How Do I Trust After Being Betrayed and Hurt So Much?

I mean this with sincerity: it really sucks that life is hard. It always has sucked and potentially always will. It sucks trauma exists and no matter how hard we work on ourselves, that won’t heal the murderers, sexual predators, and abusive parents in the world. This planet and life was made to push our buttons because if it were easy, we wouldn’t learn our lessons!

Before I touch on finding trust, I want to add in a really valuable teaching here: the different between trust and hope, because I’m wondering if you may be sitting in hope and not embodying trust.

Hope is fearful uncertainty. Hope is future-oriented, not grounded in the now. Hope is anxiety trying to control life. Hope denounces accountability.

“I hope they’ll change.”

“Maybe it’ll be different this time.”

“If I just love harder…”

Hope is trust disguised in human desires, which is why it’s soooo easy to lean into that instead of trust (interchangeable with faith).

Trust feels less grounded at first, until you really embody it, then it’s the most grounding presence you may ever feel. Trust creates safety in uncertainty. Trust keeps you in the now, relinquishing worry about the future and how your past may creep up on you. It creates space for honest reflection and responsibility.

And … the big one … it makes space for discernment!

So, reflect and see if you have been practicing trust, or if you have been embodying hope because that might be one of the main reasons you are protecting yourself in a way that provokes constant anxiety.

Now, when I ask you to start playing in the game of trust and faith, I don’t mean blind trust.

This doesn’t mean you let Joe Schmoe you just met hold your wallet while you pee or even your best friend to take care of your beloved pet when you’re traveling.

Trust still utilizes grounded evidence to make decisions, while making room for faith that all of this, this wild weird life that we’re living, is happening for a reason. What’s that reason? I can’t tell you that, that’s up for you to decide if that’s what you feel you need in order to let go.

If you have been burned, embodying trust doesn’t mean letting that person burn you twice. It means learning your lesson, leaving room for their growth while utilizing discernment in the now of the evidence you’re given, making a decision based in a grounded mind, and trusting that whatever happens, you’ve got this.

Give that a try, and let me know how it feels!