Accepting Trust


     I have always been a person who has kept my distance from people. I always wanted to have friends and yet, I was unable to attain them- or at least that’s how I felt.  I did not think I was deserving of friendships, because I always felt like they would leave me anyways or they were just tolerating me. This mentality has haunted me throughout my life and continues to impact me.  How do we mend what has been shattered?  I have always agreed that trust is earned, it is not given.  
     From a young age, I have always had a distrust of people.  After spending time in solitude and wanting to understand myself better, I have come to the realization that it is because I was adopted and did not understand why.  I lived my life feeling that everyone was deceiving me.  I would form these friendships and I did not have the ability to know how to be a good friend, which often resulted in me losing the friendship.  The worst part is for many years, I did not understand why others did not want to be my friend-this was often done unconsciously.  The ability to trust had been severed for me many years ago.  My abandonment issues did not help my process to try to regain it.  
     The desire for acceptance is wanted by everyone.  How do we attain acceptance from other people?  I think a more appropriate question is why do we want to be accepted?  For me, trust issues always stopped me from accepting others and being accepted by others.  It wasn’t until I decided to accept myself that I genuinely began to heal.  In retrospect, I understand that I was content with not being accepted.  However, now my desire to be accepted overpowers my distrust of others.  This is when I realized that it is about how I determine who I want to give my energy to and establish trust with.  It takes time, trust is not something that is instantaneous. Instead, it is something that is distributed in increments. It takes time to trust another person, meanwhile back then I was about instant gratification.  I trusted immediately just to self sabotage the friendship and was left wondering what happened.  Now that I am wiser, I take my time with people and build trust by first accepting others.  This is only possible because my mentality towards myself is more positive— I accept myself therefore I can accept others and begin to trust them slowly. 

Do you need to trust yourself before you can trust others or can you trust others without accepting yourself?

“It is time to unlearn the things you have learned from wounded people.” Living Vin

Comments

  1. CapoMay 5, 2019 at 10:06 PM

    I can completely relate to this post in every aspect. I was also adopted and feel like this at times. Spot on

    ReplyDelete

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