3 Tips to Trust Again
Has betrayal bruised your heart? Maybe a fiancé finagled his way out of your wedding day. Or maybe a parent, who was supposed to be there for you, bailed.
If you’ve placed your trust in a sorry soul and lived to tweet it, you know how hard it is to trust again.
Notice that last word. Again. Trusting can be hard to begin with; imagine having to do it after someone has trashed your trust and trampled on your heart.
“Are we talking about rebuilding trust in the person who’s hurt me?” You may be suspicious of this proposition—and for good reasons. “Or trusting people in general?”
Both. If trust is like the lens to your eyes, broken trust acts like cataracts—not just on occasion, or only when you look at grotesque things. No. Cataracts always cloud your vision.
Every.
Single.
Time.
Abandonment, unfaithfulness, deception and its ilk act like cataracts. They distort reality by painting people as sinister—suitable to be viewed with a question mark. What’s their motive? Will they hurt me too? When will the other shoe drop?
It’s understandable if you choose to retreat after getting burned by unkind behavior. After all, gambling your trust with yet another fallible, fickle human being, when your hope can crash—again—seems crazy.
So how should we greet tomorrow? Here are 3 small steps to begin the journey toward trusting again.
- Pause the process. Trusting is to be done with a whole heart—not a wounded one—because trusting while broken runs the risk of believing in the wrong people. It’s okay to gander at the newcomers in your life with a skeptic’s frown as you give yourself time to grieve and acknowledge anger’s right to exist. Let go of the loss of your relationship, dream, or life as you planned it.
- Forgive. Sigh. Repeat. I’m no fan of this F word either. But forgiving the person who broke your trust (for being a sorry excuse for a mammal), as well as yourself (for believing in the jerk), is the gateway to healing. Try it. If it doesn’t work, please comment below—you’d be giving me a reason to quit practicing forgiveness!
- Harvest healing. Don’t dwell on the past too long. Instead, set a target date to shift your attention to healing. History tracks moments when disappointments gave way to a first-class future. Good Friday, for instance, was a colossal catastrophe for Jesus—until Resurrection Sunday rolled around. So pursue things that restore your peace. Patch up the pain.
Don’t let yesterday sully tomorrow.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some cataracts to remove.
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Tags: Trust, Trauma, Forgiveness, Healing
