ERETM2 : 03. Trust

Embodied Relating Exploring Trauma and how it impacts our relationships series

This week we will explore trust, the challenges of trust when we live with trauma and have attachment wounds, and ways to begin to grow trust within our relationships with others and with ourselves.

Why is trust so hard?

When we look at our childhoods, whether there was overt abuse, subtle abuse, neglect, or "simply" misattunement, we can see the ways our brains developed to learn to not trust. When we have these kinds of experiences in childhood, where we are in (unconscious or conscious) fear that our primary caregivers cannot or will not care for us, we grow neural pathways that say others, those we rely on most, those who love us, those who are supposed to protect us, are unreliable and untrustworthy.

We develop all kinds of coping mechanisms and survival skills to ensure that someone, whether our primary caregiver or not, takes care of us and often what that looks like is we learn at too young of an age how to care for ourselves (and often others, be that siblings or even the adults…