At this time last year, I was a month away from graduating and should have felt on top of the world. In reality, I was terribly lonely, unhappy, and scared out of my wits about the future…and I’d fallen out of touch with everyone who could relate to what I was experiencing. I had managed to completely tie my sense of self-worth to leaving college with a full-time job offer, and had put all of my relationships on the back-burner. When that didn’t pan out the way I’d planned, I was crushed.
Fast-forward to now: my mom is no longer the only person to call me on a regular basis. I’ve reconnected with the friends who bring out the best in me and make me grateful to be alive. I’ve branched out, taken risks I’d never imagined actually taking, and have met some wonderful new friends along the way. And, lo and behold, I’m starting a new full-time job in May.
The one factor responsible for my turn-around?
Trust. Trust in myself, and in others.
According to psychoanalyst Erik Erikson, our disposition to trust (or mistrust) others is formulated during the first 18 months of our life. His theory holds that “If we pass successfully through this period of life, we will learn to trust that life is basically okay and have basic confidence in the future. If we fail to experience trust and are constantly frustrated because our needs are not met, we may end up with a deep-seated feeling of worthlessness and a mistrust of the world in general.”
While this stage of our development may create a filter through which all of our subsequent experiences pass, it does not damn us to a life of foolishly trusting others or keeping them needlessly at bay. We just need to keep this predisposition in mind as we evaluate our relationships with others.
Trusting others had come easily and naturally for me until an awful party during the middle of my collegiate experience. After that night, I began attributing the trust-destroying acts of others to some inherent flaw in myself, and questioned my ability to judge the trustworthiness of others. Eventually, I became so focused on removing the potential for future hurt and disappointment that my mistrust prevented me not only from reconnecting with the people I sorely missed (and still trusted), but also from forming new relationships.
Knowing that I had gotten myself into this situation, I finally stopped waiting for everyone else to reach out to me.
It’s frightening to re-establish the lines of communication with friends you’ve been out of touch with – especially if, like me, your tendency toward isolation in the face of challenging circumstances caused the schism in the relationship to begin with. Reconnecting with these individuals gave me the courage to reach out and begin to establish new friendships, which could flourish should I continue to allow myself to trust.
This hasn’t happened over night, nor has it been easy, but when I think that I might have missed out so many fulfilling relationships because of the painful actions of a few, the hurt pales in comparison to the joys that have come as a direct result of trusting others.
Find a balance (though it’s easier said than done). You don’t need expose your deepest vulnerabilities to every person you meet – remember there is such a thing as TMI. But, if the barrier you’ve erected makes the Berlin Wall seem like a picket fence, perhaps you need to reevaluate the mental fortifications you’ve made over the years. Detachment as a defense mechanism is a recipe for unhappiness.
“We’re never so vulnerable than when we trust someone—but paradoxically, if we cannot trust, neither can we find love or joy.” – Walter Anderson
Do you bestow a certain implicit level of trust to new people in your life, or do you expect them to start at zero and prove their trustworthiness over time?
