Trusting other human beings

[ILoveLife]

How to do this? Not trust in the sense of "I'll tell you my entire life story" but trust in the sense of "Ok, I'll approach you and say hello".

Someone should have those amazing insights here, I'm sure. :)

I have a much easier time talking to women or the elderly than to everyone else. Should I just do it and see there's no harm in doing it?
Like, I started to not feel safe, and that kinda plagued me today to realize it was a confabulation, but I was positive about it yesterday - so brain not working properly.

Thank you.

 

[grit]

Hey @Seitz

will just throw ideas out there - random free conscious streaming.

To me and what I am learning in therapy about me, I do not have trust issues but I have safety issues (which to my brain sound like splitting hair and just all about how I framed it in my head in order to go from A to B in life). So please take this with grain of salt.

Start with being open to service people. Just deeply (as deeply as humanly possible and is genuine) with the cashier at your local grocery store. These people are ignored like they are machines. Say hi and look at them in the eye. They are safe and they are human and you are human and just connecting that moment in life strengthened the muscle of getting out of the body/mind and getting out there. Do it with whoever you feel the safest or the closest. Even saying By “their name” is connection of acknowledging another human that society (sometimes not all the time) deems is not worth knowing.

Eventually, I learned by dealing with those that do not make you feel threatened or unsafe, YOU RELAX and you show up for more. Eventually you may start to have some humor with them. They get to know you and it is like you are in the community where you live. I am not saying hang out and go for dinner…just start with connecting to humanity at large.

If you ever give money to homeless, look at them in the eye…it is one of the frightening things I have ever done. It is deeply sad and deeply touching but trusting in others is scary cause you will have to face some feelings inside?

At least for me eye contact with others is trusting them to see me as I see them but there are many other ways one connects. Go what is natural to you. I find eye contact is safer than touching for example but to each his own.

Also framing is important for me. Do I need to trust others or trust myself to allow others to trust me? It is huge difference? And one without anchor is hard to steer.

Hope you find this helpful. Leave the residue to my bucket.

 

[ILoveLife]

Hi grit.

I do all those things. I meant creating connections other than passer by people or neighbors.
I'm a fairly extroverted person that doesn't trust anyone, that's the issue.

 

[grit]

I do not know if I can offer any help on that except ask you:
what is stopping you in trusting others since you already know how to connect with others? What is your internal dialogue that convinces you to step back or put up a happy/extroverted or mask?
do you trust yourself? why not?

I thought you were struggling with initial opening up with people but if that is not the problem, then to me at least, it seems, it is not you do not trust others but you do not trust you. and that can be more complicated and complex.

Hope more helpful comments come today.

 

[Sideways]

I meant creating connections other than passer by people or neighbors.

To me, trust is one of those things that may or may not come, waaaaay down the line.

I work on building connections. That in itself is a big deal for me. Investing in regularly contacting a few people that are relatively easy to get along with.

If I end up trusting them, it will come after we have a established a consistent relationship over time, rather than trust coming first, and quality relationship coming after trust. I don’t need to trust someone to interact with them, but I do need to have interacted with them a lot before I will trust them.

 

[grit]

this sounds like you do not want to say something or either cannt or do not know or cannot feel it!

Trust is one of the first area to develop as a human. Without trust it is absolutely almost zero to make a connections and have a coffee with anyone outside of your home. So you do trust people but you are not intimate with people!

It is like safety in therapy. You cannt have any therapy work without establishing safety or you are working on something parallel that can crumple at any time the safety is challenged or lost etc.

I am challenging you to go a bit deeper and make more sense what is the barrier. Only you know and can find it.

to me from my seat here it seems, you connect well and you trust people but maybe (just maybe) you are not vulnerable enough. You know people and they know you but you do not go deeper or more importantly you do not show depth. so everybody stays up here with you just as deep as you are willing and you are recognizing that there is a hold.

that hold could be hurt or fear or both or something else most likely for most people - shame (the heaviest emotion in my book). I do not know. I think even articulating this and being curious shows me you trust people and to some extent yourself but you are hitting a wall of vulnerability.

For me when I was maybe your age, I found that I wanted to get hurt to feel it. And I push to take a risk of caring deeper than I was doing before. got few false starts but ultimately it paid off.

What is that expression: not pain no gain. You cannot get the vulnerable without really giving up yourself first. Not easy but doable.

 

[grit]

this sounds like you do not want to say something or either cannt or do not know or cannot feel it!

Trust is one of the first area to develop as a human. Without trust it is absolutely almost zero to make a connections and have a coffee with anyone outside of your home. So you do trust people but you are not intimate with people!

It is like safety in therapy. You cannt have any therapy work without establishing safety or you are working on something parallel that can crumple at any time the safety is challenged or lost etc.

I am challenging you to go a bit deeper and make more sense what is the barrier. Only you know and can find it.

to me from my seat here it seems, you connect well and you trust people but maybe (just maybe) you are not vulnerable enough. You know people and they know you but you do not go deeper or more importantly you do not show depth. so everybody stays up here with you just as deep as you are willing and you are recognizing that there is a hold.

that hold could be hurt or fear or both or something else most likely for most people - shame (the heaviest emotion in my book). I do not know. I think even articulating this and being curious shows me you trust people and to some extent yourself but you are hitting a wall of vulnerability.

For me when I was maybe your age, I found that I wanted to get hurt to feel it. And I push to take a risk of caring deeper than I was doing before. got few false starts but ultimately it paid off.

What is that expression: not pain no gain. You cannot get the vulnerable without really giving up yourself first. Not easy but doable.

I realized now that I was responding to Sideways thinking that was you Sietz!

Never mind this post...it may be useless.

 

[Friday]

I don’t need to trust someone to interact with them, but I do need to have interacted with them a lot before I will trust them.

Very much the same, here.

@Sietz ... if I needed to trust someone to interact with them? I would never interact with anyone.

I DO however, need to trust myself. I didn’t used to, I used to be just fine in all resulting casualties, but my standards have raised over the years. If I cannot trust myself to handle the situation in front of me? I don’t engage. It’s one of the pillars of my normal-life-morality. (Yes. I have different moral codes that I operate out of by necessity. Which is another thing that stays my hand... or mouth... if I cannot differentiate which moral code needs to be applied? I don’t trust myself even at that level, when I’m not doing well and mixin up worlds.)

 

[TTC18]

I'm ok-ish with women and more OK with elderly people. And kids - no worries with kids. But most adults, I can also talk to them, but it's on a very shallow level.

 

[pink318]

How to do this? Not trust in the sense of "I'll tell you my entire life story" but trust in the sense of "Ok, I'll approach you and say hello".

Someone should have those amazing insights here, I'm sure. :)

I have a much easier time talking to women or the elderly than to everyone else. Should I just do it and see there's no harm in doing it?
Like, I started to not feel safe, and that kinda plagued me today to realize it was a confabulation, but I was positive about it yesterday - so brain not working properly.

Thank you.

Hi- We all have reasons why it’s hard to trust. In my life, I felt betrayed, hurt and it caused me not to trust again but I realized that trust is the foundation of every relationship. As I build relationship with others, I also learned to trust them.

I hope you will get good responses here in the forum and will help you to trust others again. Thank you for sharing, please update us. God bless.

 

[ILoveLife]

Thank you everyone.

 

[Abstract]

Did you mean introverted siertz or extroverted?

Disclaimer is that I have major trust issues. There are a few things I came to when looking at this issue.
One is that it is a bad idea to just go right in there without any consideration. What I rather do is still check in for objective wisdom (as much as I can manage) on how trustworthy someone is. And then take small conscious actions and see how they play out.
I also try not to fall into black and white thinking and dismiss someone entirely for small unimportant things as everyone is human. Anthony said a few things that helped me with this.
And then we do get to trusting myself. Mostly to be able to gauge the situation accurately and take the best actions in response. Don't at all trust myself unfortunately so if did what friday mentions I would be entirely isolated.
I also do small actions that still allow myself to feel some distance and protection before doing anything more, I actively think of the persons character and who they really are. Motivations are important to me. Different things drive different people.
Obviously grounding and trying to keep the past out of the situation can only be a good thing. And terribly hard of course. Darn. I'm afraid I often just want my desert island and my coconuts.

Good job trying to work on this.