Trust

Posted on December 30, 2015

Trust. What a powerful word. Something that takes a long time to earn and is easily lost or broken.
The dictionary defines it in this way:
1) assured reliance on the character, ability, strength, or truth of someone or something
2) dependence on something future
3) a charge or duty imposed in faith or confidence or as a condition of some relationship
4) something committed or entrusted to one to be used or cared for in the interest of another

Many studies have shown that the way a person trusts people is directly related to how they grew up. If there was instability or dysfunction in the home, children learn not to trust the people that should have their best interest at heart, their parents. They learn not to trust adults for fear of being hurt, torn down.
In my home, there was no trust. No trust that needs would be met, emotionally and sometimes physically. One winter (and I grew up in Colorado so by November it was already really cold) I had one pair of pants that fit me and the rest were capris or shorts. I mentioned it to my parents who replied with snide remarks about my weight and ignored it. When my second cousins found out about this, they gave me a couple pairs of pants and only then did my parents decide to take action. Only when it looked bad on them because other people had to offer me pants. That was the physical part.
Emotionally, there was no way I could confide in or trust my parents with any struggle I had. When I was diagnosed with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, my parents could care less if I was in pain. They always compared it to my mom, who has a chronic pain disease and said that if she could go to work with her pain, then I was expected to do all my chores with mine. So it was pushed under the rug. Growing up, there were lots of signs that something was off mentally. As an elementary school, I threatened suicide often, even though I didn't have the full understanding of what it meant. In middle school, school counselors were called by other parents concerned about my mental well-being and if my parents found out, it meant a lecture and yet again things were pushed under the rug. When the cops were called out to my house the summer after my freshman year in high school because I was suicidal, my parents took me to mandatory counseling once and used the session to tell the counselor how horrible a child I was. Then never took me back. Instead, they cut off the only support I had at that point, curbed my connection to others by cutting off my computer time and refused to let me speak to the adults who had called the cops, which at the time had been my youth pastor and his wife. They were also the first two adults I trusted with my story.
By the time my sophomore year came around, I began to self-harm and my depression and anxiety began to spiral out of control. I was reaching out to my high school band director, who led me to the school counselor who got me set up with an actual counselor that I was seeing weekly, all without my parents knowledge. When I ended up in a psychiatric hospital for the first time, my parents weren't concerned about what was wrong or what had happened, they were concerned with how I got there and who had brought me there so they would have someone to blame. While in the hospital, I refused visits and the phone calls and visits I did have were usually ended by staff because they were non-therapeutic. After the hospital, every therapy session was scrutinized and it made it very difficult for me to be open and honest with my therapist because I was afraid that my parents would find out what I said and that would make my home life even more difficult.
That being said, I trusted a handful of people in my life growing up and my parents cut off all those trusting relationships when they found out they existed. If it threatened how they looked to the outside world, then it was not allowed.
Because I never learned to really trust anyone growing up, trust is something I have an extremely difficult time with now. There have been many people in the past that I have trusted, only for them to abandon me. Now, I keep myself very guarded with how I'm doing and only offer up the truth to people that are at a distance, usually living at least a couple hours away. Sadly, this also includes the professionals that are designed to be there to help me like my therapist and psychiatrist. I have had therapists and psychiatrists who I sort of trusted but then the services ended for one reason or another. My current therapist I see weekly and have only been seeing her since November and don't really trust her. She is also going on maternity leave at the end of January and I will be forced to see someone else for 6 weeks which doesn't help the trust piece. I haven't met my assigned psychiatrist yet and won't until February.
Trust. I never learned how due to my upbringing and had to figure it out myself which has only ended disastrously. Keeping people an arms length away keeps me safe from being hurt but also leads to a lonely life. It's a constant battle to decide whether to trust someone or not and to determine if it's worth the risk.
Trust now is causing me to struggle to determine how open I'm going to be with my therapist tomorrow. If I'm going to be completely honest about how I'm doing, it could risk me ending up back in a psychiatric hospital, which isn't a good idea logistically right now.
Trust. How I wish it were easy for me. Yet it's so difficult.