A Letter about Trust
Hoe we Trust, and can we improve our trust?
Title: A Letter about Trust
Author: Sam Vaknin
Article:
The narcissistic condition emanates from a seismic breach of
trust, a tectonic shift of what should have been a healthy
relationship between the narcissist and his Primary Objects
(parents or caregivers). Some of these bad feelings are the
result of deeply entrenched misunderstandings regarding the
nature of trust and the continuous act of trusting.
For millions of years nature embedded in us the notion that the
past can teach us a lot about the future. This is very useful
for survival. And it is also mostly true with inanimate objects.
With humans the story is less straightforward: it is reasonable
to project someone's future behaviour from his past conduct
(even though this proves erroneous some of the time).
But it is mistaken to project someone's behaviour onto other
people's. Actually, psychotherapy amounts to an attempt to
disentangle past from present, to teach the patient that the
past is no more and has no reign over him, unless the patient
lets it.
Our natural tendency is to trust, because we trust our parents.
It feels good to really trust. It is also an essential component
of love and an important test thereof. Love without trust is
dependence masquerading as love.
We must trust, it is almost biological. Most of the time, we do
trust. We trust the universe to behave according to the laws of
physics, soldiers not to go mad and shoot at us, our nearest and
dearest not to betray us. When trust is broken, we feel as
though a part of us dies, is hollowed out.
Not to trust is abnormal and is the outcome of bitter or even
traumatic life experiences. Mistrust or distrust are induced not
by our own thoughts, nor by some device or machination of ours –
but by life's sad circumstances. To continue not to trust is to
reward the people who wronged us and made us distrustful in the
first place. Those people have long abandoned us and yet they
still have a great, malignant, influence on our lives. This is
the irony of the lack of trust.
So, some of us prefer not to experience this sinking feeling of
trust violated. They choose not to trust and not to be
disappointed. This is both a fallacy and a folly. Trusting
releases enormous amounts of mental energy, which is better
invested elsewhere. But trust – like knives – can be dangerous
to your health if used improperly.
You have to know WHO to trust, you have to learn HOW to trust
and you have to know HOW to CONFIRM the existence of mutual,
functional trust.
People often disappoint and are not worthy of trust. Some people
act arbitrarily, treacherously and viciously, or, worse,
offhandedly. You have to select the targets of your trust
carefully. He who has the most common interests with you, who is
invested in you for the long haul, who is incapable of breaching
trust ("a good person"), who doesn't have much to gain from
betraying you – is not likely to mislead you. These people you
can trust.
You should not trust indiscriminately. No one is completely
trustworthy in all fields. Most often our disappointments stem
from our inability to separate one area of life from another. A
person could be sexually loyal – but utterly dangerous when it
comes to money (for instance, a gambler). Or a good, reliable
father – but a womaniser.
You can trust someone to carry out some types of activities –
but not others, because they are more complicated, more boring,
or do not conform to his values. We should not trust with
reservations – this is the kind of "trust" that is common in
business and among criminals and its source is rational. Game
Theory in mathematics deals with questions of calculated trust.
We should trust wholeheartedly but know who to entrust with
what. Then we will be rarely disappointed.
As opposed to popular opinion, trust must be put to the test,
lest it goes stale and staid. We are all somewhat paranoid. The
world around us is so complex, so inexplicable, so overwhelming
– that we find refuge in the invention of superior forces. Some
forces are benign (God) – some arbitrarily conspiratorial in
nature. There must be an explanation, we feel, to all these
amazing coincidences, to our existence, to events around us.
This tendency to introduce external powers and ulterior motives
into our reality permeates human relations, as well. We
gradually grow suspicious, inadvertently hunt for clues of
infidelity or worse, masochistically relieved, even happy when
we find some.
The more often we successfully test the trust we had
established, the stronger our pattern-prone brain embraces it.
Constantly in a precarious balance, our brain needs and devours
reinforcements. Such testing should not be explicit but
circumstantial.
Your husband could easily have had a mistress or your partner
could easily have stolen your money – and, behold, they haven't.
They passed the test. They resisted the temptation offered to
them by circumtance.
Trust is based on the ability to predict the future. It is not
so much the act of betrayal that we react to – as it is the
feeling that the very foundations of our world are crumbling,
that it is no longer safe because it is no longer predictable.
We are in the throes of death of one theory – and the birth of
another, as yet untested.
Here is another important lesson: whatever the act of betrayal
(with the exception of grave criminal corporeal acts) – it is
frequently limited, confined, and negligible. Naturally, we tend
to exaggerate the importance of the event. This serves a double
purpose: indirectly it aggrandises us. If we are "worthy" of
such an unprecedented, unheard of, major betrayal – we must be
worthwhile and unique. The magnitude of the betrayal reflects on
us and re-establishes the fragile balance of powers between us
and the universe.
The second purpose of exaggerating the act of perfidy is simply
to gain sympathy and empathy – mainly from ourselves, but also
from others. Catastrophes are a dozen a dime and in today's
world it is difficult to provoke anyone to regard your personal
disaster as anything exceptional.
Amplifying the event has, therefore, some very utilitarian
purposes. But, finally, the emotional lie poisons the mental
circulation of the liar. Putting the event in perspective goes a
long way towards the commencement of a healing process. No
betrayal stamps the world irreversibly or eliminates other
possibilities, opportunities, chances and people. Time goes by,
people meet and part, lovers quarrel and make love, dear ones
live and die. It is the very essence of time that it reduces us
all to the finest dust. Our only weapon – however crude and
naive – against this unstoppable process is to trust each other.
About the author:
Sam Vaknin is the author of Malignant Self Love - Narcissism
Revisited and After the Rain - How the West Lost the East. He is
a columnist for Central Europe Review, United Press
International (UPI) and eBookWeb and the editor of mental health
and Central East Europe categories in The Open Directory,
Suite101 and searcheurope.com.
Visit Sam's Web site at http://samvak.tripod.com
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