Is Your Emotional-Trust Account Overdrawn?

by Josephine Faulk, MPH · Published August 20, 2018 · Updated January 14, 2019

Has your emotional trust account been overdrawn since early childhood? Do you feel deeply challenged and even fearful of allowing emotional intimacy to blossom within your closest relationships?

As survivors of childhood trauma, at our very core, we have assimilated a faulty understanding that to reveal our flaws and weaknesses to another is tantamount to requesting they reject and abandon us. We live with the false belief that if we tell people what we really want and need and what we don’t want, they will not remain with us.

As children our feelings and needs were rarely, if ever, considered. We learned to disconnect from the fear and pain of that by disconnecting from our own emotions. We struggle daily to reconnect and, even more so, when we do grab one by the tail we wrestle with regulating the damn thing. The mere thought of tuning into our feelings seems an Amityville Horror in the making.

Many of us had parents who were mired in the effects of their own childhood trauma. The effects of which ranged from mental illness to narcissism, depression, addictions and some were even sociopaths; a result of their own childhood chronic stress.

As we begin our healing journey it becomes increasingly clear to us that the debilitating behaviors and choices of our negligent, or just plain incompetent, parent/s really had nothing to do with us. We were innocent children just trying to make sense of our inconsistent environment. To all of their drama, we played peripheral roles, walk-on parts.

It’s no wonder we have trust issues, is it? My entire life I never even considered pouring my heart out to either of my parents. Certainly, there have been people throughout my life that would have listened, comforted and advised me with wisdom and compassion or at least held space for me while I expressed my feelings and fears. But, I assimilated early on that there was no point in telling anyone what I felt, feared or needed. I honestly couldn’t see the point.

In my recovery journey I learned how to build trust in ways that didn’t light up my limbic system, that part of the brain that holds all our survival instinct cues and is the facilitator of fear, for better or worse. Now, as I unfold myself to another, one petal at a time, I give myself enough time and space to observe the effects. Then, if all the signs of trust remain intact, I unfurl another petal – blossoming into an emotionally intimate relationship that confirms my own humanity and proves ~ I have been Worthy of this love all along.

Learning to trust again is one of the inevitable benefits of recovering from the lingering effects of your childhood trauma. Granted, your trust is never going to be a blue light special. But, you can learn how to slowly and safely rebuild your emotional trust account one baby step at a time.

Come, take my hand. There is much work to do.