Trust Is a Dangerous, Precious Thing
How to Heal and Strengthen Trust in Ourselves, Our Relationships, and Our Communities
Earlier this year, after a serious fallout with my partner of two years, I realized a month later how deeply hurt I still was. “Something broke inside me,” I told him. I felt betrayed, even if I hadn’t been in a literal way. It was the bond of trust that had been torn apart, leaving my heart bitterly clenched.
Trust is a precious and dangerous thing. To receive it, we need to give it first. It grows over time and remains fragile throughout. We need it to exist in relationships with ourselves, others, and the world around us, yet are becoming more and more afraid to take the risk for it, afraid to lose, be disappointed, or wounded.
(A brief side note: If you believe my work with Sharing Our Loneliness is heading in a promising direction, you can find updates at the bottom on how to support it. Thank you for reading!)
As a society, distrust is increasing, not only towards institutions, governments, and businesses but towards each other. The Edelman Trust Barometer shows that only 20% of people would be willing to live near or work with someone who holds a different point of view. This distrust feeds into our shared loneliness, creating a downward spiral where fear of rejection leads to isolation.
The lonelier someone feels, the more likely they are to develop a negativity bias towards others, trusting less out of fear of rejection, judgment, and exclusion. Consequently, they choose not to engage, retreat, and isolate themselves.
Similarly, the less trusting someone is, the more likely they’ll flee to their “island” of safety, with those they know and can rely on. In the worst case, that ends up being them only, and they’ll inevitably be faced with a sense of loneliness.
Research has found that loneliness is associated with a higher probability of sympathizing with conservative beliefs, holding more xenophobic attitudes, and an increased probability of voting for populist parties, which might be directly related to increased levels of distrust and anxiety.
As I have written before, the growing political fragmentation, surge in populism, and far-right extremism, in particular, are both causes and effects of increasing echo chambers, distrust, and loneliness.
Have you noticed how the term red flag 🚩 has become so common? To me, it reflects our collective lack of trust. While the idea of a warning sign isn’t wrong, I wonder if it’s helpful to judge someone’s behavior so quickly within the problematic duality of “healthy versus toxic.”
It smells a bit like cynicism, a general distrust or mistrust of others—a bit like “expect the worst, hope for the best.”
I sometimes catch myself thinking or saying something along these lines, while dramatically rolling my eyes, and I’m not proud of it. In today’s world, it’s not hard to become a cynic, withdraw, or isolate yourself. Ultimately, it’s a response to fear and for the sake of self-protection.
According to Erikson’s Stages of Psychosocial Development, a sense of trust is developed in the first stage, from birth to approximately the first 18 months of age, in which the infant looks toward their primary caregiver for stability and consistency of care. Depending on how reliable, consistent, and nurturing we experience this care, we’ll develop our views towards others and the world.
Since the popular work of individuals like physician and author Gabor Maté, whose book The Myth of Normal I’m finally about to finish, we know that early childhood trauma—whether capital-T or small-t—can have a serious impact on relationships and the lives we live thereafter.
As Dutch psychiatrist and author of the seminal The Body Keeps the Score, Bessel van der Kolk describes:
“The reality is that being traumatized does make you a difficult person to get along with. Because you suddenly get angry, you suddenly shut down or you space out. But more difficult is to live that life: not being able to trust yourself. And there’s always this internal pressure to step up to the plate and keep functioning. So the next piece is a profound feeling of shame about yourself and your reactions.”
I’m not suggesting it’s straightforward to explain the current trend of distrust solely through unprocessed trauma.
Yet, I do believe this angle offers insights into how we might heal wounds from the past, like neglect, betrayal, and abuse, which have shut us off from others and parts of ourselves.
As van der Kolk alludes to, if we’re unable to trust ourselves, how can we truly trust others?
Instead of relying on dystopian tech solutions, we can choose to face the precious, dangerous thing called trust—together.
A few months after the fallout with my partner, I feel that the bond of trust between us is growing stronger again. Things cannot go back to how they were before, as the loss of trust is a “loss of value,” as psychotherapist Esther Perel put it, and yet we can recreate a new sense of that value.
Trust needs to be practiced over and over again, while accepting that it will be broken again. It’s an act of love in itself.
So here’s what I’ve learned on how to (re)build trust in my relationships, and in the work with Sharing Our Loneliness:
Embodiment is essential
Trust your gut feelings, the vibes you get, and the sensations in your body. These are signals you can rely on. Once we trust that we know through feeling and sensing in our body, rather than (over)thinking and judging in our minds, we begin to get unstuck, and open to owning our sense of trust—also in terms of how far we want to go, when a “no” is a no, and when a line is crossed for us. When did you last listen to your body’s signals over your thoughts?
Forgiveness is a practice
When trust is misused, threatened, or broken, many speak of “forgive and forget,” to move on. I’m unsure how helpful that is. In my experience, we often say we’ve forgiven, yet still hold resentment, from the French word ressentir—“to feel again.” To forgive, I learned from playwright, activist, and author V, formerly Eve Ensler, that apologies can only be practiced through the practice of apology. “I’m sorry” won’t cut it. But true self-inquiry, reckoning, compassion, and taking responsibility for actions might be steps towards healing the experiences that have breached trust and trustworthiness.
Shared space is a beginning
When we meet each other through the experience of pain—whether it’s in the form of loneliness or something else—we naturally choose to make a leap of faith. In all gatherings I’ve hosted so far, where “loneliness” was put either front and center or disguised slightly, people met each other on an unspoken common ground. When we face our shared fears, pains, and wounds with one another, we can create a mutual bond of support and safety that will inevitably allow a sense of trust to emerge.
As the organizer and author Prentis Hemphill beautifully puts it:
“I think we need each other. I say this all the time, there are some things that are too big to feel in one body. You need a collective body to move them through. And I think that's what we need. We need to come together in spaces to heal, not just to consume together or to watch a movie together, but to feel together and to have human emotion in real life, in public, and act from the place of a feeling body, to choose action from a feeling body and not just a reactive or a numb body, but a body that feels, a body that can connect. What kind of actions do you take in the world from that kind of body?”
Ps. Thank you for keeping this work alive! 💛
I’ve always loved writing, and as I continue to explore the themes around our personal and collective loneliness, and how we might reconnect through it, I’m committed to keeping this newsletter open and free for everyone.
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With love and care,
Monika
PS. Check out my latest offerings, including a free community event on “What (Dis)connects Us All” in times of social media and AI friends, a 9-week learning journey to build connection skills both online and in-person, and my upcoming speaking engagements at The Conference, UNFINISHED Festival, Society 5.0, and TEDx Potsdam. You can find more details on my website, LinkedIn, or Instagram.