Tackling Trust Issues
Let me ask you a question, have you ever cheated, or been cheated on?
I think most of us have encountered at least one, if not both sides of the infidelity experience. I know I have - and it’s the sort of thing you can’t fully imagine until it’s happened to you right?
Even if you’ve been both the perpetrator and the victim, it can still be very challenging to keep things in perspective.
When someone you really trusted in the past violates that trust, it can be very painful and difficult to get over. And if it happens repeatedly, it can severely distort the way you see the world.
As Einstein said the most important question we can ask ourselves in life is: “Is this a friendly universe?”
What he basically meant was, “are you optimistic about life?”
The reason it’s such an important question is because we will react to life the way we believe it to be.
Very often people who have been scarred by trust violations come to all new relationships from a place of doubt.
Add to that some good old confirmation bias, and they start to develop negative generalizations, believing things like “all women will gossip behind your back, and all men will eventually cheat’.
This causes them to tar everyone with the same brush, even those who are trustworthy.
Obviously then it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Holding on to negative beliefs like this causes us to contract, and on an energetic level we resonate at a much lower frequency. Not only does this harm our health, but I believe it attracts other low frequency people and experiences into our lives.
Which again is what Einstein was getting at with his question.
So if you have trust issues what can you do to start the process of healing?
Firstly, you can understand your programming around trust.
You can begin to do this by downloading a free copy of 'Your Relationship Blueprint'. It’ll help you understand how your beliefs and experiences subconsciously imprint on you, and have a detrimental effect on how you relate to others.
“How you were raised, what your family and culture taught you about fidelity, and your experiences of it so far, all go towards creating your current reality.”
I’ll never forget my client ‘Peter’, who was cheating on his wife. He came in to see me because he was exhausted, racked with guilt and knew he was risking losing his beautiful family, whom he loved very much. And it was all for a couple of women who didn’t even mean that much to him.
After some digging he realised that he was so resentful towards his wife who, for the first 5 years of their marriage had constantly doubted and falsely accused him of being interested in other women.
He’d always thought of himself as a man of integrity, but since she’d been busy with their two young kids and didn’t seem as interested in him anymore. He said he pretty much felt entitled to cheat.
And when I ask him why he had two women on the go, he said he’d rather be hung for a sheep than a lamb.
And this isn’t an isolated case either. After nearly 25 years of specializing in affairs, it’s rare to come across a couple in which one of them hadn’t been cheated on before, or had a family history of infidelity.
“If we don’t repair the past we’ll repeat it.”
Do you tend to attract partners who cheat on you, or friends who often betray you?
Don’t for a minute think I’m suggesting that it’s somehow your fault or you deserve this, no one does, it’s horrible, but I am inviting you to gently ask yourself some questions.
Often there’s a family culture around trust. It could be that your parents were people who could be counted on to keep their word, or maybe they had the intention and spoke of it but there was no real follow through, or it could be that trust and honesty weren’t really values that your family subscribed to?
What does your programming around trust look like?
Has it contributed in any way to you being let down, either in the past or in a current relationship?
Could it do with being re-examined?
The next step you can take on your road to healing is to get really good at putting down loving boundaries.
This’ll help you to start to develop some safety in your life but making your boundaries loving is the key.
And the thing to remember about that is that they’re loving towards both you, and the other person.
Imagine how different Peter’s marriage would have been if his wife had recognized how scarred she had been by her past. Instead of projecting that onto Peter, she could have put down loving boundaries right from the beginning. Had she done that she would have left him pretty quickly if he’d turned out to be untrustworthy – it doesn’t just have to be an affair right?
“People can’t hide their lack of integrity for long.”
Putting down loving boundaries and being clear about your values and preferences is how you can decide whether someone is trustworthy or not.
Can you count on them to keep their word?
Do they respect your right to say no?
Is there a desire to help you get your needs met as often as possible?
These are ways to know that someone is worth trusting.
Also committing to stop all codependant, over-functioning, or over-pleasing behaviour, where you prioritize being of service to others all the time, is the best way to stop violating trust in yourself.
Only when you are able to fully love and respect yourself will others be able to treat you that way too.
Positively asserting yourself by being very clear about your desires and your limits are skills that can be learnt and they’re skills which I teach on my new course 'Love Him or Leave Him' a woman's guide to gratefully loving or graciously leaving her man'.
The final step to healing is really committing to self-awareness and self-mastery as it’s the key to attracting better treatment from others.
Being aware of your negative expectations and how they become a self-fulfilling prophecy is what its all about:
Are you obsessing or ruminating about times in the past when your trust was violated and how it shouldn’t have ever happened? Or how you should’ve handled it differently?
Are you re-living the pain and keeping the trauma alive by talking to others about it?
How is this impacting your ability to be present?
You can only be in one place at a time right?
“Life is so precious, living fully and gloriously in the present is the best way to heal the past, and to create a beautiful foundation for the future.”
Think of how much sweeter our relationships would be if we were all fully present with each other. To just be here now with them, not in their past, where they were hobbled by someone’s expectations that they would fail, or in our past, where someone failed us.
Just to be fully present with them and show them, maybe for the first time in their lives, that someone really has faith in them.
Faith that they’ll be able to live up to your hopes and fulfill your desires, because your requests are clear yet respectful, and your limits are firm yet loving.
What a wonderful gift to give someone.
In my practice I’ve met a thousand people like Peter. People who aspire to act with integrity, but just need someone else to have the faith in them. Someone who’s skilled enough, to gently challenge them with loving boundaries when they’re not acting authentically. To open-heartedly show them when their behaviour isn’t congruent with their desire to act with integrity.
None of us are perfect - we all need someone to help us grow don’t we?
To help us fulfill our honourable intentions, to remind us when we’re not acting mindfully, without shaming or humiliating us, so that we can repair or recalibrate, and continue to grow and self-actualize.
Anyway I hope I’ve given you something to think about today, and if you found it helpful please do share it on your social media.
Together we can help each other heal. You know that’s what I’m all about and I know you are too if you’re still reading this, so please do a Sister a favour, and forward this on.
Until next time, be good to yourself, and remember to keep it real.
With light and love
Nikki
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