“Hello and Welcome to Episode 40 of ‘Tuesday Choose Day’, my inspirational weekly post.
My aim here is to inspire you to feel more positive and more confident within yourself so you can find your way to overcome anxiety and create the change you want to happen in your life.” I’m offering you here every Tuesday straight to your inbox empowering strategies to help you to take control, feel better and feel good!
This is a two part mini-series to help you to understand more about trust issues. Trust issues are very common if you suffer with anxiety. I thought it might be helpful to delve into this subject a little with you here.
When we talk about trust, what do we mean?
The definition of trust is the firm belief in the reliability, truth or ability of someone or something. When there is trust in a relationship or a circumstance, we feel safe and secure both emotionally and physically.
When we seek trust, we tend to look outside of ourselves
…and onto someone or something to make us feel safe and secure. That’s what we do as children. Growing up, we can’t take care of ourselves so we must look to the adults in our lives to protect us and keep us safe. It becomes a habit for us to look to other people and we forget to learn to ‘look to ourselves.’
If you have trust issues, it is very possible that you were violated or significantly disrespected as a child. You may have been abused in some way (be it emotionally, physically, sexually or psychologically) by any adult you looked up to – as children, we can’t make sense of this betrayal.
Do You Trust Yourself?
Feeling confused, it is likely that you turned the isolation and guilt in on yourself and deep down you began to question if it wasn’t really yourself that you couldn’t trust? You loved more and tried to be better, endlessly hoping that you would receive love and security somehow in return.
You grew up not trusting your judgement and your intuition, with blurred boundaries. From little babes, we grow through the first eight years of development, believing in an egocentricity. The world revolves around us and therefore, if something isn’t right – it must be our fault.
Do You Trust Your Judgement?
When things go wrong in our adult lives, and relationships become unhealthy, the child in us tries to love more. Logically, it seems madness, but we place even more trust in that person, as we did as children. We are invested in this person and if we pull out, we’ll have to accept that we got it wrong; that in fact, we really can’t trust our judgement, so we keep going, hoping that our investment of trust in them will eventually pay off.
When it falls apart, we secretly blame ourselves for not having realized what was happening or for not acting sooner, which might have saved us the pain or complications we have experienced just now. We tell ourselves we can’t trust people; that we don’t trust people easily.
When you don’t trust fully… you believe it’s inevitable that before long, someone will let you down.
We almost expect to be let down and we fear it because this will inevitably stir questions of self worth. You know that’s gonna hurt, so sometimes the safer option seems to opt to save yourself, and you let down first…You still lose.
The reality often is that the trust issue is not with others, but with ourselves.
Tune in next time for the second part in this Trust vs Anxiety mini-series and find out how to help yourself take a leap of faith.
Until then,
With love and light x
Do you feel powerless, anxious and overwhelmed to make change happen in your life? I’d like to offer you an immediate opportunity to take a break from your stresses and anxieties. CLICK TO DOWNLOAD my FREE De-Stress Audio
From the Wobbles and Worries Mailbox…
If you’d like my advice with your particular wobble or worry, simply click on the link here
You can read through a selection of previously answered questions here too.
Lisa Skeffington, Anxiety Expert – Anxiety Help Bournemouth