Is learning to trust yourself more important that trusting others?

Trusting someone means that you think they are reliable, you have confidence in them and you feel safe with them physically and emotionally.

We all have, or have had, people in our lives we think we know. People that we trust, that we put our faith in. People we’ve invested time and emotion into, who make us feel safe and comforted and cared for. These people are our lifelines and connections in a vast world of disinterest.

I think when people say they have ‘trust issues’ they’re really speaking less about their trust in other’s and more about the ways in which they have placed their trust in others. When someone close to you manifests into something you never thought possible, it makes you question everyone and everything. You question the things you once believed with conviction, you question the nature of human interaction and affection. You question whether trust is really even possible in this life because you’ve proven you can tragically misplace it. Perhaps you are the one who can’t be trusted.

Oh, we all have those friends or relatives who appear completely predictable. Who we believe can never change, and it is always those people who surprise, and often hurt us the most. People who show us that human beings are capable of just about anything, whether it be good or bad.

And that is where the true pain comes from, where the lasting effects ripple out into the rest of our lives. when someone has hurt you, has broken something that you thought was solid and invariable, it forces you to either blame the world, or to look internally. It forces you to accept that trust and love are always, always blind leaps of faith with the understanding that people will let us down, they will hurt us, and we will likely do the same. When someone has broken your trust, don’t focus on adjusting the measure of how your place your attachments ,necessarily, don’t assume that you now have the secret code to what types of people are just out to hurt you and which aren’t.

Focus instead on learning how to trust yourself again. On collecting the debris of who you are and forgiving yourself for placing your heart somewhere unsafe, accept that maybe there were no signs, that you had no way of knowing because maybe that person didn’t know either. Let go of the notion that there are perfect people in this world who will never hurt you or disappoint you. Accept that everything in life is a gamble and that the stakes may be high but the profit might be worth it.

Learn who you are, learn what you are capable of, and you’ll find that trusting yourself is far more valuable than placing unwavering trust in someone else.