How Do We Rebuild Trust?
At times, we may find ourselves feeling uneasy, distrustful, and ready for a change. At Good Human Work, we believe that real change takes time. We learn, we reflect, we practice change, we rest, we repeat.
Let’s learn.
Out of all the issues that couples come to therapy to discuss, trust is by far the most common. Trust is essential for a healthy relationship, but it’s also delicate and easily broken. In an ideal world, we wouldn’t need to repair trust. We would be consistently generous, thoughtful, kind, and vulnerable with the people that we love. We would validate, we would empathize and trust would remain intact.
Of course, the reality is that we’re all human - complicated and messy. It’s all too common to end up in a relationship where trust is fractured on a frequent basis. If we want to improve our connections and repair trust, we can start by practicing empathy and reminding ourselves that we’re all imperfect humans.
Over the course of any relationship, emotional injuries are bound to happen (in our field, we call these attachment injuries). There will be moments when we let each other down, or say something unkind. There will be moments when we dismiss each other, and moments when we turned away when we should have turned toward. Hopefully these injuries are small and infrequent, and they are healed quickly with a sincere apology and a concerted effort to do better. When these injuries are large, when they occur frequently, or when they aren’t properly healed, trust begins to quickly break down.
Let’s reflect.
Unfortunately for many couples, trust is broken in both small and large ways. There may be too many of these smaller attachment injuries, or it may be a large one, such as an episode (or series) of infidelity, lies, or betrayal.
When trust is broken, the big question becomes:
“Can it be healed?”
The answer is:
“Yes, absolutely.”
(But it doesn’t happen easily or accidentally.)
It happens with effort - with healing the injuries, repairing the emotional bond, and intentionally learning to respond to each other in a new, healthier way. Both partners have to be fully engaged in the process and willing to make effort and changes.
Relationships go through various stages, and that they take intentionality and effort to improve and maintain. When trust is broken, the processing of past hurts and efforts to repair must be ramped up significantly.
In order to begin the process of healing, you both need to be fully on board, willing to at least try to repair the relationship. This is a process that requires you both to be actively engaged.
Let’s practice change.
You both need to understand the how and why of the hurt. This is usually trickier than it sounds, and the root causes are often deeply entwined with how we emotionally attach to others. This processing is best done through a combination of efforts including self-reflection, therapy, tracking relational patterns and dynamics, and increasing coping and self-care.
Once you both fully understand the how and why, the work can begin to heal and safeguard your relationship for the future. The process of healing and safeguarding involves breaking old patterns, enhancing empathy for each other, and developing new ways of interacting and supporting one another.
To be perfectly honest, it’s a challenging process. It requires a willingness to self-reflect and a commitment to pay attention to what’s below the surface of your relationship.
Yet the beauty of the process is that it allows you to create a truly satisfying future together - one where you understand yourselves and one another, where you fully heal from your hurts, and where you know how to protect each other.
Rebuilding trust takes a commitment to the process of healing and growing. This active engagement allows us to understand and deepen our other relationships too - with friends, kids, and other important people in our lives. We know it’s not easy, but we promise it’s worth it.