Regaining Trust

Richard
Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Therapy Natters podcast. I'm psychotherapist Richard Nicholls. And with me, my cohost here, another psychotherapist is Fiona Biddle. Hi, Fiona.

Fiona
Hello. How are you today?

Richard 
I'm super yet again got myself a cup of tea. This one is a green tea with Mint. And it's quite nice. It's a green tea, so it's got a strong, bitter sort of taste to it, but it's got a nice little mint feel to it. It's quite nice. I see you've got a mug there, too.

Fiona 
Yes, and mine is beetroot again. But I have to confess to a major error in last week's podcast because I said it was from Sainsbury's. Well, it was from Sainsbury's, but it was made by Twinings, so I just wanted to correct that dreadful error.

Richard
Yeah, well, if anybody's going to send us anything, it needs to be Twinings. Now, I went on a vocal coaching course once, and the vocal coach that was there was saying how important it is to keep your voice warm when you're going to use it. Don't have too cold a drink, and for goodness sake, never have milk or chocolate or anything like that before you do any vocal work.

Fiona 
Okay I don't understand the concept of not having chocolate.

Richard
The thing is, it clags up your vocal cords. It makes you sound all throaty and phlegmy. So a nice warm cup of tea goes well. So if anybody out there is interested in podcast work or voiceover work, and you want to keep your voice warm, a nice cup of tea from Twinings sounds like a good move. Are we open to sponsors? I like Omega watches. They're great.

Fiona 
And I prefer champagne to tea. And that, I'm sure is great for your vocal cords. Or Prosecco I'm not fussy.

Richard 
I'd like to see the research into that.

Fiona 
I can do something for you if you like.

Richard
Uh, that would be anecdotal research, though.

Fiona 
That doesn't mean you can't do it properly.

Richard
Just get lots of people involved. That's a party, Fiona, you'd like a party I get you. On my other project, on my other podcast, the Richard Nicholls podcast, which still slightly embarrasses me that it's called that. But hey ho, it is what it is. I like to quote as many studies as possible and research to back things up so that when somebody asks a question whether it's a listener or it's a friend that says, I've got a question, okay, I'm going to think about that. I'd like to find out the truth and not just make assumptions. Otherwise, we still carry on thinking that the world is flat. And if anybody's going to submit any questions to us here to Therapy Natters, I'd like to spend a bit of time beforehand making sure that I go through some current research and see what's been done over the years to see if what we do isn't just an idea. There's actually some backing to it. And there isn't a great deal out there about the question that was submitted because we had a question submitted. I'll jump straight into it. We had a question submitted from listener John and John says, Let me find sorry, John, let me find it. Here we are. Hi, Richard. I am struggling with being able to trust people, and more specifically, a significant other. Given my past circumstances and experiences with intimate relationships, is there any chance you could provide advice on your podcast on how to develop trust again and how to be aware of who to give it to? Thank you, John.

Fiona 
That's a Biggie it sounds quite simple, but it really is a Biggie. The facts about trust most people. Well, I don't know about most. A lot of people think it's black or white. You trust somebody, you don't trust somebody. Somebody is trustworthy. They're not trustworthy, but it is certainly much more complex than that. And it's also multilayered, I think as well. So it's not one dimensional, but it's not black and white. And it's also relational. It's between two people. It's something between two. Unless, of course, we're talking about trusting oneself. But we might get to that later. It's an element of a relationship between two people.

Richard
Mhm. Yeah. And that can be any relationship, any sort of relationship between two people. That could be a romantic relationship. That could be just a friendship, work relationship, family, anything. And each of those, each person needs to be able to offer and earn trust. And I think when we create a relationship with anybody that we, by default, expect to trust, and I think trust for a lot of people comes by default. We don't assume, or at least I need to make sure that my world isn't filtered just for somebody, uh, with a relatively healthy mindset to go, well, you automatically trust people until proven otherwise. But that's not always the case for a lot of people who have got trauma, for example, especially something that goes back to childhood when the personality was developing. If the message that was given to them by their caregivers or just significant people around them is that the world is chaotic and you never know what they're going to do next, then yes, it can be very difficult to find trust to come instinctively, indeed.

Fiona 
And I was thinking that everybody has a sort of base level of how open to trusting that they are. Uh, but you mentioned earlier about research. I've got a little quote here. It's, uh, not research per se, but it's a really well established book from Erik Erikson, I didn't look up the date. Probably should have, but I didn't. It's a long time ago, and he wrote about stages of psychosocial development. And I got this particular quote from Simplypsychology.org, which is a great site. His idea was that throughout the lifespan, all the way through the lifespan, different stages with different challenges at each stage. And the very first one, which is from birth to 18 months, is what he calls the trust versus mistrust stage. This stage begins at birth, continues to approximately 18 months of age. During this stage, the infant is uncertain about the world in which they live and looks towards their primary caregiver for stability and consistency of care. If the care the infant receives is consistent, predictable and reliable, they will develop a sense of trust which will carry with them to other relationships. And they will be able to feel secure even when threatened. If these needs are not consistently met. Mistrust, suspicion and anxiety may develop.

Richard
Yeah.

Fiona 
Nobody actually remembers their time from 18 months. There may be the odd little glimmer, but I found in talking about this to clients, they know they just inherently know whether where on that continuum from trust to mistrust they ended up that can be worked on. Um, that can be developed and changed. But it's part of that baseline that you were talking about.

Richard
Mhm. Yeah. And Erikson's psychosocial stages that has stood the test of time. There's a lot of theories that psychotherapists have put forward over the last sort of 200 years or is that exactly right? No, 200 years is probably a fair figure. And a lot of the early stuff, not much of that stands the test of time. And even some of the fairly recent in the 50s and 60s was debunked. But there are some things fairly well established. And Erik, Erikson's stuff is definitely one of them. And propped up definitely with things like Mary Ainsworth and her strange situation experiments, the studies that they did with the toddlers, some of those were very young. And there was a correlation that when children were parented in such a way that was unpredictable, that they were more likely to develop anxiety problems as they grew. To the extremes that maybe even personality disorders.

Fiona 
I would just like to add in, though, for any parents listening, don't feel that this puts huge pressure on you, because there is also the fact that if you are too consistent, then your child doesn't learn what inconsistency is like. So it's a balance. You don't have to be perfect. In fact, perfect is not a good thing. They need to learn that sometimes. Yes, of course you can have a sweet and the next day. No, of course you can't have a sweet. They need to learn that people in general are not always consistent. So it's okay. It's okay.

Richard
Yeah, absolutely. There's there's a thing, a phrase that we use in therapy a lot, is that parents should simply be good enough. Just good enough. Good enough parenting is good enough. And one of the things that I've said to clients over the years, when they've been worried about their parenting and whether they could inflict the same damage that maybe their parents did on them to their children. I say things like, as a parent, the best you can do is screw up your kids so little that only needs a couple of sessions of therapy with somebody when they're older not going to need weekly therapy for ten years, I think. And we've said this in a previous episode, I think it's impossible, uh, to not at some point put yourself in a situation where your child feels rejected, forgotten, abandoned, even if it's just for a couple of minutes. It's impossible. And as we're developing our personality, we're going to have these experiences, and it shapes us moving forwards. But what we don't want is that we get stuck with a particular model or, uh, narrative about the world that says people can't be trusted very black and white. That sort of dichotomous you're either with me or against me. And if you're not fully on board with me, well, that means that you clearly don't love me. You're going to reject me eventually anyway. Might as well push you away now. And I guess what John has experienced, along with many other people in the past, is that if a partner does cheat, I guess is the common story that gets brought up, then it's going to hurt emotionally. And it feels physically within the body. It genuinely does hurt to feel that rejected.

Fiona 
And with that experience, and especially if it's repeated, then a belief pattern is going to grow to say that this sort of relationship isn't safe. But all women or all men or all people are not trustworthy. And this is where it comes into the idea of what to do about it. Because clearly John recognises at some level that those generalisations aren't the case. Or he wouldn't be asking. He knows that some people are trustworthy. But then if you talk about some people being trustworthy, what does that mean? Because there is the cheating phenomenon, of course there's that part of it. But somebody might be completely faithful in a sexual sense, but steal your money or somebody might be really good as a provider. But there's all sorts of different factors. You have all sorts of things that you hear about, like honour amongst thieves, the different codes that there are people who shouldn't snitch, and that if you break those sorts of rules, then that's untrustworthy. So there's lots of different levels of it. But if you're talking about, well, any particular one, but take the intimate relationships one, really, it's like doing the risk analysis. Is this a risk that I'm prepared to take? Is it worth it? That's what it comes down to.

Richard
To some people, that's quite a leap of faith. 

Fiona 
Yeah

Richard
Because you're relying on your faith in others. And if your faith in others has been damaged through experiences, maybe not even just that one experience, but things that have gone on in the past. If you've witnessed friends talking about the fact that that has happened to them, it rebuilds upon the foundations that might have been there since you heard your parents arguing when you were ten years old, for example.

Fiona 
Yes. I was just going to say about parents, if you've seen one parent being unfaithful or leaving the other, that can put that bedrock in of this isn't safe.

Richard
Yeah. And then every other experience either confirms or denies that. But it's really simple to fall for those cognitive biases where we forget the things that don't match our belief system and we only see the things that do. And then it becomes, well, everybody cheats. Everybody cheats. And I remember, I think you would have been at the same conference as me. We were at a conference. It's going back a fair few years. And one of the speakers he was very passionate about his topic, and that's how we started his seminar. Do you remember he just stood there. I won't say who it is.

Fiona 
I've not got there quite yet.

Richard
He just stood there and said, Everybody in this room is a cheater.

Fiona 
Oh, yes, I've got it.

Richard
The room had been so silent. And I was on the front because obviously I was holding up the signs that say, You've got ten minutes, time out. Time out. What? You can't say that. But he wanted to confront everybody and say in his own way that everybody has the potential to cheat. But what I think he was alluding to is that cheating means something different to everybody. One person's level of you broke my trust is you had a coffee with somebody at work and you didn't tell me about it, or you saw that you went on that website or you were playing with yourself. Uh, everybody's got their own level of what cheating is. And I think those conversations need to happen in a relationship to go, Where are we at? What can we do? Yes, what can we get away with, I suppose, is what they might think.

Fiona 
And if it's a problem, then you can seek help to sort out why it's a problem, what is going on. It could be either way around, either not able to accept things that are, according to some sort of social norm, perfectly fine, like having a coffee with somebody or perhaps being able to accept too much. So either way, let's just maybe think about the idea of how some people who struggle with trust in intimate relationships will do all sorts of checking up and checking partner's phone or asking, Where were you? What were you doing? And wanting chapter and verse about their life, because they need that. And it reminds me of something from a long time ago, showing my age. But when John Major became Prime Minister, he had this thing where he was really big on accountability. And if you think about it, just the immediate thought is, well, yeah, the parliamentarians, the staff, the civil servants, etc. And etc. Need to be accountable, need to be held accountable for what they do. Sounds great, except that what that leads to that sort of narrative, it leads to a lack of trust, because they're forever having to demonstrate that they've done what they're supposed to have done in the right way and at the right time. Whereas if you just trust people to do what they need to do, well, for a start, it makes life a lot easier, but it also actually makes them more likely to do it in most circumstances. I think that's been borne out during the working from home situation over the pandemic. So many companies were fearful of their staff working from home because, well, wouldn't they just play online games all day and chat with their friends and do nothing? Hasn't turned out to be the case at all that most people do what they're supposed to do because if they're trusted to do it, they do it.

Richard
Yeah. One thing that did come out of all that, particularly 2020, when it was really quite new to work from home in such a way that everybody was, was the micro managing that some managers felt they needed to do. Because I can't see that staff member, that team member is actually working. So I just need to jump onto teams or just jump onto Zoom or whatever and just double check they're actually working and sending messages to say, oh, I notice your mouse hasn't moved for, uh, 45 minutes. What's going on? I'm on the lunch break. That's okay. The fact that a device exists that you can put your mouse on and it makes it look as if it's moving so that the screen is moving. So the manager is like, oh, yeah, their mouse is definitely moving. It's not being sat still, so they're working. That's good. The fact that that exists and it's not for oh he hasn't moved for 45 minutes. It's like, oh, you've not moved for five minutes. That means you must have been sitting on your phone for five minutes. Um, well, I'm not allowed to go for a wee? And that did happen. I was hearing those stories again and again and again. That was cropping up a lot, but not in 2021. Didn't hear those stories then. I think those managers, they got graded exposure, they got systematic desensitisation. They learned to trust. And that's absolutely vital. It shows their insecurities, for example, or their lack of faith in other people. Sometimes that comes out of. Well, is that because that's what you would do if you knew there was nobody watching you? You do nothing. Sometimes it comes from that. And there could be some guilt, not necessarily for John. Um, we don't know John's story, but it could be sometimes the reason somebody's suspicious or insecure is because maybe they, when they were younger, they might have cheated on their partner or something. And if that's the case, then that needs addressing, not necessarily with their partner, but with themselves to say, oh, I get it. I'm just scared of that happening to me, because I know that it can be done. It just needs exploring and talking through.

Fiona 
It's very close to the concept that we have one of our jargon terms of projection, where we have something that we don't like in ourselves. So rather than facing it inwardly, we put it out onto the other person so it can be. And again, taking this away from John, we're not saying that. But some people, if it's them who's not trustworthy, they see a lack of trustworthiness in other people to deflect from their own feeling.

Richard
And it needs understanding. And when you can understand it, when you can see that layer within you, that way, you can counteract it. That way you can look for the evidence that says, Is this person trustworthy after all? Yes, they are. Here's the evidence. Constant evidence. Now, when somebody has, uh, been hurt, that's a traumatic experience. It might not be full on PTSD, but it can be. There have been lots of clients of many therapists around the world who right in that moment when their partner has said, this is what has gone on and the emotion that it's brought up, the pain that it brings up, it sticks. And that's a trauma response. Now, even if it's only a mild version of that trauma response, it's going to mean that the next time they become vulnerable, their brain screams, that's painful. Don't do this. Don't do this. It's painful.

Fiona 
And going back to the idea of the risk assessment, that makes the risk seem that much greater, because the pain is blown up to be a huge thing. And I'm not diminishing it. It can be really painful.

Richard
Yeah. And the other partner needs to recognise this, whether it's somebody in a subsequent relationship and they've done nothing wrong. And that obviously happens a lot where somebody will be treating their new partner in the same way with the same level of anger and mistrust that belongs to somebody else. And they'll say, you're treating me like I've cheated on you already. I haven't done anything. And until they sit down and go, well, this is why I've been hurt before and have that conversation and be vulnerable. And I know a lot of people don't like the idea of sitting with a new relationship and being vulnerable about it. I don't know how many dates in it is before you go, oh, by the way, this is what has happened to me in my past, and it's made me a bit mistrustful. So apologies if I come across as insecure. I don't know, five, six don't know. But I wouldn't wait a year, do it when it's right. But I think those conversations need to happen, because that way you can be honest and open and rather than say, hey, who you texting. What's that all about? You can look beneath that, look closer to the bedrock and be honest and say, I'm feeling a bit insecure today, feeling a bit frightened today or whatever it is that somebody terms it to them and the partner can say what's going on. Well, I'm scaling up some flashbacks on things that have happened in the past, and with you on your phone, you just reminded me, that's all. Oh, I'm just texting my brother. Yeah, that's fine. I just need you to know every time you pick up your phone like that, I just get that twang in my heart. Oh, honey, I didn't realise. Now I'd love everybody to have that sort of simple conversation. And if they can open up, then the other partner can realise. And if you're in a relationship saving the relationship after somebody's cheated on you, I think you're well within your rights to say, I'm feeling insecure today, because when you picked up your phone, it reminded me of what you did the other year. What the partner needs to recognise is that it's okay that they haven't got over it yet. What causes problems is their guilt over what they did. Maybe it's two years later and they go, you're still going on about that? Uh, are you not over that yet? No, they probably never will be.

Fiona 
And this takes me back to the relational thing, that the trust is something that's there in between the two people. So when the person has been cheated on, it's not just their feelings. The person who did it has got feelings as well. And as you said, there's guilt there. But there could also be all sorts of other things. Depends whether they've looked into the reasons why they did it could be all sorts of reasons. And it all needs analysing and pulling apart, ideally so that each person within that relationship can understand.

Richard
And then they've got the ground to work from. A good place to go for that would simply be couples counselling. In an ideal world, everybody would do that, whether they got any trouble in their relationship or not. I think that would be a brilliant idea. You go back a few generations when society was a bit more religious, a bit more spiritual, and they were going to get married in a Church before the wedding, there would have an element of marital guidance with the vicar or the priest, a premarital chat about what marriage is like.

Fiona 
We had that 

Richard
you did. 

Fiona 
It was only brief

Richard
So, that's a recent thing?

Fiona 
Well, it seems a long time ago. It was only a brief thing. I don't know, half an hour. An hour. But I think the vicar wanted to just sort of know that we were serious and that it was the sort of wedding that he wanted to conduct. So there was even that element even then.

Richard
Wow. I don't think we should wait until there's a problem before we start talking about the possibility of problems in a relationship. That's a scary thing.

Fiona 
Though, unless people are getting together at a very young age. And even then, possibly. But I'll come back to that in a moment. Everybody's got history. Everybody's had past relationships that by necessity haven't worked because otherwise they wouldn't be in the new one. Unless, of course, they're cheating. But that gets a bit complicated. But just saying, let's say get together really young, even if they get together really young. Uh, like my youngest son and his fiance got together when they were 14. But even then, everybody's got their own personal history, their life history their experiences, their transition through the psychosocial stages. So whatever the position, you've got a relationship of two people who have stuff. I hate the phrase baggage, but they've got stuff that they're bringing with them, their personalities, their experiences, their beliefs. So absolutely. Talking, understanding, listening being vulnerable, being receptive to vulnerability.

Richard
That's what helps, really does. And I think if we're honest, it's the men that need to probably do a lot of the challenging here because our culture is quite open to the idea of women talking about how vulnerable they are and how they're feeling. Men don't have that. Men, on the whole, for the most part, are brought up in a society where we don't talk about our feelings and we don't talk about our weaknesses. And the only emotion that we were allowed to demonstrate that we have is anger. That's it. We're not allowed to show that we feel anything else. And of course, that's toxic. That's a whole other subject which I've touched on before in my other podcast. And we'll probably touch on here. And if you've got any questions about that, do send them to us, because we'd like to talk about anything that you've got. And actually, Fiona unless you've got anything you want to add on, we've kind of come to time.

Fiona 
Gosh, that went quickly. But no, I feel that was to say the things I wanted to say.

Richard
Yeah. I hope we answered John's question and any other Johns and John-ess's that are out there that are in a similar situation with similar questions. I hope we've helped you. If you do want to submit us a question, the link is in the show notes to a web page where you can get our contact details and so on. And you can submit a question and we'll try and group a lot of the questions together if they're all of a similar topic. So everybody can get a bit of a shout out and we can really cover a topic in depth. Um, but whatever your question is, as long as it's appropriate, we'll do what we can to do what we can to address it.

Fiona 
And you can be anonymous. You don't have to give your real name. It's okay.

Richard
100% yes. Anonymous listener from Redditch is fine that's happening. We'll get a lot of people from Redditch now. Right, well, I guess we'd better love you and leave you all. Have a super week. And as I say, if you need anything, you know where to to find us. Keep in touch and we'll be back next time. We'll speak to you then.

Fiona 
Bye. And thank you, John for your question.

Richard
Take care folks.

Fiona 
Bye.