Trusting gracefully

If this is your first visit to my blog, please read the intro.

Hello Frank.

Hi! How did you know I was ready?

You made your presence felt. And besides – we had an appointment so I had been expecting you, trusting that you would make your appearance no matter how strange that may be.

How trustworthy are you, Francois?

Phew! Talk of a bucket of freezing water in the face as you walk through the door… Getting defensive won’t do, will it? So OK, if I am honest with myself I would say that I wonder about that myself. I mean, if I put myself in someone else’s shoes there are certainly things that will make me go: “Errrr… and I have to trust this guy with my stuff!?” I will not deny that I have done some pretty weird and dubious things in my past. I am OK with that and with them being in the past. I experience this catch 22 situation about them – if I make them public knowledge I give reasons for mistrust, and if I keep quiet about them and they are discovered at a later stage the trust is broken in any case. I guess I just have to trust people to respect the fact that I don’t like talking about them because I have dealt with them and closed those chapters – I am not ashamed of anything and I won’t go there again. And if I do talk about it when asked I guess I have to trust people to trust me as I am now. Does that make sense?

How important is trust to you?

It is crucial! If I feel that I am not trusted then there is no relationship of whatever kind. And if I don’t trust someone there is no relationship either. I also find that I can’t trust someone in one situation but not in others – it is an all or nothing thing. One of the worst things for me is if I break trust inadvertently – you know, due to a lack of communication or not being competent yet. It is pretty embarrassing. I believe I am more or less confident with and conversant in building all kinds of relationships and if I slip on trust I really feel like asking earth to open wide and swallow. Trust is broken more easily than it is built. So one misplaced or omitted word that breaks the trust that I worked hard at building makes me feel like a bungling idiot. I can recover though. It takes time but if the relationship is important I forgive myself for the flop – otherwise my lack of confidence will inspire no confidence or trust.

Allow me to quote for you: “Trust is established when words and deeds are congruent. Trust also develops when people feel safe and secure. When thoughts and ideas are shot down and ridiculed it does not take long to realise that the climate is neither safe nor conducive to making yourself vulnerable. A defensive climate can be diminished by providing descriptive rather that evaluative feedback, expressing feelings of caring and involvement, and being willing to actively seek out, listen to, understand and utilise other people’s perspective.” William M. Boast wrote that in the book Masters of Change.

Wow, that is amazing. True, Frank, very true. I latch onto especially the last parts – the willingness to see, respect and accept the other’s perspective. You know, attacking someone else’s perspective and then complaining about not feeling safe is not especially a trust-engendering strategy.

Sounds like you talk from experience… is this self-reflective or have you experience it at someone else’s hand?

Perhaps a bit of both… perhaps more having been on the receiving end and having used the same strategy as a model later on. Your quote put things in clear perspective for me, thanks.

Now is a good time to give you some pointers on trust – you know: ‘Advanced Trusting’.

•  Trust must be effortless. The moment it is effort, it is not trust. It would be best to then call attention to it. “I have some trouble with trust at the moment because…” The response that you are looking for is neither defensiveness nor indifference nor treacly re-commitment. You are looking for a sober reply that does not deny, down-play or cover up the points you raised. If that is not there the commitment is not real and you can end the relationship based on trust having been broken.
• When someone is looking for reasons or warning signs why they should not be trusting you, don’t even bother. Move on.
• If someone constantly tells you stories about how they were in situations where they could have violated trust and didn’t, the intention may be sincere, but this is not effortless trust.

You know Frank, long before I had it ingrained even deeper in me by training, respect for the other person’s reality, their frame of reference, their perceptions and values and even their issues, was part of who I am. Every human being has only that, and who am I to evaluate, question, measure, dissect, throw away their stuff, let alone make fun of it? I have come to expect and trust other people who intimately and professionally work with people to share this kind of respect, but I just realised something: perhaps this kind of self-trust/self confidence comes only when we stop looking at others for our healing.

True. Let me tell you how I feel about positive affirmations: they are only good for people that already feel good about themselves (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8132857.stm). Ironically. So I want to leave you with a thought – what do you get when you combine: “Healer, heal thyself” and what we talked about on trust?

Well, let me reflect on that.

I am dead tired after this conversation, but Frank…

Yes?

Thank you.

For what?

For listening.

Trust

If this is your first visit to my blog, please read the intro.

After having done Morning Pages for a while, Frank came to me.  I felt him as a gentle presence, his voice very familiar.  Frank is an Idea, and like all ideas (as such) he is real.  He does not pretend to be divine inspiration.

 Frank's mission in existence is to become more than a figment of my imagination, to contribute to man's understanding of self.  So, he told me: "Expand understanding.  Write down and communicate everything I tell you."

At first I was startled. There was something like a voice in my head, but it was not easy to make out words. I considered listening more closely or perhaps to just ignore the nudging feeling towards the side of my mind. Curiosity. With me it is always curiosity that prompts me to open up to new experiences and ideas. When my curiosity then moves on to something new, the usefulness of the idea will ensure its survival... So I thought, let me turn on my ears inside and listen to this half-voice that is more a feeling than a sound.

Frank: At last! What took you so long?

Me: I don't know. How long have you been trying?

That was a rhetorical question. You and I have to talk, that’s what is important right now.

About what? Who are you? 

My name is Frank, and… we are going to have many conversations on many subjects.

...Conversations with Frank. What happened to God?

Oh, that is a subject of many of our conversations, but not tonight.

OK, Frank, about what do you need to have a conversation with me… tonight? 

Trust.

You’re not giving me much chance to get used to the idea of chatting to some invisible and strange… what… person, thing?

I am no stranger to you, Francois. I am as much part of you as your heart or your bone marrow. 

We’ll see. 

No we won’t. You’ll just have to trust me that it is so. Which is why I first of all want to talk with you about trust first of all. You don’t trust anyone easily, do you? Do you trust yourself?

I think I do. I mean I have no intentions of cheating or harming my self! I am pretty sure that I am honest with myself, that I have integrity, that my mind and body works more or less predictably and benignly… congruently. I can trust myself around other people – trust myself to think clearly, act responsibly, to have intentions in line with my values and what I think is good for all present. I am sure that I am authentic, not deluding myself in any way. But you are right, I don’t trust others easily. I’ve just been disappointed too often, and I’ve also been scared by what other people can think and do.

Guilty until proven innocent…

No, it depends on how close the people are to me. Someone I have no emotional attachment to is neither guilty nor innocent – they just are. So I can’t say I trust or mistrust them. The people close to me are people that I trust. Trust is earned and it is mutual.

Good! But there are people you don’t trust… 

Sure. I don’t trust anyone who says: “Trust me.” If I suspect someone of manipulating me (or anyone else, or a situation) I lose trust immediately. If someone is doing conscious and artificial things to gain my trust, I start wondering. 

You know how these things work: “The untrustworthy is ever mistrusting.” 

Frank, you are now scratching something that is not itching. I am not coming from a place of distrust. My distrust is also earned. I know that the best way to make someone trustworthy is to trust them, and the best way to make someone untrustworthy is to distrust them and to show it.

What lets you know you trust someone? 

That is a good question – better than what I think trust is… All the books I’ve read say wonderful things of what trust is but I’m more concerned about what it does. For me trust is when I firmly believe (closer to ‘know’) that the other do not intend to hurt or harm me, and if they can help it would not do so; that the other would not abandon me (if it is someone whose presence I value in my life); would not ridicule me or laugh at me especially if what I did or think is off the mark; that the other would not cheat me, stab me in the back or bad-mouth me; would not use devious ways to manipulate me to do anything I normally won’t or which is to my or any other person’s detriment. I can only believe these things of the other if they don’t do them to me or others. What lets me know I trust someone is that that person had proven to me that they can be strong where or while I am vulnerable. 

It sounds like you believe the opposite of trust is fear.

Perhaps mistrust is a kind of fear, but the absence of the fear does not imply trust. As I said before – there is a neutral position. The stronger the fear (be it fear of being harmed, discredited, abandoned, ridiculed…) the weaker the trust. Generally I don’t fear these things from people that do not know me – their intentions, thoughts and words have no context and therefore no meaning, really. And I believe most people are not out to cause other people physical harm. So rather say I am careful, not fearful.

OK, I think for now you’ve learnt enough about trust. We can continue again after you’ve reflected about what you learnt.

Hey! Who did most of the talking?

Exactly. The teacher asks the questions, the student answers. One who talks is no teacher to one who sits and listens. M: So now you are my teacher?

That I am too. This was an easy conversation but it left you exausted and with nothing much more to say. You will learn to have better conversations as we progress. For a first conversation this was enough. Rest well.easy conversation but it left you exausted and with nothing much more to say. You will learn to have better conversations as we progress. For a first conversation this was enough. Rest well.