Trust is never a small thing, and for many people it does not come easily, according to psychologist Pascal Anger. Learning to trust others, he said, is a gradual and ultimately beneficial process, even though building it can be genuinely difficult.
Trusting someone means accepting the other person into one's life and becoming vulnerable, with the risk of disappointment, betrayal or hurt. Yet trust remains essential to forming solid relationships, whether friendships, professional ties or romantic partnerships. Many people struggle to give it because, for them, it represents a risk of suffering.
Anger described distrust as a protective mechanism. Behind this way of functioning, which can create tension, isolation and a distorted way of seeing things, lie fears such as rejection and abandonment, some of them dating back to childhood. He said there is hypervigilance, anxiety and a fear of the unpredictable, with little room for spontaneity, which he called wearing, because everything becomes mapped out as a threat.
Roots in childhood
The capacity to trust has multiple origins but takes root in childhood, Anger said. He explained that this can stem from parents who were themselves hypervigilant, distrustful or controlling, failing to place trust in the child, when in fact trust is important for a child's development.
A child raised in an overly controlling and distrustful environment will come to associate a mistake or a setback with something serious, internalising the belief that no one is allowed to fail. The result, Anger said, is that such a person assumes bad intentions in others from the outset.
Paradoxically, he added, distrustful people often end up encountering people who are genuinely not trustworthy, as though they needed, at some point, to confirm that they had been let down and could no longer trust anyone. Yet in their own pattern of behaviour, they had done everything to end up with someone unworthy of trust, a way, perhaps, of reassuring themselves that they were right all along.
Anger said everyone is a little distrustful in certain situations, but when that becomes the only way of reading a relationship, it becomes unbearable, both for the person themselves and for others.
Humanising relationships
The psychologist said it is important to humanise relationships with others and to experience them more positively, seeking out bright spots where possible. He noted that society is already disenchanted and disoriented, so adding individual worry and darkness on top of that will not help.
That does not mean being gullible or granting trust too quickly, Anger cautioned. People who tend to trust rapidly also show an imbalance, in the form of considerable naivety, and they too carry fears. He said such people may be in denial and unwilling to see the darker side of the other person, even though it exists, and that it is important for them to open their eyes.
Often, he added, a person who grants trust quickly is also driven by fear, specifically the fear of conflict and of what it might mean to tell someone that they have been betrayed or that they failed to provide enough security.
Trust can be learned
Learning to trust does not mean giving everything from the start, Anger said, but rather following a gradual process. That means observing whether someone's words match their actions, testing their reliability, and slowly widening the circle of trust, setting small, realistic challenges to expand that zone.
Therapy can also help, he said, by offering a protected space to talk about distrust, past wounds and blockages in a secure way.
The process of learning to trust differs from person to person and depends on individual judgement as well as personal history and experience, Anger said. Even so, some people are more reassuring than others because they are punctual, keep their word, avoid underhanded behaviour and are able to explain their positions clearly.
For the psychologist, it matters to get to know and understand the other person and to keep communication open at all times. He said being betrayed or disappointed is never pleasant, but that it is important to be able to talk about it, since the other person has the right to make mistakes, provided the conversation can happen so both sides know which direction to take next depending on the response. All of this, Anger concluded, can transform distrust into something more solid within a relationship.
