Learning to Trust Again

Finding it hard to trust after leaving a controlling relationship? 

Anyone who has endured years of living with a controlling partner, often experience trust issues moving forward.  It does not only apply to a new partner, but friends and work colleagues as well.  You look at them and think, are they friend or foe? 

By understanding the following, we will be able to move forward quicker and live a more fulfilling and satisfying life. 

1. How long should it take to trust someone?  

   Good question, isn’t it?  Now think about it? How long did it take to trust your best friend?  How about your partner or a close work colleague?  When we think about this, we will always come to realise that it actually takes time to trust someone.  It doesn’t happen overnight, but it will happen.
    

2. Trust is something people earn by their actions, not their words. 

   The wonderful thing about trust taking time to gain, means that we have the opportunity to observe and take note of people’s actions.  Someone might say to you “Oh you can trust me with anything” but in the next breath they are telling you the latest office gossip or squealing on a friend’s private one-to-one that this person promised to keep tight lipped about.

3. We ignore our own awareness.

   You know that gut feel, you know the one that you sometimes think later to yourself ‘bugger, I knew I was right’, but went ahead and ignored it anyway.  How many times have you done that in the past?  See we are born with many precious gifts in life. One of these gifts is our inner compass, our inner knowing.  Don’t ignore it.  When we do, it will always be at our peril.

4. Living in the past

   When we live in the past, we become bogged, we keep spinning our wheels and cross our fingers and hope like crazy that feeling of sinking is actually us moving forward.  Time to stop kidding ourselves; we are sinking and if we don’t change what we are doing and look at reality, we are going to sink even further into the murky, thick shit we are stuck in.
   

5. You are putting an invisible shield up.  

   You think you are hiding this ‘trust thing’ extremely well, but boy others may not be able to put their finger on it, but geez they can sense it.  You are like a lighthouse sending out a cosmic ray of light, but instead of a ray of light, it is a tsunami vibe screaming to oncoming potential partners or friends, ‘warning, warning, I have trust issues’.  They then think ‘Abort, abort she can’t take it anymore, she’s going to explode.  Hey sister, anyone is going to run from that beacon.  Put your invisible shield down and move forward with the confidence and strength you know you have within you.
   

   We are human, we are going to make mistakes, people are going to take advantage of us, but we learn from it, we take another step forward.  Even if it is one step forward, we are moving forward. 

   It is far better to put yourself out there, take chances and participate in life than sit back in the safety of our four walls at home and live a life of loneliness and spectating our years away until our bodies fold under the boring sameness of everyday and our partner, family or friends are left organising our funeral.  Oh, that’s right, no one will be at our funeral.  Why?  Because we didn’t trust anyone therefore we became a hermit, paralysed by fear and lived in the past. 

   Your life is worth living and participating in – LIVE IT.