Moving from Surviving to Thriving-- Beginning to Understand the Meaning of Trust

Survivors as a rule do not trust others, and for good reason.  Many people surviving family dysfunction have learned from their families not to trust . . . including their family members themselves. Some people also get brainwashed not trust themselves in the process because none of your caretakers any sense of confidence in you.
If you are not supposed to trust your family nor trust others, you are in a another paradox besides being stuck behind a wall of emotional isolation. . . . you are in a position of emotional abandonment where there is no one you can rely on to the degree of your need.    Similarly to what I have observed in my previous posts, the Holiday Season can make things feel worse--the rest of the world seems happy during this time of year while you feel terrible because you are alone, you may not feel like you can trust anyone, and your family is no consolation to you.

We need other people

Our families never really meet all our needs.  When your family is especially dysfunctional, they create some needs . . . or leave some needs unfulfilled. 

I think that from culture to culture and society to society, people have needed relationships outside of their biological family to meet the emotional needs family cannot need.  When you especially have a toxic, dysfunctional family, all the more it is likely you need friends . . . perhaps to be the surrogate family that your biological family cannot be.

However, if you cannot trust, you will be unlikely to make the friends that you need to help improve your experience of the holidays.  Trust is a glue in relationships.  If there is no trust then there is no relationship. 

With a friend you trust, you have a good sense of what he or she is like.  You have a good sense of what you can tell them.  You can tell that a friend accepts you for who you are, even when you show your fear and vulnerability, and even some stupidity.

Considering the concept of trust

Trust is many things.  I would like to define it as a act based on belief informed by knowledge.  To get trust, someone has observed you over time and has enough information to satisfy their doubt--you are going to be worthy enough to handle something valuable or accept their vulnerability.   A math-like formula that seems to fit is

TIME + BEHAVIOR= TRUST

When you meet someone, you are going to see how they act first. As crudely depicted by the below grid-like diagram, there are a series of boundaries that people have to cross to get increasing levels of trust.

      NO TRUST--------------------------------------------------------------------------------MOST TRUST      A STRANGER------------------------------------------------------------------------------A BEST FRIEND

The people you have met outside of your family all started out as strangers to you. They have demonstrated how trustworthy or how untrustworthy they are by their words and actions. 

The new people you meet now all start out as strangers. Some of them will demonstrate that they are good and trustworthy, and some will NOT.

Here is an example how this grid idea works.  If someone looks appealing enough to talk to, they have crossed the first boundary.  If they are nice enough in that first conversation of "small-talk" or social nice-ness, they get to graduate to the next level.  If in the third conversation, they seem to be accepting of a little more serious conversation, they move on.  The moment they mock you for a belief or view or a preference, a fear of spiders, or that you are going to see a psychotherapist or psychologist, you have learned that the degree of trust you can give stops right there. 

The following triangle diagram suggests how we order the relationships in our life.

You and I only have so much energy and time to have relationships.  We are not going to be able to be friends with everyone.  The majority of people that we know are not going to get the same amount of trust towards the top.  For example, I am not going to trust everyone I know to watch my children--in fact, I trust very few with my children--I do not have the time and energy to get to know whether everyone is trustworthy.

Furthermore,  not everyone has the same interests and attractions.  If I meet someone who is really big into mountain climbing and I am not, and all they do is climb mountains, we are not going to have much of a relationship.   If you do not have much in common, you may continue to have a distant friendship or occasional conversation, but you are not likely to be close.

I find it liberating that I do not have to try and be friends with everyone.  It is also liberating to see that there are different kinds of friends and I do not have to trust everyone the same. 

Family relationships fit in this triangle too.  The reality is that some people in families will burn bridges between each other, and then rebuild bridges, and the burn bridges again.  Family members can move from one level of trustworthiness to another and then back again. 

Trust is a great experiment

As noted above, good friends make tolerating the holidays more possible than being alone, but if you have been an isolationist, you are going to choose whether you are going to try the experiment of trust.   

Trust is still very much an individual choice. I can tell you how it happens and how it is formed, but I cannot get you over the hump of inact. Either you will do it or you will not do it.

I assume that if you have been surviving for a long time, and not just at Christmas, it has satisficed that you have not trusted.   People who have been surviving are sadly tolerant of the discomfort they feel in isolation.  It is not really contentment, but it is a perceived amount of less pain than if you were getting hurt in the worst way imaginable by other people.    

Beginning to trust is daunting and scary. Many people beginning to trust as adults think in black and white terms that we have to trust everyone all at once. With this mindset, those survivors show that they are ambivalent about changing and trying to trust and be more social.   The good news is that we do not have to (nor should we) trust everyone to the same degree.

If this has hit home for you today, this season of Advent and the holidays is an opportunity for you to trust in many ways.  I would like to think as a human being, your trust means something to you.  Your trust is valuable because it is not coming cheaply, whoever gets your trust will hopefully have earned it. 

As I consider the core of the Advent and Christmas Story, I find that we are called to trust  someone who came to earth in the most humble of ways to live a sinless life, and give up that life for the whole world that whoever believes will not perish but have ever lasting life.   When we believe, it does not matter how much education we have, how much money we make, how many bad things we have done, or even how old we are--the trust of anyone who has the ability to trust is valid and valuable--whether it is in a new friend or a savior.

Backing up a step--considing the meaning of the word survival

Since my blog is about surviving the holiday, I thought I would back up and look at the concept of survival.

Canadian Les Stroud is the “Survivorman,” and a master of wilderness survival. Stroud does a show that I enjoy that comes on “The Science Channel” in the United States and the OLN Channel in Canada.

The usual format of the show is that Stroud goes out alone to some different wilderness area for about one week with his cameras, a few odd items and fewer legitimate survival tools. He must be creative in making a shelter with whatever he can find.  He also must go through humiliating and desperate measures to get food and water which can mean eating weed roots and bugs.

As he talks to the camera, Stroud will lecture about various subjects related to survival including the psychology of survival. A lot of it is keeping a level head and not getting anxious. After one week, Stroud is able to go to a rescue spot or zone where he is picked up and the show ends.   I watch the show and repeatedly think that Les Stroud is a better man than I am when it comes to survival.

A laundary list describing survival behaviors

However, when it comes to the matter of emotional survival, you are not eating roots and bugs like Les Stroud, but you are likely engaging in a number of emotional gymnastics or behavior patterns as identified quite nicely by James Messina Ph.D:

• Those behaviors you needed to exhibit in order to survive in an abusive, neglecting or ignoring environment in your family of origin, marriage, work, or school setting. 
• The walls or barriers which you have built between you and others so that you will never be hurt again like you were in the past. 
• Your pulled-in feelings which you are no longer willing to share with others lest they take advantage of your vulnerability. 
• The closing off of your vulnerable side for fear of being hurt again. 
• The insecurity and lack of trust you exhibit to others who reach out to show interest or concern to you. 
• Your lack of tolerance and apparent lack of empathy for the feelings of people who have their own problems and are in pain. This is especially true if you think their problems compared to your past ones are trivial or less severe. 
• The competitive way in which you deal with people always looking out for “who is the winner or loser” in each human transaction you encounter. 
• The coldness and “detachment” you display as you describe your problems from your past. 
• The often hostile, negativistic, sarcastic, and cynical attitude you hold towards life. 
• The often bitter, acrid, and biting comments you make about aspects of your life. 
• The often uncontrollable anger, rage, and hatred that you exude as you speak of past hurts.
• Your unwillingness to consider that there might be more viable options for you to cope with life than your “tried and proven” self-defensive model. 
• Your defensive and “closed in” attitude when others suggest to you a constructive criticism over something you have said or done. 
• Your inability to warm up to people and your shy and retiring ways whenever you are in a new social situation.
• Your fear of speaking up in a group of people lest they not accept or approve of you.
• Your desire to be invisible so as not to be hurt or abused in any way.
• Your guardedness and watchfulness in your interactions with people lest they get to know too much about you for fear they take advantage of you with that information.

http://jamesjmessina.com/toolsforcontrolissues/tempersurvivalbehaviors.html

I think that we all engage in survival behaviors from time to time.  We are going to be in unpleasant and abusive situations at work, church, in court, school and family situations. 

I see many people in my current situation who are survivors, and many people in my past who evidenced to be survivors.   I will be cautious in my examples.

Going back 26 years ago, I recall the residential director (RD) at the small college I went to for my first two years of undergrad.  The RD was a patronizing stick in the mud when it came to ALL the rules.  He made enemies among the male students, but the adminstration liked him because he was strict.   I remember seeing an interaction between the RD and a guy I knew named Tom.  In this encounter in one of the dorm TV lounges I observed that Tom barely looked at the RD and was guarded and angry.  The RD snapped at Tom.  I look back and saw that Tom was surviving the interaction with the RD and neither Tom nor the RD had the emotional intelligence to understand it but Tom told me later that he merely thought the RD was a jerk.

More recently, on the American version of the TV show, The X Factor the young rapper that goes by the stage name Astro demonstrated survivor behaviors when he was one of the bottom two and had to perform well enough to stay on the show.  Judge Simon Cowell confronted him and told him that he had a bad attitude.   From my perspective, Astro was demonstrating that he was still just a kid with limited poise and surviving the pressure of being under the gun on national TV.

Surviving should be a temporary situation, but there are occasions when it seems to become a enduring way of life.  If someone is going through a messy divorce, they are likely surviving for a longer period of time.  If someone has ex-spouse who is a borderline personality or narcissist (like two of my friends have) the surviving can go on for years whenever it has to do with the kids and child support.   If someone is a caretaker of a loved one with a chronic and terminal illness, survival seems to become the norm.  I do recognize that there are some people who have to survive because of their settings.  

Surviving or Thriving?

I have no doubt that many people are surviving this holiday season because they feel obligated to endure abusive and judgmental family members.  They are surviving the memories of the past abuse and their imagination predicting more of the same.  As a result they are engaged in survival behavior patterns.

However, I have concluded that too many people make surviving a way of life when they do not have to.   The survival situation has long-ended but they continue to go on in survival patterns because it is what they know.   Some people go on surviving because they are not aware they can be different.  Some people have some irrational beliefs about the world.  Too many people continue to act as if they are surviving when there is no danger evident. I have seen people carry on too long with the above italicized list.

I have to ask the question: are you really only surviving the the holiday because you have to, or do you have a bad habit of surviving instead of thriving? 

I plan to visit this later.  Tomorrow happens to be the first Sunday in Advent.