My trust issues started when I was 18 months old

Healing stories #2

When I talk with a person, my first thought is, "How far can I open up to this person?"

Should I limit myself to topics like the weather, etc.? Or can I dive deeper, share things, and find commonality?

Nine out of ten times I don't go further than talking about what they ate.

Because my ability to trust is battered.

Through the self-awareness workouts, I learned about my issues with trusting people. (Also, trusting myself. But that is a big topic for another story). I recalled the reasons. Could it be because of my friend’s betrayal? Or could it be due to my colleague who took credit for my hard work? Or could it be because of my parents leaving my side when I needed them the most? All of these impacted my ability to trust, for sure. 

But all of these were just exacerbating that trust problem that was implanted in my subconscious. 

When was the seed for this problem sown?

In the first 18 months of my life.

I was surprised to learn about this. But it made a whole lot of sense.

According to Erik Erikson, a developmental psychologist, birth to infancy is a stage where we navigate the stage of trust versus mistrust. If our parents meet our basic needs of food, care, and comfort, we develop a healthy trust. If they are neglectful or inconsistent, we are prone to developing a general mistrust. This is important for our emotional and social development.

So why am I talking about this now?

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For those who are new, I’m taking up a workbook guided inner child healing journey. This is a part of my documentation series. To know more, read this post and this.

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As a part of healing the inner child, I need to work on the different stages of life where my wounds began.

I started with my infant stage, i.e., birth to 18 months. At this stage, the foundation of three crucial elements is laid—safety, nurture, and trust. We learn these skills when our parent/caregiver meets the basic needs of this period.

How our caregivers meet our needs determines our ability to feel safe, nurtured, and trust in later life. Specifically, safety and nurture are felt through physical contact with our caregivers—how they fed us, touched us, and kept us warm and comfortable. The trust part is nourished through how our caregivers emotionally connect with us.

If any of these needs aren’t met, we can develop issues with any of these three.

But how will I remember what happened in my infancy?

Step 1: Identifying the infant’s pain:

Everything that I’m feeling today is a reflection of my prior experience. 

Thus, the author gives a set of statements that I could relate to at present. These statements were divided into three groups based on the problem they stem from—lack of safety, nurture, and trust. I need to rate how closely I relate to the statement with always being on one end and never on the other. 

I’m not going to give you all the statements. You need to get the book for that. But I’ll tell you where I had the problem and to what extent.

My major issue was that I have this inability to trust people that I come across in my life. I can feel safe to some extent, but that in turn depends on how much I trust the other person. And lastly, I can very well acknowledge my needs and feel nurtured.

The next step is to get deep into the pain.

Step 2: Researching the pain:

I believe this is the hardest step. (You will know why at the end)

Having identified our pain, we now need to research its origin. We need to find the answers to the how and why. This step involved a lot of introspective and extrospective work. I’m dividing them into the four substeps that I followed:

1. I've got to interview myself.

Here, I was asked to remember any sensations and feelings from my infancy. Honestly, I didn’t remember anything at all. So, I moved to the next.

2. I have to interview my body.

Here, I had to listen to the self-recorded guide and meditate on my body. Looking for bodily sensations that I have when I feel abandoned, betrayed, or needy. This was easy. 

I know that in such situations I feel an aching tightness in my chest. It feels difficult to breathe. I could sense my pounding heart. And the pain shifts to my stomach. Now it is a sharp one, like acid being poured in. I need to lie down alone in my space to get back to normal. 

This was clear, as I had done similar exercises before and then went on to the next.

3. I've got to learn how I treat my body.

This step involved a series of questions about how we treat our physical body at present. The rationale is that our present relationship with our body is the evidence of our past trauma. (Read Issa’s post on numbing.)

I am well aware by now that I’m using food as an escape route. I feel sad, an ice cream goes in. I feel mad, a huge chocolate bar goes in. I feel dull or bored: hot and spicy fried food goes in. I eat based on my mood. I know I’ve been treating my body like a dumping ground. 

But I realized this a bit earlier. And I’ve started healing my body along with my inner child. So, this step just lets me connect the dots. 

4. I've got to interview my family/caregiver.

Okay, this was the challenging part. Here I need to interview either my parents or relatives who were involved with me in my infancy. I can ask them about how that time was for them and the important events. This is to get to the reasons for those wounds.

It is true that I’ve realized and moved forward in taking steps to heal my wounds. But it is also true that the people who were involved in it have not changed. This could mean that I have a higher chance of getting hurt if I ask questions about my past. 

The exercise was to interview at least two to three people. I took no pressure. I chose one: My mom. Because she is the one with whom I've already opened up a little. 

Talking to her, let me learn her side of the story more. I was nurtured and taken care of well as an infant. I had my grandma, uncle, aunts pampering me all through my childhood. There is no gap in the amount of physical contact, protection and nourishment that I received then. I’m grateful for that. 

But my mom, who was living with her in-laws, was not emotionally available to me. She was living in fear and hurt all through the years. She was in the constant run to protect herself from mental abuse and loneliness. Hearing this, I felt sorry for her, but also I was relieved. Because I know it’s not my fault. I also know now that I can empathize better with my mom.

And the touching part is that she admitted that she had taken out everything on the little me. Though there were no more words shared after, I felt a bit relieved. To hear her say that. 

I had this clear picture now:

I got all my basic needs met except for the emotional connection as an infant. This reflects today my inability to trust people despite knowing them well and at times feeling safe. And I’m taking it out on myself by numbing my body. Also, I know the reason and I accept that no one is at fault here. 

I still have more work to do in this infant stage. But all this realization made me want to know what trust meant.

To me, it is to be able to:

• Talk to someone with the confidence that they will respect me and not take advantage of me.

• Confide in them without the fear of being gossiped about behind my back.

• Ask for help without the fear of abuse or mockery.

• Not assume that others will hurt me.

• Create new relationships with an open and free mind.

• Not keep questioning the fairness and honesty of the other person. 

Now the question for you:

What does trust mean to you?

Weeks highlights: 

• Completed the 1st week of the 90 days or let me call it the 12-week challenge. Feeling proud of my little streak of consistency.

  

  
  

• I’ve also been doing Christina Fang's 90-day writing challenge. You need to write 90 words every day for 90 days. It is a good exercise for me to write short, concise stories, and I’m really enjoying it. These are my stories from the first three days.

• This week, I’m adding a recommendation section to my newsletters. I will share the stories that touched me or gave me pause.

Those that gave me deep thoughts:

Are you forcing yourself to be happy by Sonaakshi Sinha

A quick update by The Sleepy wildflower

If you want to follow along or want to support me, you are one click away from it.