How To Work Through Your Trust Issues

The phrase “trust issues” is commonly thrown around to describe general, persistent behaviors of distrust in other people. But how do we develop these patterns of behavior?

Different from paranoia, trust issues are rooted in the reality of our experiences. If something bad happened to you in a dark alley in a busy city, for instance, you may become increasingly distrustful of walking alone downtown at night because you’ve experienced something that made you doubt specific environments and the behaviors of other people.

Similarly, you can develop distrust in virtually any relationship where you’ve felt you’ve been taken advantage of, harmed or offended in some way. Often, you can displace this distrust onto others in the future out of fear someone else might harm you in the same way. And this deep distrust in others has a way of affecting all of your relationships if you’re not careful.

Psychologist Ramone Ford, PhD, shares why you might need to work on your trust issues and ways you can overcome the fear of being hurt again without compromising your safety, your health or your values.

What are signs of trust issues?

If you have a hard time trusting someone (or anyone in general), you’ll likely experience certain uncomfortable symptoms whenever you’re around them. Or you may participate in patterns of behaviors in an effort to protect yourself from future harm. These signs of trust issues include:

• Low self-esteem or self-confidence.
• Increased anxiety, fear, worry or emotional triggers when you’re around another person or other people.
• Feeling on edge or dismayed by aspects of the person or relationship.
• Feeling stuck or unsure of where you stand in a relationship.
• Avoiding conversation or connections with someone.
• Second-guessing yourself or others.
• Being guarded, closed-minded or withdrawn.
• Experiencing a strong desire to not be associated with a specific person or event.

“If you’re feeling anxious or you have a strong emotional response to someone or something that someone does, that warrants investigating those feelings to find out what’s truly going on,” says Dr. Ford. “If you’re not being authentic or saying what you need in a relationship out of fear or mistrust, you could end up internalizing those feelings and worsen the situation.”

What causes a lack of trust?

We can lose our trust in someone in a million different ways.

If someone bulldozes over the boundaries of our relationships, we’ll likely see them as a threat to our safety and well-being. Infidelity and cheating (and internalized fears that those activities will happen to us) are common examples that can lead to someone developing distrust in their partner and future relationships.

Other behaviors that can hurt our ability to trust other people include:

• Lying.
• Manipulation.
• Gaslighting.
• Breaking promises.
• Withholding important information.
• Doing something intentionally hurtful.

Sometimes, trust issues stem from our experiences during childhood development. If someone or something hurt us deeply when we were young, we tend to carry those traumatic experiences into adulthood and sometimes, foster the belief that it’s hard to trust other people. In these instances, our inner child is wounded because we associate trusting other people with negative experiences — even if those other people would never harm us.

“Early in life, you form expectations and beliefs that the world and certain people will act a certain way,” clarifies Dr. Ford. “If your needs aren’t met earlier in life, it becomes harder to build those connections and to open up and be vulnerable in relationships.”

Indeed, pistanthrophobia — the fear of trusting others or being hurt by someone you love — is often wrapped up in other fears like gamophobia (the fear of commitment). When these fears are reinforced by the actions of others or by the unhealthy coping mechanisms we rely on to feel safe, our ability to trust others (and even trust ourselves) can become increasingly difficult.

“If you have 10 relationships in life and the first nine were healthy and they always did what they said they were going to do, then your 10th relationship may be easier for you to believe in a trusting, healthy relationship,” illustrates Dr. Ford. “But if your first relationship is unhealthy, you may end up questioning the authenticity of the next nine relationships and whether someone is being genuine because of your past experience.”

How to get over trust issues

Healing the wounds of distrust and learning how to trust others again is no easy task — in fact, it may take months or even years to feel like you’re able to fully trust someone. Everyone handles trust issues differently, and if you have a fear of trusting others or have difficulty establishing vulnerable relationships with other people, you may need more time to work through these issues — and that’s OK.

Healing isn’t linear. Everyone heals in different ways and at different speeds. The important thing is to recognize when you have trust issues and try to work toward rebuilding trust over time. If you have trust issues, taking these small steps may help you overcome that obstacle:

• Communicate your needs and be clear about your values and expectations. Rather than blaming others for what happened during times of conflict, take ownership of your feelings and be honest about how someone’s actions make you feel.
• Give people a chance to grow by allowing second chances (when you feel safe to do so) and give them the space to learn. If you have general distrust in other people, try to lean on the belief that everyone has positive intent because not everyone will hurt you the way others have hurt you in the past.
• Leave a relationship behind when you need to. If someone continues to hurt you after you’ve expressed your needs and expectations, it may be time to look at the evidence and end the relationship.
• Meet new people where they are by trying to find some common ground. If you have trust issues in general and it’s hard for you to establish and maintain new connections, perhaps you can start small by bonding over your interests, hobbies and shared passions.
• Ask for help from a therapist. Therapists can validate your fears and feelings and help you identify the problem areas where trust becomes difficult for you. They can also help with underlying mental health issues like anxiety and depression, which can make trust issues and relationship-building a far more difficult task than it needs to be.
• Trust the process. Over time, as you work on healthy coping mechanisms and simultaneously get to know other people, hopefully, you’ll feel more established in any relationship and trust will begin to come more easily for you.

“Sometimes, we have the capacity to be our own worst enemies, and we get in the way of our own progress,” recognizes Dr. Ford. “That’s a very human thing to do because the best of us can be self-critical at times. But that doesn’t mean you have to push people away or do any of this healing on your own.

“You can trust other people again. You just have to find the right solutions and the right people that make you feel safe and supported.”