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The wide, wacky, wonderful world of "TRUST"

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sKePTiKal:
Since this came up a couple times in various on-going threads, seems to me we need to apply our intuitive and understanding and analytical powers to this very broad topic. So, it's not limited to any one type of trust, or situation, or "issue"... or whatever. I want to go at this, the way TT would with some topics. Let's talk about this from all the angles, experiences, dilemmas and personal preferences until we nail the jello to the wall.

I'm pretty sure that 90% of all my anxiety issues are due to a lack of self-trust. Manifests in some recurring specific ways too. They're odd. Contradicted by actual evidence of my competence - one example, is anxiety about getting lost driving. Another is forgetting to pay a bill on time, not noticing my checking account balance, or not noticing that I didn't GET a bill, when I know I should have (including the reverse - forgetting I've already paid one.)

So driving: there are 2 incidents in the last 10-20 years where I've actually "gotten lost" - and I wasn't so far off the beaten trail or without resources, that I couldn't rectify the situation quickly. One, was driving to my old, old friend's house in the county where we both grew up & ran the back roads together. She's lived in that house since the 1980s. I kept taking the wrong turn and finally had to call her. By then, we were both laughing our heads off at me. WHAT in all that, would become anxiety? Especially, since it happened on a trip I was making from the beach in NC, all the way to the shop in Michigan... and running a lot of back roads - 2 lanes - to minimize my highway driving time.

Same trip; coming out of NC to Va Mike and I always avoided the highway around Chesapeake & Norfolk by taking the backroads through the swamps in Gates Co. It was "home turf" for him because most of his relatives live there; his parents are buried there - we've spent a lot of time there and I know the route pretty well, since I was always the passenger and able to "know" the landmarks. So since this was me driving alone back north for the first time, I was going to rely on GPS. Except GPS wanted to take me on the route I wanted to avoid... so I kept forcing it recalculate the route. And missed a turn... and didn't realize it until a landmark passed my awareness.

Crap like that happens to people ALL THE TIME. Why would that become anxiety, given how many times I've driven long distances and travelled alone... and WHY would that then gel into a distrust of myself about driving somewhere "not so familiar"? Holly and I talked about that a little, while she was driving me to where she lives in Baltimore.

Now, I spent probably 5 years of my life, driving the route between Winchester & B'more. I KNOW how to get there. But I also know, that since they've built things like Camden Park, Ravens Stadium and revamped part of Fells Point - the highway system is unfamiliar to me. Silly things like you have to go south, to go north downtown. And I'm not afraid to admit, that I was afraid I would take a wrong turn and end up in a neighborhood that was dangerous for me to be in. Those areas were dangerous back in the 80s when I lived in the city.

So the landmarks have changed. Things that may "feel" right to me... may all of a sudden look like another planet. (That same kind of change is evident in the town I grew up in, too.) So I wanted to play "navigator" the first time going to their place - it was in a part of the city I'm totally unfamiliar with. See what I remembered... what was still the same... what was different. I have a pretty good mental map of the main roads in my head - so I was associating landmarks and placenames/street names with my map. I have a better relationship with my GPS these days, too.

So, it's the intensity and level of fear I feel - when contemplating something I've done many times (successfully) in the past that is turning into an awareness that at the gut level, I just don't TRUST MY SELF. How did this happen? When did it happen? I've usually been kinda "intrepid" most of my life; up for "adventure" that didn't have any guarantees of safety, security or outcome.

Maybe that's a pretty low-level example, compared to what others are experiencing and it only seems big to me, given the tight limitations I've put on myself lately. But the same thing applies to the big trust issues, too. Relationships. "Once bitten, twice shy" is a truism; I'm not sure it's a metaphysical imperative. But I think I'm seeing a lot of us - to one degree or another - believe or act as if that's the case about others and ourselves.

So let's pick the flies out this crap and figure out what we're doing fer cryin' out loud! We're AMAZONS... we can do this in our sleep... I think we need to get our personal versions of this sorted out.

Your turn.

Hopalong:
I hear your story and raise you loads of periodic lostness tales, Amber!

I think of a few things--one, getting lost is temporarily losing control. When hypervigilance and a powerful need to control and mold one's life result from the trauma you had...getting lost would feel huge. Rather than simply like being temporarily lost. It'd take on much bigger meaning than it merits. And as we age we need to be very kind and gentle and merciful toward ourselves, because we all get lost.

Another is that when you're traveling or driving--the environment is not yours. Random new roads, changes and challenges are par for the course. But they screw with that sense of strong control because, in fact, you don't have as much as you do at home. You can pre-plan and GPS (mine drove me dead-end into a field once, I wanted to smack her...) to your heart's content but the random error will still happen, and you may, like Blanche, still have to depend on the kindness of strangers.

Maybe pondering how many friendly, decent people are all around you at nearly all times (barring war zones, where most people live in fear indoors--like some of the places where I used to teach). But mostly, people are good. That means, getting lost is okay. Because most people are willing and/or even happy to help a lost stranger get back on her way safely again.

Maybe part of this is feeling a crisis of trust in your own abilities to navigate anywhere in a controlled fashion and make no errors or meet no unpleasant surprises.

But maybe part of it is also feeling a crisis of trust in the kindness of other humans, generally.

I wonder if a pre-trip meditation would help.

xxoo
Hops
PS--I may talk about trust on my Heist thread too but this is a great general topic, I agree!

Twoapenny:
Gosh, trust is a difficult one for me, although I'm not sure whether it's trust that is my problem or my mind always going to the negative scenario - or maybe that's the same thing?

Hops, you are right about most people being kind and good, yet any situation I go into I can't help but run things in my mind of bad reactions, bad people, criticisms (of me) and fault finding.  So maybe this is lack of trust in ........... other people's decency?  Just not having a basic assumption that most people will (a) barely even notice, (b) overthink things the way I do (c) behave like arseholes?  Like the pot plant scenario, for example - I'd been running all my excuses in my head for why I hadn't taken it over, why the box was damaged, why it had got wet - and that lady was so sweet and thought I was very kind for taking it in for her and making the effort to contact her.  I doubt she even noticed any of the stuff I'd been worrying about.  So is that lack of trust in others?  Or just negative thinking?  I don't know :)

Hopalong:

--- Quote ---things in my mind of bad reactions, bad people, criticisms (of me) and fault finding.  So maybe this is lack of trust in ........... other people's decency?
--- End quote ---

Aha. Tupp, when I see your post larded with question marks, I says to meself I says:
Aha. Which question is it that Tupp's given herself a very good answer to here?  :D

I guess the only nuancey thing I'd say is that in my mind, lack of trust in other people's decency IS "negative thinking" that simply resulted (logically) from some Very Negative Experiences.

But when those VNEs become a loop in the brain, and remain unchallenged by "positive thinking" they become self-fulfilling. Expecting negativity, emit negativity, then be affirmed in negativity when negativity returns in the next experience.

I think the only way to stop the loop is to intentionally argue with your own negative thought-stream. ("I've got no real reason to assume this person will be thinking something unkind about me" or "I can't read another person's mind so I can relax about what comes next, as I've handled plenty" or "With strangers there's as much reason to hope for something pleasant as to predict something unkind, so why don't I wait and see? I can handle it either way...")

I honestly don't know whether negativity or positivity is more the norm. If I were in a refugee camp, or living in a palace of peace and justice, I'd have a firm conclusion about that.

As things go, I try to hold strangers in a kind of gentleness in my mind...extending a little force of love (not a pushy gush, just a happy beam) in my path. I see somebody in a store and I smile at them, notice the tired cashier (hey, sorry to see you're working this holiday but hope it's okay anyway), the old person especially, the person of a different ethnicity (I'm always taking the BLM button off my coat and giving it to anyone who comments (take it, it's the designer version!) and just kind of keeping general goodwill toward all in mind.

Doesn't preserve me from all nastiness but does make my walk in this cold world warmer.

That's the kind of way my Dad walked--he genuinely loved people, so he had a little bit of joy in his interactions, nearly all of them. I try to keep a similar habit. Takes my mind of myself, my miseries, my self-consciousness. For each moment I'm sending out some goodwill toward a stranger, I feel more relaxed, more part of the human community, and just....more at peace.

I can't control others, but I can control what I carry toward them.

xxoo
Hops

sKePTiKal:
OK, like I said - I've not ever been "lost" in any serious fashion. (But I'll come back to that.) Yup, I get irritated with myself for missing a turn... but the anxiety doesn't appear in the experience. It's all anticipatory. Before I've ever left home. There is definitely no sense of loss of control in the exerience. Rather I get more "switched on" and in command of myself and actions. For the most part, the actual experiences don't involve any other people - so that whole section of stuff doesn't apply.

Driving is one of the most relaxing exeriences for me. I simply don't think; just drive. I have a good internal compass - read maps well - and know how to navigate pretty decently. Maybe not tracker level skills - but I've never ever been that "lost", that it wasn't merely an inconvenience.

But there is a whole 'nother type of lost - dissociation. Think something more persistent than day-dreaming. Like being caught between two complete self-contained world's that contradict each other. That's what I think my fear is about - somehow returning to that state.

Driving - not "thinking" - daydreaming a bit - on "autopilot" - I think maybe I slide closer to that state than I'm comfortable with. (And that is also my issue with some forms of meditation...)

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