How Important is Trust?

We have already discussed the first two roadblocks to forgiveness: anger and fear. Today, we move on to tackle a particularly stubborn roadblock: mistrust. I hope that by the time you finish reading today's post, you will have a solid understanding about how mistrust is holding you back in many areas of your life, including the ability to forgive.

Understanding the psychology behind trust is important to our recovery.
Erik Erikson was a German psychologist (1902-1994) who became famous for his theories about the stages of psychosocial development. He was very interested in how we form our identities, and he listed eight stages of development from birth to death. Each stage is marked by a conflict that must be resolved in order for a person to achieve complete emotional growth.

Below is a brief summary of Erikson's work; including ages, conflicts to be resolved at each age, and a virtue to be gained in the process:

Ages.......Conflict to be Resolved........Virtue to be Gained

0-1...............Trust v Mistrust.......................Hope
1-3...............Autonomy v Doubt..................Will
3-6...............Initiative v Inadequacy..........Purpose
6-12.............Industry v Inferiority..............Competence
12-18...........Identity v Confusion................Fidelity
18-40..........Intimacy v Isolation................Love
40-65..........Generativity v Stagnation.......Caring
65-death.....Integrity v Despair..................Wisdom

When we experience abuse or trauma during any one of the stages of psychosocial development, we can become stuck. For children who are victimized or neglected between the ages of birth and one year, a severe lack of trust in others undermines all future developmental stages. Trauma during later stages may alter other areas of psychosocial development.

There are social and emotional consequences for mistrust.
For many survivors of abuse and trauma, mistrust becomes a way of life. We rely only on ourselves, because others have wounded us so deeply. We develop the mistaken belief that trusting only ourselves will keep us safe. In reality, this belief system merely serves to isolate us from others so that we never reach our full potential.

Before you decide that you are never going to trust others, I want to make it very clear how a lack of trust can deeply hurt us. Based on Erikson's studies, if we decide that we will never take a chance at trusting someone, we may anticipate:

1) expecting negative outcomes from most of our experiences;
2) living in an emotional prison where we take hasty actions without feeling or thinking;
3) never achieving satisfaction in serving others through the use of our God-given talents;
4) failing at most tasks that we attempt;
5) lying to our spouse, employer, children, and God;
6) never knowing what it means to love other people or God;
7) going throughout life unable to feel compassion for others in need; and
8) dying without wisdom.

I don’t know how you feel when reading this list that results from mistrust, but it sounds like living hell to me. It seems like a sure-fire way to remain depressed, anxious, fearful, and lonely for the rest of our lives.

There are spiritual consequences for mistrust.
When the Israelites were dying of thirst in the desert, God commanded Moses to speak to a rock to make it produce water for them. Instead, Moses struck the rock with his rod to make the water pour forth. He did not trust God to cause water to come out of the rock by simply speaking the words to it. (See Numbers 20:1-13) The consequences were severe.

The Lord said to Moses and Aaron, “Because you did not trust in me enough to honor me as holy in the sight of the Israelites, you will not bring this community into the land I give them.”(Num 20:12)

Blessings await those who know how to trust.
If, on the other hand, we can learn how to trust, we may find opportunities to develop the following abilities:

1) to persevere in the belief that positive outcomes are possible for us;
2) to make well-thought-out decisions after considering our own feelings;
3) to discover our purpose in life, based on our God-given talents;
4) to perform tasks competently;
5) to maintain a faithful relationship with a spouse, an employer, or God;
6) to feel love for a spouse, children, acquaintances, or God;
7) to care for children, the sick, elderly, handicapped, or poor; and
8) to gain wisdom through our life experiences.

There is freedom in learning to trust.
If we can learn to trust God first for all of our needs, we can set ourselves completely free to trust anyone...including ourselves. Tomorrow, we will discover how to trust again--or perhaps for the first time--so that we can fully experience all that the world has to offer. Remember, learning to trust helps us to remove one more roadblock on our journey toward forgiving.

Today's Challenge
In your journal, write down the names of people whom you don't trust. Beside each name, write the incident that caused you to mistrust them. Note your age at the time. Then, look back at Erikson's chart above and see if you can pinpoint which stage of development was disturbed by mistrust.