Trusting someone is one of the most difficult things to do. At least in my experience it is. Especially when you’ve been burned over and over, after believing the best in people; constantly being let down. It really makes you jaded and have a tough time opening up again and trusting. I’ve struggled with this most of my adult life.

Being completely honest seems to be also tough for a lot of people to do. Why does our brains immediately jump to a lie when given the opportunity to tell the truth? I think it stems from childhood. Every younger child generally lies because they are afraid of getting in trouble, so they think that lying will save them from it. Having 2 kids myself, I always tell them that I know when they are lying and will be in more trouble, rather than if they just told the truth. Yet they still do it. I think some people never develop the skills to move past this behavior, and lying as adults is generally motivated by fear of some kind. It’s really quite eye opening how much fear can control our lives!

If we are constantly afraid, we will never be able to trust. They are opposite thought processes in our brains. In fact, one of the definitions of fear is not being able to trust, or being able to let go.

I will be the first to admit this has been one of my biggest struggles, and it has affected relationships I’ve been in, and been caused by bad relationships. Like I’ve said in an earlier post, I’ve always wanted to trust and give people the benefit of the doubt until they give me a reason not to, but the argument to that is this: How do you know when someone is lying to you when they lie to you from day one?

That’s been my struggle. I in turn, find myself more distrusting than ever, and projecting that on the people closest to me. It’s not fair to the people that don’t deserve to be constantly scrutinized. My biggest fear is that I will ruin a great relationship because of how terrified I am of being blindsided and hurt again. My fear causes me to pick everything apart and over analyze things to death, to create some kind of safety net for myself, so I’ve already thought of and prepared for the worst, should it happen. That kind of thinking not only is incredibly stressful, it also creates emptiness, loneliness, and a huge distance between you and your partner.

So how do we trust then? It’s a learnt process, I can tell you that. It doesn’t happen overnight, but it requires action on our part. You have to at some point choose to let go of the fear. You have to choose to trust. Even if you get burned and the worst happens. Until you make that decision to trust 100%, regardless of the outcome, you are hurting yourself and holding yourself back from experiencing happiness. It’s important for our own growth and emotional and mental health, to push ourselves to keep looking for the best in people and believing in people.

I can promise you that people will let you down, though. You have to stop expecting perfection. Another thing I struggle with is perfectionism. I will get into that in another post. No one is perfect, therefore people are going to let you down. You’ll never be perfect, so you are also going to let people down.

The conclusion here is that we are all imperfect people. If the people in your life are worth keeping around then keep forgiving, and keep loving. This doesn’t mean you allow yourself to be walked all over, but when you’re open, love with your whole heart and don’t hold back, you are able to trust. Little by little it will grow and get easier to do over time. Trusting sets us free.

Just remember, when it comes to unhealthy situations, choose wisely whether or not they are ones that you should continue to be in. If they stay unhealthy and never change, it only hurts you and affects your own health to stay in those situations. As long as there is a willingness to change and move forward with things being worked on, then those are the situations where it’s worth sticking around to see them through. Sometimes the things that we are the most afraid of turn out to be the most rewarding. Only you can decide what’s worth seeing through.

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