Trust Issues

I recently had a long talk with an old friend. At one point, I made a joke about my friend’s perpetual single status and his avowed membership in the “Bachelor and Loving It” club. Little did I know, but I had just pushed a button. For my friend had decided, after almost 15 years of actively avoiding dating (with a couple tentative, half-hearted attempts that led to automatic retreat), to try it again. He had started filling out an online dating site’s survey.

He said that he “didn’t need a woman to make him happy or fulfilled” but wanted to give it another try. He admitted that he is often isolationist in relationships (and friendships) because he has “trust issues”.

“Trust issues” is often code for “fear”. Fear of being hurt/ abused and fear of abandonment. Although this kind of fear can be generated by a terribly abusive adult relationship, in fact, it is more commonly generated at younger ages before a person has developed a sufficient ego-strength/ self-identity to say “the problem here isn’t about me”.

Teens who are just trying to figure out who they are and are hyper self-conscious can learn relationship fear through abusive peer and dating situations…. which ultimately tends to delay the development of a strong ego. We see this often in people who don’t seem to blossom until their 20’s, 30’s and sometimes even 40’s. It is also part of why people divorce in their 30’s and 40’s….. they finally realized who they are and the previous relationship no longer fits.

Strong, pervasive, paralyzing “trust issues” usually has earlier roots. At some point as a child, that person learned that people they love and trust leave them (physically and/or emotionally). It could be parental divorce, emotionally unavailable or abusive parents, or some other situation. More importantly, because they were too young to have a self-identity strong enough to see that it was mom who was broken, they had no choice but to decide that they are the insufficient, unlovable one. And therefore will never find someone who will really love and stay with them.

Their logic goes: If they are unlovable – even their mommy didn’t want them – then how can they exist in the world? A child that repeatedly hears: “don’t be so loud”, “don’t be so needy”, “don’t be so dirty” or any other such statement eventually only hears the refrain “don’t be”. The lesson is that they are broken and unlovable and they shouldn’t exist.

And feeling like they shouldn’t exist brings up fear – fear of being discovered in their brokenness and unworthiness. In Chinese medicine, “fear makes the Qi descend”. This can manifest as a fight or flight response. We want to survive so our body’s energy moves to the legs so that we can run or kick as needed. However, in extreme cases our energy descends so quickly and strongly that our “qi” sticks our feet to the floor. We become frozen like the “deer in the headlights”.

When someone is afraid of relationship, they try to avoid situations that might make them vulnerable. When contacted, they will often either flee the situation (flight) or become non-responsive (headlights). In both cases, they end up feeling like failures and are reinforced in their belief that they are unworthy of love. In the rare case that they do find someone who loves them, they are often unable to accept it as real. Because in their hearts, they feel like they are frauds - not capable of being loved and not worthy of existence. They are sure that you may love them now, but one day you’ll discover just how really bad and unworthy they are and leave them like everyone else.

On a more spiritual level, if you believe you are so broken that you can’t trust people to love, care nurture and support you – how can you trust God/ Nature/ the Divine to either? How can you ever feel safe, nurtured and supported in succeeding in life? How can you trust in a Benign Universe? How can you feel like you belong?

This is a deep wound that goes way beyond the psyche. It is a wound to their “essence” – that which creates and feeds all other aspects of their being; their minds, their physical bodies, their emotions, and their spirits. Healing CAN happen but it is usually slow and incremental. The initial obstacle to overcome is their resistance to even looking at the issue (because at a deep level they believe that if you dig deep enough you'll discover their core unworthiness), lack of trust in their healer (and the healer's assertion that their "trust issues" are THEIR issue and not an inherent problem with the world at large), and the reality that they can heal and have whole, healthy and happy relationships. It requires a lifetime dedication on their part to healing this wound and someone who can see the various levels of their being, understand their patterns, and give them personalized guidance, counseling and treatment every step of the journey.