Can Trust Be Rekindled?
/My daughter attended the same high school as most of the girls in her local Girl Scout troop. One day, she came home stunned. One of the girls had reported another one for having a weapon in her backpack. She lied. Nonetheless, all hell broke loose. The police were brought in with special firearm detection dogs who sniffed throughout the school, locating nothing. There may have been a lockdown. There were visits to the principal’s office, sessions with the school counselor, and more. My daughter lost trust in the girl who falsely reported the nonexistent weapon and her interest in Girls Scouts waned.
This breach of trust was not repaired. My daughter found the lie so heinous and damaging that she had no interest in maintaining the friendship. Was it possible to rekindle the trust? Yes, it was possible; however, that rekindling would require some key ingredients.
Trust is foundational in all relationships, providing the safety to connect, let down your guard, and open your heart. Trust develops over time. Trust allowed you to connect with your parents or caregivers when you were very young as they met your needs. Trust stages the environment for making friends, developing intimate relationships, and maintaining long-term commitments. It is the glue that binds you with others and that supports your wired directive to connect.
Things happen in early life that impede the development of trust. One’s needs being unmet, neglect, abuse, substance use, parental absence, volatility, violence, instability, and anything else that alerts your nervous system to a lack of safety can all derail the stitching of trust between you and someone else. Those experiences inform your belief system, which you carry with you into adulthood. Those beliefs can determine how you will respond to a breach of trust. Your children are developing their belief system right now.
What are the ingredients needed to repair a breach of trust? Here are four:
Both parties would need to value the friendship or relationship enough to do the work of repair. Repair requires energy. It requires time and commitment. My daughter and I discussed the situation that happened at her high school. We softened the tone of the discussion by becoming curious about the motivation for the false report and empathetic with the impact on the girl wrongly accused. My daughter was clear in her decision not to pursue repair.
Both parties would need to be willing to be vulnerable. By vulnerability, I mean open heartedness. They would need to be able to tenderly talk about the feelings that arise and what they need in the friendship. They would need to be able to listen to one another and to drop any agenda. They would need to avoid judgement as much as possible.
The harmed party would need to be able to set boundaries. They would need to be able to firmly and clearly express what is ok and what is not ok with them. They need to be rooted in their values.
The party who did the harm would need to be self-accepting enough to embrace accountability. Accountability does not mean punishment. It means empathetically seeing the harm caused (the impact on the other person), letting the other person know how they will handle things differently in the future, and doing some sort of meaningful make-up that goes beyond an apology.
You guide your children in the ways of trust by your decisions about repair in your own relationships. They watch you and learn. Engage with them, explaining how you reached your decision. Ask their opinion. When they come to you when they have experienced a rupture in trust, see if the key ingredients are there. Do they value the relationship enough to do the work? Can they be vulnerable? Can they set clear boundaries? Is the person who caused the rupture able to be accountable?
Discussion about each of those four ingredients can provide immense learning for both of you. It provides guidance to them on managing their relationships down the road. It lets them know how much agency they have in creating relationships that provide safety.
If you would like to go on an enriching exploration of trust, consider joining me for our May program, “Trust: Building the Foundation of All Relationships”. I would love to have you there! (Visit https://wholeheartedparenting.com/shop/trust for details and registration.)