So, we have trouble trusting? We don’t know how to trust self or others? Sounds like shame is running the show.
A very wise young man who is on a healing path out of shame said, “ the “T” word”. I didn’t know what he was referencing. We had been talking about trust. He was seeing how shame had impacted him and had interfered deeply with his ability to Trust. At this point in his healing he wasn’t even saying, “trust”. He was saying, “the T word.”
The statement captured how difficult it is to begin to trust when we have shame at our core. Most of us with shame have been betrayed by someone we had every right to believe we could trust. We turn that on self and feel like there must be something wrong with self, or the person would not have betrayed us. So our shame gets locked around a “betrayal bind.”
Repairing that betrayal bind requires learning to trust again. It can be terrifying. We take baby steps and we learn to build trust with trustworthy people. We learn how to take care of self so we are not so vulnerable to other people and their bad actions. We learn we are loveable and worthy. We start to trust our self and then learn to trust others. It is a process that helps move us out of the isolation and self- loathing. It is worth taking the risks, baby step by baby step.
Reminder: We move from the “T” word to Trust in self and then others. We learn to live in the world of people and relationships.