It's not possible to truly TRUST someone who hasn't EARNED it!
I’ve seen parents who encourage their kid to “hug” a relative or adult friend of theirs that the child does not know or have a sense of connection with. This represents major dangers especially for females, who grow up with the ideation that they must automatically trust everyone they encounter, regardless of what their inner senses tell them about a person! Hence, the high number of rapes and murders by predators who are seldom apprehended or punished for their crimes of ‘convenience.’
We might meet someone we like a lot, and decide that we want to trust them or should trust them, but trust can’t be based on a mental decision. Trust is a feeling that emanates from inside of our body that's built on months, often years of having observed consistently positive behaviors in another, that make us feel safe enough to count on them. You might wanna reference tried and true friendships, here.
The things I speak about and write about are experienced by my public as being ultra-consistent. So, whether you approve of or like what I share, or you don’t~ at least you have a strong sense of how I think, what I believe is true, and where I stand. I suppose this could be why people have come to trust me over the past 20 years I've been accessible within public venues, and they’re eager to buy my books.
You'll notice you get precisely the same messages over and over and over again in my social media posts, my videos and in my website articles. The concepts and ideas my words convey, never vary. I don’t contradict myself year to year or decade to decade, and you can take that to the bank! Maybe this is why I’ve become a reliable and trusted international presence.
My parents were honest, integrous people. My dad was honest to a fault. If he didn’t like or approve of you, ya knew it. He pulled no punches, and neither do I. My mom was well-read and articulate. I inherited some positive traits from each of them, for which I’m grateful.
Someone’s consistent behavior patterns (whether positive OR negative) engender our sense of their predictability. Even when we have a toxic friend or lover, we come to rely on their predictable behaviors toward us~ but if you were taught as a youngster that you “should trust others,” despite what your intuition and instincts are alerting you to, you could stay too long at the fair with the hope that someone’s “true nature” will emerge to alter your disappointing perceptions, and you’re fucked.
Your head is capable of lying to you, in order to serve whatever wishlist or agenda is on your platter. Your body senses are not! Intuition and instinct are the tiny feelings that rise up inside our torso, which try to warn us of danger ahead~ or that a different choice or decision will serve us better. Devoid of these, we’re literally shooting in the dark, unable to sense when we might actually hit the bullseye and have a positive outcome, or not.
Emotional dissociation from painful feelings when we’re very young, prevents our instincts and intuition from developing~ for alas, these are bodily sensations that help us determine whether or not another is trust-worthy. If you haven’t learned to develop and entrust these inner sensations with protecting and guiding you, you can’t trust yourself to make self-affirming decisions. How often DO you second-guess yourself, because your head ~not your GUT made that particular choice??
Psychotherapists encourage you to “feel your feelings,” but they never teach you how to begin doing this, which leaves you ill-prepared not only for deciding whom to Love~ but for making healthy, gratifying choices that serve you the rest of your Life.
Incidentally, most of us grew up with the myth, that if we make a right choice, we’ll feel good afterward. This is largely untrue. RIGHT choices are the hardest to make, because they almost never yield immediate gratification (which is why emotionally underdeveloped people always second-guess themselves in these instances).
But, do Right Choices build Integrity? Do they enhance Character? Do they mature us, to where we learn to tolerate delayed gratification? Do they grow and magnify our capacity to trust Ourselves?
You bet your ass, they do! Children and teens seek instant gratification. Fully-developed, self-actualized adults have grown the patience to wait for the extraordinary personal rewards they know are forthcoming.