Trouble with Trust & Openness
Having trouble with trust and openness in relationships can be quite a painful struggle to have for people that have a strong desire for deeper, more meaningful relationships.
Here are some common symptoms of issues with trust:
Mental & Emotional Symptoms
- Difficulty expressing vulnerability
- Keeping an emotional distance
- Fear of abandonment
- Difficulty forgiving
Behavioral Symptoms
- Secretiveness
- Withholding affection
- Excessive defensiveness
- Testing behaviors
- Sabotaging behavior
- Excessive jealousy or possessiveness
Relational Symptoms
- History of short-lived relationships
- Difficulty committing
- Excessive cycles of breaking up & reuniting
- Attraction to unavailable partners
These symptoms are not the issue, they are the effects or symptoms of underlying processes. Furthermore, these are not a result of bad decisions as these are not consciously chosen patterns. Instead having trouble with trust and openness is an emotional pattern and emotional patterns can’t be changed with logic or intellectual understanding alone.
Emotion Focused Therapy for Trust Issues
The main type of therapy I use is called Emotion Focused Therapy (EFT) and it’s typically quite effective for helping people to work through struggles with trust & openness.
All those bullet points above are symptoms of issues with trust, not the root causes. The focus of EFT is to address the root causes.
Though each person’s healing process is unique & tailored to them, a quick idea of some of main parts of the process include:
1 | Identify the Stuck Patterns
The list of symptoms above are downstream results of larger upstream processes that we’re often not aware of. We all have blind spots in our self-awareness and becoming aware of our self-defeating patterns is a very helpful step.
When it comes to trust & openness, it’s often the case that one or more of these types of negative, self-defeating patterns is active:
- The “I can’t trust you” pattern (mistrust & abuse)
- The “I’ll never get the love I need” pattern (disconnection & rejection)
- The “"I don't fit in" pattern (social exclusion)
- The “I always do it your way” pattern (self-sacrificing & approval seeking)
- The “please don’t leave me” pattern (abandonment)
2 | Building Emotional Regulation
Developing trust & openness requires an ability to tolerate the strong emotions and uncertainty to go along with vulnerability and intimacy. When we haven’t had the chance to develop these capacities, avoidance and escape become our default options and trust doesn’t have the chance to develop.
3 | Building Emotional Awareness
You can’t change something you’re not aware of. Once someone has the ability to tolerate some of the more intense emotions that have previously been avoided they then begin to be able to develop a deeper understanding of their emotional experience. This is a central part of building a sense of trust within yourself and with others.
4 | Understanding the Bigger Picture
Struggles with trust, openness and vulnerability don’t just occur out of nowhere. These patterns come from natural instincts to protect ourselves and almost always were adaptive at one time in your life. Afterall it’s not adaptive or healthy to be open, vulnerable and trusting with everyone we meet. Understanding when and why we learned to put a guard up and keep it up is often a very helpful part of learning how to let the guard back down.
If you'd like to understand more about the EFT process you can read more here.
Next Steps
I offer counseling & therapy in Hood River. If you’d interested in potentially working with me the best next step is to check out this page.