How to Heal from Broken Trust

The prompt: It's about trust but specifically how do you trust someone after that trust has been broken. 


As you may have noticed, I changed this prompt to focus on healing and not necessarily re-trusting someone else. Trust getting broken has to do with either a lack of follow through on a commitment, or an action that hurts our feelings because it is outside of our expectations. The expectations can be explicit or they can be assumptions that were never communicated.

Step One: Your Own Healing

Tell someone. The first aspect of repairing trust has to do with your own healing. If you have a best friend (hopefully you have numerous people close to you that you share deeply and honestly with), tell them. By telling someone what happened from your perspective, you can stop being in anguish by yourself. Don't sit with it alone and try to sort it out. It's muddy, painful place. Reach out. And your friend may also have a view of the situation that can illuminate it in new and helpful ways.

Be with yourself in a way that allows full room for all emotions to come up and be explored. Journaling is one way that I know how to create a safe and honest space with myself. Meditation is another one, I hear :) Do the thing that will help you be completely honest with yourself. For me, when I went through a broken-trust situation, it was really helpful to name/write all the feelings it brought up. In doing so, I realized that I was being triggered, meaning, this situation was a catalyst for an old wound to re-surface. It's not to say that the current situation wasn't painful, but that the magnitude of my reaction was not proportional to what was happening now. It was replaying an old line in my head that had deep pain associated with it. Notice what your lines are, also known kindly as "Stories" :) Let them go, look at what is happening now. Hint: In looking for the stories we've learned to believe, watch out for sentences that include "always" and "never". Nothing is perfectly consistent, life is full of contradictions, including our own feelings and behaviors. 

In a moment of broken trust, you feel some sense of being let down. If this happens with someone you care about, you may feel hurt because that let-down feeling can sometimes translate as "they didn't care about me enough to do this / not do this." Don't take it personally (Don Miguel told me this). It's really not about you, it's about them - who they are right now, what they need right now, what's going on for them, where they come from, who they are becoming. This one is hard to practice, but it's true. Whatever trust-breaking action happened, don't internalize any messages about yourself from it. Simply witness that person and what they're doing. Chances are, they need to sort something out or are on a different journey. Focusing on that person and what their actions mean can lead us away from ourselves and how we are actually being impacted.

Have trust of the situation. I truly believe that whatever happens, happens for everyone's best. So if this happened, there is a reason it is good for me and also others. Try to look at the situation to see what lessons it can offer you, what teachings about how to do things differently. Or make peace with things being what they are. Maybe that's the learning - that despite doing our best, we can't control or predict things. Look at what has surfaced as an opportunity to learn and grow from it, to transcend it.


Step Two: Accountability - Give Honest Feedback, Be Kind

Tell the person you have trust breakage with. Tell them what happened for you. I repeat - what happened for you. This is not the story of "you did this to me". This story goes more like "because I was coming from this perspective, or this history, I had these expectations. When you did this, it affected me like this, I felt this way.... I did communicate my needs/desires to you but in your actions you disregarded my request so I felt hurt. OR I didn't communicate my expectations to you and my reflection is that I should do that more clearly."

Ask for their perspective. Be open, be willing to genuinely hear what was going on for them. This could shed new light on the story that may have solidified for you, so be really willing to re-evaluate it and come to a new understanding of how two people's actions intersected. (Then go back and tell your own support people, be honest with yourself, journal, meditate etc.) 

With the other person, please don't be harsh. In unkind words or a cold tone, it is really hard to hear even the truest of things. Especially the truest of things, if they require a person to self-reflect and change. Ultimately, you want to give this feedback because you want to be heard and you want your hurt to be acknowledged. All you have control over is speaking your truth and all you have responsibility for is how you act - so stay gentle. Whether you are heard or believed is not up to you, but you certainly improve your chances with kindness :)

Finally, forgive them and let go of your own wounds. This is where the true healing and freedom is. What happened happened. You can move on. You will move on if you don't take things personally and allow yourself to heal.


Step Three: Rebuilding Trust with Someone Else

First you have to do some soul-searching and truth-telling to decide if you really want to. I feel like we often don't want to have a loss of relationship with a loved one so we default to rebuilding trust, but actually, internally we haven't forgiven so we keep them close and punish them often. Don't do that. If you really can't move past whatever happened, be honest with yourself, be honest with that person, and let them go.

If you do decide that you can and want to move past the broken trust, then both of you will need to share your reflections and learnings from the situation, and what you will be doing differently in future to ensure it doesn't happen again. Explicit communication about needs and desires are necessary. It doesn't mean that the other person can or will give you everything you want, but you get to ask, they get to hear it, say yes or no, and then your expectations can be adjusted accordingly. Set yourself up for success! Set the other person up for success. Don't move forward with unrealistic expectations and when they fail, use it as an opportunity to bring up the old situation. This is unnecessary punishing, and not truly forgiving. If you have forgiven, it doesn't hurt you anymore.  

And finally, trust is a gut feeling. You either have it or you don't. Don't force yourself, but also don't fool yourself. Sometimes you need to let go in order to give yourself space to heal enough that you can approach a re-connection again. If you do find yourself in a re-connect situation, then go slowly and rebuild trust brick by brick. Don't make assumptions, don't even assume to know them as you did before. Our experiences changes us, especially ones that are painful and involve broken trust. They can be a huge opportunity for self-reflection and spiritual growth (for both/all people involved), and the repairing can be equally lovely, if it is authentic and well-paced.

In Conclusion...

Trust yourself first :) to take each step as it comes. Pause, seek clarity in your own solitude, allow friends in to support and comfort (and advise, if you want), and keep moving forward. Sometimes a connection is also ever-present, whether there is an active relationship or not. You have the power in each moment to make choices about how to relate to a current or past sitaution, or a person you care/d about. Healing is inevitable because life is long and people change and situations change and our own feelings change. My advise would be to focus on being your authentic self and healing, and allowing a natural connection to emerge from that place, rather than to focus on maintaining a relationship. That feels like attachment to me, and is the cause of a lot of suffering and ungrounded choices. 

One really important thing - trust equals faith. Trust comes from within and is a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you believe and act like the world is out to screw you, that is how you are likely to experience the world. If you decide to believe that you deserve good things and connections with trust-worthy people, you will invoke those. So, no matter what has happened in your past, believe that things can be different and act like it, work for it, put your energy and faith into it.


Resources

The Four Agreements - Don Miguel Ruiz
The Mastery of Love - Don Miguel Ruiz
Generative Somatics