Fear of trust is so common it’s an official phobia:
pistanthrophobia. Not trusting anyone keeps you safe from hurt and betrayal, it also leaves you isolated and suspicious.
How does this happen? And how can you find it again?
Decades ago, researchers working in A.I hypothesized that people have a “script” for certain experiences.
For example, at a restaurant, your script goes something like this: look at the menu, order, eat your food, pay, and leave. There’s a particular order; you know how it’s supposed to go.
Many people, as kids, learn a script about life that goes something like this: I get hurt or upset, someone comforts me, I feel better. But many others didn’t learn that script. They learn: I get hurt or upset, someone blames me or gets mad, I feel worse. Or: I get hurt or upset, no one notices, I am alone. These scripts are a recipe for feeling unable to trust or get close to others. It makes sense—if getting what we need from other humans was the unexpected exception rather than the reliable rule, it would be foolish to trust. We’d be setting ourselves up to get hurt over and over again.
Other times the script we learn in childhood is healthy, but then gets rocked by the earthquake of trauma. For instance, the love of our life cheats, we get swindled by someone we trust, or life turns on a dime. Again, it makes sense: if you were blindsided by betrayal, you’d get a rewrite on your script pretty quickly.
Either way, you’re left with a belief system that puts a wedge between you and the rest of the world. The beliefs may be about yourself, such as, “If I trust someone, they’ll see the real me and reject me.” Or they may be about everyone else: “If I love someone, they’ll leave.” “If I trust someone, they’ll betray me.” You might truly believe, “You can’t trust anyone; you can only rely on yourself.”
I won’t lie: changing these beliefs and rebuilding trust is hard. When you’re first starting to rebuild trust, it may feel like an intellectual exercise. You know in your head that most people can be trusted, but you don’t feel it in your heart. To make the move from head to heart, in many cases, takes a leap of faith.
It’s like that cheesy team-building exercise, the trust fall, where you fall backwards, blindly, and trust your teammates will catch you. You aren’t guaranteed you won’t end up on the floor—it takes a leap of faith to lean back and let yourself go.
How do you set yourself up to take a real-life leap of faith? How can you trust again, deep in your bones? Start by trying these 7 things.
#1: Stay in one place.
Moving around the country or the world is a socially acceptable way to sever ties and never get too close to anyone. But if you’re committed to rebuilding your sense of trust, set down an anchor. This will feel wrong at first. You will feel the need for a geographic do-over, but try to settle in. Once you put down some roots, you can branch out by getting to know—and trust—the people around you.
2: Ground yourself in a routine.
Once you’re in one place, get into a rhythm. The same yoga class, the same people at the dog park, a 12-step home group. Why? It’s not to get you in a rut. It’s a proxy: Inherent in a routine is seeing the same people. Repetition—seeing the same faces again and again—is the next step to building trust.
#3: Give a little, and see what you get.
Once you’re seeing the same faces, next comes testing the waters and seeing what you get. Reveal a little bit about yourself—it doesn’t have to be deep or dark—and see what happens. Usually, you’ll get a tidbit in return.
Or ask for a little and see what you get. Make yourself the teeniest bit vulnerable: ask a neighbor for a favor, a friend for advice, or even a stranger to please help you reach that can of tomatoes on the top shelf at the supermarket.
Having a need and getting it met adds a drop to the bucket of trust. It may not seem like much, but drop by drop, you discover that most people mean well and will help you when you need it. Trauma experts call this “re-engagement with communal life,” but you can call it taking that first leap of faith in trusting again.
#4: Make plans for the future.
Experiencing trauma doesn’t just shake your trust in people, it also shakes your trust in the future. Trauma plays a trick on the brain: it creates hopelessness—a sense that your future will be devoid of meaning or happiness- which in turn feels like there is no future at all.
#5: Trust an animal.
Millions of pet owners know—an animal can provide a safe haven and a secure base from which to engage with the world, which sounds remarkably like... trust.
#6: Stop painting red flags green.
Many people who struggle with trust also claim that their friend-picker or partner-picker is broken—they end up aligning themselves with people who betray their trust, and the cycle continues.
But along the way, we learn to see red flags in potential friends and partners: from small things like self-centeredness or an inability to apologize, to big things like violence or emotional abuse. The trick is to stop rationalizing or allowing the red flags and “painting them green.”
It’s a long journey. What would you tell a friend who was experiencing the same behavior? It’s easier to be objective when it’s not you.
#7: Grow the belief that you deserve to be around trustworthy people. Mistrust often comes as a package deal. In addition to believing bad things about the world: “No one can be trusted,” “The world is a dangerous place,” people who can’t trust often believe bad things about themselves: “I am broken,” “I deserve the bad things that happen to me.”
So in order to grow trust in others, grow the belief that you are worthy of having your trust honored.
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