Trust and Betrayal
The road between a built-up trust and being betrayed can be a long, winding process of unfolding or a quick downhill slide.
As human beings, we tend to be trusting overall. We see and meet people, we resonate, or we don’t. If we resonate and connect, we continue to build upon the relationship and trust is earned. The same is true for institutions, groups, and organizations.
We are energetic, spiritual beings with a unique, expansive, and wildly accurate intuitive system. We ‘know’ without knowing why. We feel the resonance or dissonance as soon as we meet someone – or enter a place – or join a group. Our gut instinct knows, and our body processes this information.
As children, we are taught through our primary relationships, who to trust and who to avoid. Most well-intentioned parents/caregivers are only trying to protect us & save us pain. We assimilate their information into ours. Because we trust (in many cases), our caregivers, we accept what we’re told – even when it doesn’t always feel right to us personally. With that cognitive & sensory dissonance within us, we begin to question our gut integrity to inform and guide us. This is one area where our distrust of ourselves & our bodies begins.
This internal conflict between what we feel and what we are told drives many interactions and the building of relationships as we mature. We assume because someone we trust & care about told us something, that it is true regardless of how we assimilate that statement. We assume that because an organization or institution is set up with a flashy website & public statement of, ‘in service to’ us, it is also true even when we feel it isn’t. Our internal struggle to find the truth continues to grow. Our ability to trust ourselves continues to spiral downward.
As adults, many of us tend to ignore the signs/gut feelings & our true inner knowing. This ability is meant to be a beautiful gift of guidance for us in living our expansive life purposes.
We want to believe people and organizations & trust they have our best interests at heart (& some do but others do not). There are so many motivating factors in peoples’ truth which influence their statements & behaviours, sometimes without even knowing why they deceive or mislead people. Many things influence our choices, like life experiences, traumas, insecurity, ignorance, egos, greed, money, and power – just to name a few.
We want to believe others – we want to see the best – we want to connect and feel a part of something bigger and many times we ignore the red flags. We want it to be mutual, trusting, and respectful. It’s our nature.
In ignoring the signs, we allow ourselves further down the rabbit hole of trusting someone or something that doesn’t deserve it and hasn’t truly earned it. This human mistake (& I know personally, I’ve made a ton of them), usually costs us dearly as our trust gets breached & we feel betrayed (& usually we beat ourselves up for not ‘seeing’ things earlier or clearer). This too, is a process of growing, healing and shifting to take responsibility for our choices, take back our power & continue to move forward.
In the process of learning to trust again, we need a healthy curiosity to question the motives of others, pay attention to our whole body’s response, listen & discern to rebuild that internal trust. As we manoeuvre the ups & downs and we decide to turn our hearts & minds to trust others again, we must be willing to listen to that still small voice inside (our gut instincts, our intuition), that guides us.
In opening ourselves to an expanded life experience, we must trust ourselves first.