Not being able to trust others has a relationship with childhood

One of the aspects of personality that are affected by family instability is trust in others and openness to society. People who have grown up in an environment that did not provide them with security tend to be suspicious of everything outside.

Never having felt the protection of an adult, They grow up thinking that no one will ever protect them. These people can systematically distrust others for life.

People who don’t just trust anyone

Childhood lays the foundation for adult life. While growing up in a stable family provides a secure and balanced personality, growing up in a disorganized family generates in children a feeling of apprehension towards others that drags them on for life.

This was what happened to Marta, a girl who, after several sentimental failures, came to my office. In our first sessions, Marta told me that he had never come to trust his partners, that he had never fully opened up to them and that this had greatly affected their relationships. She also told me that the same thing happened to her with her friends, she had never been able to deepen a friendship.

Marta’s inner feeling was that she couldn’t trust anyone, but she couldn’t explain why.

She had always been very independent and she liked this, but a part of her inside wanted (even needed) to be with other people and have friends. However, every time he tried to get closer to a group and integrate, he ended up pulling away. The young woman felt an internal struggle that she could not reconcile between her independent part and her social part.

A learned distrust

At the bottom of this type of conflict, there is always a broken family that has not been able to create a welcoming and protective environment for its children. If children grow up in a messy environment and they do not feel cared for, they lack emotional footholds to hold on to and they are forced to seek their safety in ways that are not entirely healthy.

The usual reaction of these children is to stop looking for protection in their elders and try to procure it themselves. In this way, they end up isolating themselves from the outside to focus only on themselves, the only people they can really trust. Over time, when this attitude extends to all areas of their lives, a distrust of others is generated in them that ends up affecting all their social relationships.

In one of our sessions, Marta was able to verify the tremendous instability she experienced when she was little.

This is how he told me in his own words: “They are all liars. They lie to each other and they lie to me. Everything is a theater. They don’t take care of themselves and they don’t take care of me. They are not trustworthy. I don’t want to have to depend on someone who is unreliable.”

Obviously, if her parents, the people who should have cared for her, were so focused on themselves and their disputes that they were unable to pay attention to their daughter, the conclusion that the girl drew was that “people are not to be trusted”. In this way, as a self-protection strategy, the insulation pattern and the distrust of Marta.

Those who have experienced such unstable childhoods learn to close themselves off from others and do not allow themselves to trust anyone. They get used to doing everything by themselves, without expecting help from anyone.

How to regain trust in others

In the case of Marta, this employer ended up boycotting all her relationships (friendship, partner, work…). Always on guard, the young woman did not allow herself to open up because she unconsciously thought that sooner or later she was going to be deceived or betrayed.

In this type of case, one of the main objectives that we set for ourselves, when starting therapy, is to help the person learn, from security, confidence and inner strength, to guard down.

Marta understood that, when she was little, those who should have protected her, her elders, did not. For this reason, despite the few emotional tools that she had at her disposal at the time, she had to learn to defend herself. The young woman had spent her life on guard, waiting for betrayal from others, because this was the way she had learned to defend herself as a child. The only one she knew.

Paradoxically, although Marta had always been perceived as a safe person, this security came from the fear of feeling unprotected and abandoned. Even as an adult, she still continued to interpret all her relationships through the prism of her childhood.

However, at present, she was already an adult, she was already capable of defending herself properly if someone betrayed or deceived her. She didn’t need to be constantly on guard. Little by little, Marta began to open up, allowing the others to get closer to her. Obviously, she had some disappointments, but also he managed to find true and sincere friends in whom he could trust.