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.