Building Trust~

10 Fundamentals of Trust

1. The glue or cement of relationships that allows you to need others to fulfill yourself.
2. The ability to let others into your life so that you and they can create a relationship built on an understanding of mutual respect, caring, and concern to assist on another in growing and maturing independently.
3. The sense that things are fine; that nothing can disrupt the bond between you and the other.
4. The inner sense of acceptance you have of others with whom you are able to share secrets, knowing they are safe.
5. Assuming that others will not intentionally hurt or abuse you if you should make an error or a mistake.
6. Placing confidence in others so that they will be supportive and reinforcing of you, even if you let down your "strong" mask and show your weaknesses.
7. Sharing your inner feelings and thoughts with others with the belief that they will not spread them indiscriminately.
8. Letting others know your feelings, emotions and reactions, and having the confidence in them to respect you and to not take advantage of you.
9. Opening yourself up to let others in on your background, problems, concerns, and mistakes with the assurance that they will not criticize or judge you because of these things.
10. The act of placing yourself in the vulnerable position of relying on others to treat you in a fair, open, and honest way.

Why is that people have trouble trusting? I read the 10 fundamentals of trust and see that in my marriage I actually have very few of these. I know and feel that my husband has conditional love, he does not have the ability or desire to love unconditionally. He is not accepting of bad choices or mistakes. For reasons I cannot understand he believes that I am not allowed to make mistakes, and if I do.... he is not understanding.

There are many reasons why people have trouble developing trust:

People have trouble developing trust if they have:

• Experienced a great deal of emotional and/or physical abuse and/or neglect.
• Been chronically put down for the way they feel or for what they believe.
• Been emotionally hurt in the past and are not willing to risk getting hurt in the future.
• Had problem relationships in the past where they were belittled, misunderstood, or ignored.
• Experienced the loss of a loved one through death. They can get so caught up in unresolved grief that they are unable to open themselves up to others, fearing they will be left alone again due to death, or, abandonment.
• Experienced a hostile or bitter divorce, separation, or end of a relationship. They may be unable to believe anyone who opens up to them in a new, committed relationship.
• Been raised in or have lived in an environment emotionally and/or physically unpredictable and volatile.
• Experienced a great deal of pain at the hands of another. Even if the other finally recognizes and accepts the responsibility to change such behavior, the person fears that if they let their guard down, the pain and hurt will begin again.
• Low self-esteem and cannot believe that they are deserving of the attention, care, and concern for anyone. They have problems even trusting the positive, healthy, and reinforcing behavior of another who is sincere.
• Experienced a great deal of non-provoked victimization in their lives. They are unwilling to trust people, situations, or intuitions for fear of being victimized again.

We need to develop the behavior traits, attitudes, and beliefs in order to develop trust:

• Taking a risk to be open to others: This enables you to become a "real" person to others. It is an essential behavior in trust-building between two people because it is the establishing of the parameters of strengths and weaknesses on which you have to draw as the relationship develops.
• Becoming vulnerable: This allows you to be hurt by others who know your weaknesses and strengths. This is an essential step in trust-building between people. It lays the cards on the table in a gamble that in such total self-revelation the others will accept you for who you really are rather than for whom they want you to be. In order to get to full self-disclosure you must take the risk to be vulnerable to others. This is an important building block in trust development.
• Letting go of fear: Fear restricts your actions with others. Letting go frees you of behavioral constraints that can immobilize your emotional development. Fear or rejection, fear of failure, fear of caring, fear of success, fear of being hurt, fear of the unknown, and fear of intimacy are blocks to the development of trust relationships and can impede relationship growth if not given appropriate attention and remedial action.
• Self-acceptance: Accepting who you are and what your potential is, is an important step in letting down your guard enough to develop trusting relationship with others. If you are so insecure in your identity that you are unable to accept yourself first, how can you achieve the self-revelation necessary to develop trust? Self-acceptance through an active program of self-affirmation and self-love is a key to the development of trust.
• Self-disclosure of negative self-scripts:Your disclosing of your inability to feel good about yourself and your perceived lack of healthy self-esteem are essential in reducing miscommunication or misunderstanding between you and t he significant others in your life. This self-disclosure reveals to the others your perspective on obstacles you believe you bring to relationships. This sheds the mask of self-defensiveness and allows the other to know you as you know yourself. It is easier to trust that which is real than that which is unreal or hidden.