[Issue #18 FREE Re-post] The Dark Side of Trust
An exploration of the inter-dynamics of trust and PTSD
“Trust is like a mirror. You can fix it if it's broken, but you can still see the crack in that motherfucker's reflection.”
-Lady Gaga
The look on her face, as I confidently accused her of cheating on me, bore holes so deep into my heart, I felt my own heartbeats spill out, and I, unable to retract any of it.
I’d, once again, run with a story in my head - this particular story had been borne from a past of broken trust by intimate partners. The story played unconsciously - I had no idea this story in my head was only a story; I’d acted, reacted, behaved, thought, based upon this story of no intimate partner being honest/always going to betray me as though it were true now and would be true forever. Because I’d entrusted intimate partners before and because they cheated on me (and one relationship became abusive, which is an article for a different day), the story in my head became a deep-seeded belief that all new partners would betray me. With black and white thinking like this, there’s little room for trust.
Trust.
Another one of those 5-letter words that boils over into something more akin to an “umbrella” term rather than a one-distinctive definitive definition of something we can all agree on. And yet, we throw the word around the same way we tend to use like as filler when we’re recounting some event.
So, what is trust?
Merriam-Webster defines trust like this:
Assured reliance on the character, ability, strength, or truth of someone or something;
One in which confidence is placed.
Trust encompasses all the small things, like emotional reactions, shared experiences, the undressing of the rigid to get to the soft body of vulnerability and honesty. Trust encompasses how we trust someone, or ourselves, or an organization. Trust encompasses why we trust. It’s a filtering tool, useful for finding those few people who would help you in the direst, darkest of times - friendships or intimate partnership(s).
But, defining trust doesn’t get the job done. Knowing the definition doesn’t change my own internal reality and experiences with trust. Of trust.
And PTSD and trust don’t tend to mix well. It’s like milk and gin.
I think we all know that trust is imperative to our ability to live an authentic and genuine life. Trust is as important as self-compassion and general empathy for idiots, assholes, friends and partners.
Trust is a spectrum, though. Like sexuality, or moral codes.
In a previous issue, I briefly explained that my lack of trust in many and most places, persons, and information sources has protected, and probably saved, my life. It’s also hampered my ability to fully engage and fall into the safety of my marriage, the life I live now. My engagement with my life is bound by many things - trust being one of them. I bet your daily life involves more trust than you ponder upon, betweeen trusting people to stop at a red light, or trusting the server won’t spit in your food. That the pilot will stay awake and fly the plane. That your boss really will file the paperwork so you get that raise.
Trust seems like one of those topics, or themes, or things we should just inherently know and understand, on some universal level. Something inside me cracks open each time I learn how large and wide the net of trust is - and I only have control over some of it.
We’ve explored triggers (click here for the essay) and what happens when we (or someone else) gets triggered. One of the most complicated and frustrating things about my own mental health and PTSD is the fact that I’m not always sure when my symptoms will be triggered. I don’t always know what will trigger me. I don’t always know why I got triggered until days, weeks, years later.
Dr. Dominic Fareri, a prominent psychologist and professor at Adelphi University, based in New York, studies the biology of trauma (namely PTSD) using nueroimaging, neuroscience, and nueroeconomics along with behavioral and physiological therapuetic and theoretical approaches. By studying PTSD in this way, using these multimodal variants, Dr. Fareri has begun finding long hidden links between trust and PTSD. In an article he wrote for the university (it’s worth reading the full piece), he explains the complexity of the relationship between trust and PTSD:
Individuals with PTSD tend to exhibit significant interpersonal difficulties and have a hard time developing and maintaining social relationships, which depend on the exchange of trust…Because PTSD sufferers’ basic appraisal mechanisms often function atypically as a result of their traumatic experiences, [and] they may not be able to accurately evaluate other people as trustworthy or not.”
That last part, “…they may not be able to accurately evaluate other people as trustworthy or not” is the meat in the potatoes here. PTSD shifts our perspectives, beliefs, emotions, and thoughts about the world around us, those who engage with us, and ourselves.
Remember the article on hypervigilance (click here), where we explored how PTSD warps our sense of safety in the world around us? Hypervigilance is one thematic symptom of complex trauma and PTSD because of a lack of trust- either within ourselves, within others, or within the larger social systems we inhabit. And with trauma inflicted by others or by us witnessing something traumatic happening to others, our brain is desperate to survive and will cross our neurons and pathways to raise the alarm as a means to that end, whether we’re in imminent danger or perceive such. Our brains cross now with before in order to protect us later.
It works great, this particular protective mechanism of our brains. But at some point, the antidote becomes the poison and we have to decide which road we’re gonna hike. It’s a long one either way.
In a study titled The social cognitive appraisal of trustworthiness in individuals with dimensional levels of post-traumatic stress symptoms: a translational study (click here for the full study), researchers hypothesised that perceived trustworthiness is affected by trauma, but they wanted to know how it happens and what can be done to strengthen trust within oneself and within intimate relationships (with friends, family, partners, etc) while working on and through PTSD recovery. The study participants volunteered to have their heads strapped with a bunch of EEG diodes, then, they were shown differing facial expressions and asked to rate the trustworthiness of the person in the photo based on facial stimuli alone. Neurons would light up and pathways would buzz as the monitor, linked to all the diodes attached to the particpant’s head, was studied. Partipants were split into three different groups: those with high levels of PTSD, those with low levels of PTSD, and those with no discernable PTSD symptoms or diagnosis.
I bet if I gave you a chance, you’d know how this study turned out.
It’s no surprise that the particpants with high levels of PTSD were less trusting, even of the most-trustworthy facial expressions and stimuli:
“This study provides preliminary evidence for additional conceptualizations of PTSD as a disorder with disruptions in the social cognition, namely in the appraisal of trustworthiness at the behavioural, attentional, and neural level. Deficits in the appraisal of trustworthy faces could translate to difficulties in assessing the trustworthiness of individuals in real life, potentially thwarting the ability to affiliate with meaningful social bonds facilitating recovery.”
We have the ability (if we have the courage and will to change) to shift our beliefs with and about trust, to a degree. I know this first hand because I’ve been able to shift my relationship with trust to be more aligned with the relationships I want to have versus the relationships I have had.
Restoring and repairing trust is a hard job and if you suffer from complex trauma/PTSD, it’s likely rebuilding trust will be more difficult based on our built-in survival mechanisms. To get to a place of safety and re-assurance, it takes real reflective inquiry about ourselves and our relationships (and their health) and how we feel while engaged within those relationships. Do I feel safe with my wife? Yes. Do I trust her? I can safely say (finally) the answer to that is also yes (after a lot of therapy and empathy practice on my part) because she has a multi-years long track record of reacting, behaving, engaging, and commnicating in a way that’s loving, kind, honest, and respectful. Those don’t seem like big things to ask for out of a relationship (of any kind) or anyone, and I believe these fundamental qualities are neccessary to have and to hold a safe, healthy relationship (whatever the context). And yet, these things - love, kindness, honesty, and respect are the things typically missing from unhealthy, unsafe relationships. Why are those relationships so hard to walk away from? This is a question more akin to why didn’t you leave that abusive relationship? and can take quite a bit of time and therapuetic intervention to figure out.
Now, changing our perspective and relationship with trust will only go so far - if we’re in relationships with people who are or have been un-trustworthy, we may find ourselves dipping back into our old patterns or ways of thinking. Our self-esteem may tank. Our self-trust may waver or evaporate entirely. Our trust in the world, social structures, institutions can feel flimsy and fragile, weaponizing what had, at one point, been protective, eroding our internal understandings of the relationship.
After hundreds (thousands?) of hours of therapy of all sorts and types, I now know self-trust is the most important trust of all. Why?
Without self-trust, we’re unable to truly trust our own experience, relying more on others to inform how we should be, feel, think, etc.
The website Psychology Today (which as an awesome therapist finder, actually - it’s how my wife found our still-current therapist about 5 years ago and she’s been nothing short of incredible) has an article entitled Self-Trust and How to Build It that defines self-trust:
“Self-trust is not trusting yourself to know all the answers, nor is it believing that you will always do the right things. It’s having the conviction that you will be kind and respectful to yourself regardless of the outcome of your efforts.”
Until we can define self-trust for our own selves, we can’t un-learn and re-learn healthy ways of trusting ourselves. I believed, for a long time, self-trust was the same as self-esteem or confidence, but self-esteem and confidence has little to do with the building of self-trust. Self-esteem and confidence are built on the foundation of self-trust, not the other way around.
The same article continues to define self-trust as follows:
“The definition of self-trust is the firm reliance on the integrity of yourself. There is a difference between a life that is grounded in self-trust and one that is not. When we look at examples of people who are self-trusting, we find that they have clarity and confidence in their choices. They are interdependent, which includes healthy dependency, not overly dependent or hyper-independent. They speak with authority that comes from a deep place within but is not arrogant. They are good observers and have cultivated the ability to learn from their experiences, both the successes and failures.”
Self-trust takes a long time to re-build if it’s been broken down over years and years of toxic and unhealthy relationships.
Our first step to re-building self-trust and trust in others is to take stock of our own reactions and feelings as things and events fill our days. Then, our job is to get curious (replacing self-criticism or judgement) about why we felt/reacted/thought the way we did and then asking if it was an appropriate response.
Learning our internal patterns and cycles can help us re-build our self-trust, and this takes time. We’ll explore the building of trust in further issues, so for this week, I’ll leave you to ponder on trust with the following -
Think back to a time and relationship in your life where you felt you didn’t trust yourself. How do you know your self-trust was wavering? Do those same feelings, thoughts, beliefs come up now? How is your self-trust presently? Let me know in a comment, shoot me an email, I’d love to hear from you (ADpurchas@gmail.com)! Or journal it in private to keep to yourself.
“I don't trust people who don't love themselves and tell me, 'I love you.' ... There is an African saying which is: Be careful when a naked person offers you a shirt.”
-Maya Angelou
So much of this makes sense to me and pieces fit together. It reminded me that I am secretly astonished that I have very few, if any, very long term friendships that I’ve never sabotaged in one way or another at some point.
Oh how you single handedly cause me to peel back my own layers, as you assist me to endeavor to know a new compassion for the people in my life who suffer from PTSD. Just one of the reasons I believe you are a magnanimous creature and I love you! You move me to at least attempt, if not succeed, to see things from those good souls' perspective. That's true knowledge - seeing other perspectives outside of your own and holding/considering them with your own. What better way to begin to understand. I could write a dozen pages about all the thoughts, feelings, etc. that this piece invokes as I read. I'll spare you. <3