Consequently, people around you would leave you.

Furthermore, if you cannot trust anyone, you are always filled with anxiety, wondering if you can really trust what this person is saying, or if something bad will happen, or if you will get hurt again.

And this feeling of insecurity prevents us from doing things as we would like to do them, and it interferes with our daily lives.

Being unable to trust people is painful and lonely.

If left unchanged, it can lead to depression, anxiety disorder, and other mental health issues.

Even though it is not your fault.

If you make up your mind that you will never trust anyone again because of a negative experience, you may be able to protect yourself from lies and betrayal.

But the consequence is likely to be that you always feel hatred towards others and that you make yourself suffer more from insecurity and loneliness.

If people have treated you poorly and made you unable to trust them, it is not easy to feel ready to trust someone again.

But being able to trust someone again means that you can be free of the negative feelings that torment you, and you can appreciate the joy of connecting with others.

And you can regain your confidence, reduce the anxiety of not knowing how things will turn out, and even challenge things you would like to try.

So how can we learn to trust and rely on someone again?

◎ Know the elements of trustworthiness.

It is said that there are several psychological conditions for us to trust someone.

According to the literature review by Wayne K. Hoy and Megan Tschannen-Moran, they are: benevolence, reliability, competence, honesty, and openness.

The state of not being able to trust anyone leaves you in a state of doubt and confusion.

Knowing the elements for believing in someone may help you to organize your mind.

Let’s see in detail.

A “benevolent” person here is someone who respects you and the things you value, and does not take advantage of them for their own benefit.

When you feel that the other person is truly a good person, you feel a sense of security, which leads you to trust him/her.

The second “reliable” person is someone who is accountable and responsive to what you ask for, and whose behavior is consistent, that is, to some extent, predictable.

If you have known someone for many years, haven’t you ever assumed how that person would do or react in certain situations?

However, if a person behaves in a way that is far from what you expected, or if his/her behavior is inconsistent, as if he/she were a different person each time, you would find it difficult to trust him/her because he/she is unpredictable.

If a person is responsive to what you are asking for or offers to help you, you can trust him/her because he/she is concerned for your wellbeing.

Of course, this does not mean that they must give you everything you ask for.

A “competent” person is someone who is able to do what he/she says that he/she is going to do.

In other words, the ability to do what he/she says he/she will do and to keep his/her promises.

Needless to say, it’s hard to trust someone who can’t keep their word.

An “honest” person, as the term implies, is someone who is consistent in what he/she thinks and what he/she says, someone who doesn’t lie.

There is also the element of being sincere and genuinely dealing with the other person.

Finally, an “open” person is someone who communicates by disclosing information about himself/herself to the other person.

To communicate one’s information to the other person means to take a risk.

To do so, however, is to trust that the other person will not misuse the information.

If they are taking a risk and telling you something important, then you would want to believe them.

Unfortunately, people who try to deceive you may also tell you lies.

When this happens, consider other elements mentioned as well.

It is natural to distrust people and no longer want to have anything to do with anyone.

But if this situation continues for a long time, your mind can become tired and you may find yourself in difficulty in various situations.

Thinking about what kind of people you can trust while interacting with others little by little may lead you to trust people again.

◎ Let the other person see your safe part.

Just as you feel at ease when the other person opens up to you, it is important for you to open up to the other person as well, in order to create a good relationship and to communicate well.

If you don’t trust the other person, you may be afraid that if you talk about yourself, someone else may get a wrong impression of you or use the information inappropriately, so you may try to avoid talking about yourself as much as possible.

However, if you are very secretive about who you are, they cannot grasp who you are, and it is difficult for you to develop a deeper relationship with them.

By having someone else listen to you, you can organize your thoughts and the feeling of being heard can relieve tension in your mind.

So, try to talk a little bit about information that will not harm anyone else even if you talk about it.

Then observe the reaction of the person you talked to and how they behaved afterward.

By checking whether the person remembers when you talk to that person again, or whether negative gossip is spreading, your impression of the person can change.

And if they are good, it is a step toward building trust with that person.

Give it a try while protecting yourself.

◎ Change the way you think about yourself.

Some people who have had difficult experiences with family and relationships in the past and have trouble trusting others are those who blame themselves and have an extreme view of themselves.

For example, “I’m the one who can’t do anything, that’s why people betray me,” “It’s my fault that people take advantage of me all the time,” “I deserve to be betrayed and hurt.”

If you live with this kind of thinking, you will never be able to believe in others.

So let’s change that thinking little by little.

We try to find meaning in things.

We try to make sense of things so that we can reduce the number of things we don’t understand and feel better.

So we try to make our unpleasant experiences easier by making up reasons for them.

But I think it is wrong to deny who you are.

Since it is a human relationship, there will be times when your responsibility cannot be completely absent.

But then you have to think about what went wrong in each situation and discuss it with the person and try to find the answer.

Each time there should be a different reason for each situation.

For example, let’s say you were asked to take over a job at work, and you responded vaguely because you were also busy with your own work, and the other person assumed you had taken care of it.

But in the end, the job was left unattended, resulting in that person talking badly behind your back to other colleagues about your irresponsible attitude.

At that point, you may think “I can’t believe that a work colleague would talk about me behind my back as a jerk. But it’s my fault for not always being clear.” Instead of ending the situation like that, you could say, ” It’s my fault that they made the decision on their own because I didn’t say no clearly and I feel responsible for that. But I think he/she should have also listened to my response properly. Let’s apologize for my part in the situation and listen to his/her feelings.”

In this way, you can think about it according to the situation each time.

Don’t just tell yourself that you are the one who deserves to be betrayed or hurt.

It is not easy to trust someone again after a painful experience.

However, if you are always afraid that you will be betrayed, or if you always end up assuming that it is your fault, your mind will not be able to withstand it.

Think and take action at your own pace so that you can trust and rely on someone again.