Childhood Trauma and Adult Trust Issues. Why is it hard for me to trust others?
Trust & Mistrust
The following information is from Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT) and the trust issues modules/worksheets. More information here.
Cognitive therapy approaches for post-traumatic stress disorder propose that trauma entails cognitive alterations of increased distrust and perceived threat from others.
If you had prior experiences where you were blamed for negative events, you may develop negative beliefs about your ability to make decisions or judgments about situations or people, ultimately making you question yourself. The traumatic event(s) serves to confirm these beliefs.
Developing trust is an important part of self-concept and serves as a way to protect ourselves.
Childhood Trauma & Neglect’s Impact on Trust & Mistrust
When your caregivers/parents abuse or neglect you, it impacted your brain and personality
Children are helpless and rely on their parents/caregivers for food, shelter, support, safety, etc. When this is not consistently offered, it impacts a child development meaning how they treat others, how they expect others to treat them, how they see themselves (e.g. Self esteem), how they talk to themselves, how they see the world, whether they see the world as dangerous or safe to explore, etc.
Because a child’s brain has not fully developed yet, they cannot truly make sense of what is going on when they experience neglect and/or abuse. After all, trauma and neglect are extraordinary, meaning they should not happen and this is not an ordinary experience.
Ultimately, children feel confused, lost, alone, scared, and worried. This can lead into mistrust of themselves and others.
Abusive & Neglectful Statements From Caregivers/Parents
I’m trying to prepare you for the real world
When I yell at you, it’s because I love you
When I hit you, it’s because I love you
You’re lucky you’re my child because nobody would want you
I should’ve never had you
I wish you weren’t my child
I don’t love you
You’re so stupid
You’re dumb
You don’t amount to anything
I’ll give you something to cry about
Stop crying
Crying/anger/etc. is bad
Silence and ignoring a child consistently
And more
Children Who Grow Up In These Environment Tend to Feel
Resentful
Powerless
Hopeless
Lack ability to make their own decisions and take accountability for their actions/choices
Low sense of Self (Self-esteem, Self-worth, Self-love, Self-acceptance)
Need for approval and and people pleasing
Discomfort around authority figures
Anxious
Overly sensitive to rejection, anger, feedback, and criticism
Guilty caring for themselves (tend to focus on others more)
Anxious, mistrustful, and insecure in relationships, particularly romantic and intimate relationships
Examples of Trust & Mistrust Statements In Relationships
Why are you so nice to me?
You must want something from me
Why are you giving me a gift?
Why do people like me? It’s hard for me to like myself.
I find it hard to believe this person is saying all these positive things about me. I don’t see myself this way.
I don’t like having all the attention on me. I have the panicky feeling and urge to leave the room.
This person is going to cheat on me. I just know it.
I just met this person and I don’t like them. Something about their face or personality. They feel inauthentic and fake. Something feels off.
And more
Examples of Trust & Mistrust
Believing you cannot trust or rely on your own perceptions or judgments
Believing you cannot trust or rely on others
Believing your feelings and thoughts do not matter and questioning your own experiences
Believing others are out to get you/want something from you/want to take advantage of you
Believing there is an ulterior or sinister motive from others who are nice, kind, and trustworthy
People pleasing/fawning and asking others for their decisions/choices/options before considering your own
And more
Common statements when someone is still stuck from traumatic experiences
“I can’t make good decisions, so I let others make decisions for me”
“Because I am a poor judge of character, I can’t tell who can be trusted”
“If I make choices, then they never work out”
“I cannot trust my own judgement”
“I have bad judgement”
“I have perfect judgement, and I never make bad decisions”
“No one can be trusted”
“If I trust someone, they will hurt me”
“If I get close to someone, they will leave me”
“People with power or in authority will take advantage of you”
Common statements when traumatic experiences are processed and actively worked on
“I can still trust my judgement even though it’s not perfect”
“Even if I misjudged this person or situation, I realize that I cannot always realistically predict what others will do or how a situation may turn out”
“No one has perfect judgement. I did the best I could in an unpredictable situation, and I can still trust my ability to make decisions even though it is not perfect”
“My bad decision did not cause the event to happen”
“I can trust some people”
“Although I find some people to be untrustworthy in some ways, I can’t assume everyone is alway 100% untrustworthy”
“Trust is not all or nothing. Some people may be more trustworthy than others”
“I may not be able to trust everyone in every way, but that doesn’t mean I have to stop trusting the people I used to trust”
“It may help to tell others what I need from them and then see if they do a better job of meeting my needs. I can use this as aw ay to assess their trustworthiness.”
“There are some people I cannot talk to about the traumatic events I’ve experienced, but there are other areas of my life where I can trust them”
“I get to decide who to trust and who I don’t trust”
“I have more choices now in the present day about who I trust and who I do not trust”
“I do not have to trust everyone, nor do I have to assume everyone is untrustworthy. It just depends”
Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma
“If your parents’ faces never lit up when they looked at you, it’s hard to know what it feels like to be loved and cherished. If you come from an incomprehensible world filled with secrecy and fear, it’s almost impossible to find the words to express what you have endured. If you grew up unwanted and ignored, it is a major challenge to develop a visceral sense of agency and self-worth.”
CPTSD: From Surviving to Thriving by Pete Walker
“The worst thing that can happen to a child is to be unwelcomed in his family of origin - to never feel included. Moreover, many survivors have little or no experience of any social arena that feels safe and welcoming.”
“Chronic emotional abandonment devastates a child. It naturally makes her feel and appear deadened and depressed. Functional parents respond to a child’s depression with concern and comfort. Abandoning parents respond to the child with anger, disgust and/or further abandonment, which in turn exacerbate the fear, shame and despair that become the abandonment mélange.”
”Emotional neglect, alone, causes children to abandon themselves, and to give up on the formation of a self. They do so to preserve an illusion of connection with the parent and to protect themselves from the danger of losing that tenuous connection. This typically requires a great deal of self-abdication, e.g., the forfeiture of self-esteem, self-confidence, self-care, self-interest, and self-protection.”
”If this is what you suffered, you then grew up feeling that no one likes you. No one ever listened to you or seemed to want you around. No one had empathy for you, showed you warmth, or invited closeness. No one cared about what you thought, felt, did, wanted or dreamed of. You learned early that, no matter how hurt, alienated, or terrified you were, turning to a parent would do nothing more than exacerbate your experience of rejection.”
”Unrelenting criticism, especially when it is ground in with parental rage and scorn, is so injurious that it changes the structure of the child’s brain.”
”Repeated messages of disdain are internalized and adopted by the child, who eventually repeats them over and over to himself. Incessant repetitions result in the construction of thick neural pathways of self-hate and self-disgust. Over time a self-hate response attaches to more and more of the child’s thoughts, feelings and behaviors.”
”Verbal abuse is the use of language to shame, scare or hurt another. Dysfunctional parents routinely use name-calling, sarcasm, and destructive criticism to overpower and control their children. Verbal abuse is as commonplace in the American family as homework and table manners. It is modeled as socially acceptable in almost every sitcom on television.”
Gabor Maté, When the Body Says No: The Cost of Hidden Stress
“Emotional competence requires the capacity to feel our emotions, so that we are aware when we are experiencing stress; the ability to express our emotions effectively and thereby to assert our needs and to maintain the integrity of our emotional boundaries; the facility to distinguish between psychological reactions that are pertinent to the present situation and those that represent residue from the past.”
Alice Miller, The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self
“The art of not experiencing feelings. A child can experience her feelings only when there is somebody there who accepts her fully, understands her, and supports her. If that person is missing, if the child must risk losing the mother's love of her substitute in order to feel, then she will repress emotions.”
“Many people suffer all their lives from this oppressive feeling of guilt, the sense of not having lived up to their parents' expectations. This feeling is stronger than any intellectual insight they might have, that it is not a child's task or duty to satisfy his parents needs. No argument can overcome these guilt feelings, for they have their beginnings in life's earliest periods, and from that they derive their intensity and obduracy.”
Bruce D. Perry, The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog: And Other Stories from a Child Psychiatrist's Notebook
The more healthy relationships a child has, the more likely he will be to recover from trauma and thrive. Relationships are the agents of change and the most powerful therapy is human love.
What I’ve learned from talking to so many victims of traumatic events, abuse, or neglect is that after absorbing these painful experiences, the child begins to ache. A deep longing to feel needed, validated, and valued begins to take hold. As these children grow, they lack the ability to set a standard for what they deserve. And if that lack is not addressed, what often follows is a complicated, frustrating pattern of self-sabotage, violence, promiscuity, or addiction.
Relationships matter: the currency for systemic change was trust, and trust comes through forming healthy working relationships. People, not programs, change people.