In adulthood, children taught not to trust others tend to lack trust in self.
It is fully understandable, isn’t it? You meet an adult and their life just isn’t working out for them the way that they want it to. Why? Because external forces are keeping them in a constant state of worry and disappointment.
A bossy boss, a difficult partner, an overbearing parent, disobedient children…they are all external factors negatively impacting the person’s internal experience.
And, when you go looking a little deeper, the chances are the person has been negatively influenced by external factors throughout their whole life.
It started in childhood and it doesn’t look like stopping at any point soon.
If that’s the case, what did the child learn from their interactions with, and observing the behaviours of other people? The world is a dangerous place and people are cruel, selfish, and unpredictable.
Do you blame them for not trusting the rest of us?
Of course not. Think about a sensitive little soul at the age of five getting that lesson that adults aren’t safe and predictable (it doesn’t have to be a serious case of abuse to have that thought be realized).
It is a perfectly reasonable attitude to take. The problem is, as the late philosopher Alan Watts said, the person often goes on through the rest of their life not only not trusting others, but not trusting self either.
But he says this is a waste of energy.
“The moment you stop doing that, that wasted energy is available. And therefore, in that sense, having that energy available, you are one with the divine principle. You have the energy. When you’re trying, however, to act as if you were God—that is to say, you don’t trust anybody, and you’re the dictator, and you have to keep everybody in line—you lose the divine energy because what you’re doing is simply defending yourself.”
So, what can we do?
The world and the people in it will always present dangers and risks, disappointments and frustrations. Most importantly though, it (and us) will always be outside your sphere of control.
What you can do is learn to trust yourself. To have faith in your own wisdom, your own nature, and your own intelligence.
This is why working on yourself can be such an important step in people’s lives. Primarily, developing deep and accurate self-awareness.
If you don’t know yourself, how can you really trust yourself? But if you don’t trust yourself and keep being at the whim of everything and everyone external to you, we will always have control over you…because you are volunteering it to us.
That sounds to me like quite a vulnerable and exposed position.
Whereas, if you find a way to be OK within yourself (and you really must know and trust your true self to do this), A. you aren’t as drained and exhausted after being constantly pushed around and affected by external factors and B. you know that whatever happens, you will be alright because you are secure within yourself.
But what if you say “I don’t think I can trust myself”? Well, I think you are forgetting who the little child is that existed within you before those lessons were learned.
That knowing of true self is your ultimate awareness.
