“The effects of unresolved trauma can be devastating. It can affect our habits and outlook on life, leading to addictions and poor decision-making. It can take a toll on our family life and interpersonal relationships. It can trigger real physical pain, symptoms, and disease. And it can lead to a range of self-destructive behaviors.” – Peter A. Levine

What happens when trauma collides with trust? What lasting impact does being traumatised have on self-trust? Why do post-traumatic events make trust feel risky?

Trust is the foundation of any healthy relationship that allows people to feel safe, understood, and emotionally connected. When trusting, you have made yourself vulnerable to someone or something. You have invested part of who you are in a relationship. This commitment increases one’s vulnerability due to one's commitment to trust.

Trauma is about feelings of significant fear, helplessness, dissociation, confusion and disruption intense enough to have a long-lasting negative effect on a person’s attitudes, behaviour, and functioning. Trauma can destroy trust either temporarily or permanently, depending on the severity of the trauma and the resilience of the person traumatised.

Fear

Trauma triggers fear. The traumatised person feels at risk of being retraumatised. This may involve multiple permutations of fear. There may be a fear of being reinjured, or being betrayed, or being neglected, or being deceived, or being rejected.

All of these fears may lead to being hypervigilant, which keeps the abused person on high alert for anything that might be even remotely related to their trauma. Triggers to being retraumatised may lead to panic attacks and feelings of extreme vulnerability.

“Trust dies but mistrust blossoms.” —Sophocles

Mistrust

Having all this fear promotes feelings of mistrust. The person may need to be reassured that they are safe and not at risk. Relaxation may be more difficult to experience after trauma. The heightened feelings of danger may even shut down the person temporarily. The openness before trauma is now gone. Getting close to anyone may also be affected. The lack of feelings of safety may cause traumatised individuals to avoid or withdraw from relationships abruptly.

Trauma may also make it hard to forgive those people who have hurt you. Your past pain makes forgiveness more difficult due to your lack of trust.

Trusting Again

Trusting after trauma is a huge challenge. Taking up the challenge will require a recognition of the situations or behaviours that have triggered you into feeling unsafe.

Taking note of your triggers will begin the process of managing your reactions better in the future. To establish healthier relationships, talk more openly about your feelings, especially your fears.

Try to avoid, dispute, or reframe any of your negative thoughts. These thoughts can trigger you into your fears. Take small steps to build back your trust. Start with low-risk situations to build your confidence. Avoid self-blame and support yourself more often.

Be aware that self-compassion is healing your trauma. When you feel you are ready to share your experiences of trauma, seek professional help. Therapy provides the traumatised person with a safe environment that offers acceptance and non-judgement.

Trauma Bonding

Another paradox of trauma is trauma bonding. Trauma bonding is a psychological response to abuse. The abused person typically develops sympathy for the abuser due to affection and maltreatment overlapping in the relationship. The abused person then forms an attachment with their abuser and is reinforced through affection to stay within the relationship despite the abuse.

Trauma bonding can also occur in certain situations. A person may be attracted to abusive work situations or abusive social situations. These situational abuses are also a mix of affection and maltreatment. Eventually, the person attracted to the trauma bonding has to become aware of this pattern of abuse and avoid the attraction to more abuse.

Symptoms of trauma bonding include an emotional dependency on the abuser, which will only grow stronger over time. The abused person may even justify or minimize the abuse due to the strong bond with the abuser. There will be fears of isolation or abandonment that maintain the status quo. Eventually, the abused may even become self-blaming for their feelings of abuse. These symptoms point to not just a loss of trust but also a loss of self-trust.

“We have all a better guide in ourselves, if we would attend to it, than any other person can be.” ―Jane Austen

Self-Trust

How important is self-trust? How will you make decisions if you are lacking self-trust? You may become more indecisive and probably procrastinate more often. Each time this occurs, you would also be reinforcing the belief that you cannot trust yourself.

Not being able to trust yourself can lead to many of the mental health issues that you do not want. It may fuel anxiety because you are unsure of more situations due to your lack of confidence in yourself.

Lack of self-trust may lead to depression due to your increased isolation because you are not trusting yourself in the world. Intrusive thoughts may also become more prominent because your lack of self-trust increases your fears.

Elevating your self-trust will boost your confidence and your resilience. You will be less likely to fall into negative thoughts and feelings.

Like all personal characteristics, your self-trust needs to be accurate. As your confidence and self-trust grow, the accuracy of those feelings must be tested to avoid falling back into trauma. Date rape and home invasion are just two examples of a fales preemptive confidence in safety that may be an inaccurate judgement of your confidence.

The Iceberg

The iceberg is a good metaphor for trauma, which suggests that 80 percent of the iceberg below the surface is our subconscious mind, and the 20 percent above the surface is our conscious mind. This realization demonstrates the challenge that trauma presents. Our subconscious has substantial power to trigger our past trauma. To minimize that power, our conscious awareness of our current reality must be in charge. The traumatised person needs to dispute the past triggers and remain in the present repeatedly over time. Progress will begin through recognition of the power of the subconscious, but not giving in to it!