Step 5 of 6 · Heal From Discrimination & Prejudice
Trust — Including Yourself
Trust — Including Yourself
Step 5 · 12 min
🎬 Video lesson coming soon
After abuse, trust is damaged — not only in the person who perpetrated harm, but often in people generally, in your own judgment, and sometimes in your own perceptions of reality.
Rebuilding trust is not naive. It is essential for a life that includes genuine connection.
Betrayal trauma (Freyd): when those meant to protect cause harm
The specific difficulty of trusting others after abuse — and why it makes sense
Rebuilding trust gradually: the research on trust repair
Self-trust as the foundation: trusting your own perceptions, judgment, and instincts
Jennifer Freyd's betrayal trauma theory identifies the specific psychological injury that occurs when harm is perpetrated by someone on whom the victim was dependent for care or safety — a partner, a parent, an authority figure. The injury is not just the harm itself, but the betrayal of the trust that made the relationship possible. This form of trauma is particularly damaging to the capacity for trust in future relationships.
Why distrust after abuse makes complete sense: the instinct to be wary of close relationships after having been harmed in one is not a pathological response — it is rational learning. "I trusted this person and was harmed" produces, reasonably, "I should be more careful about whom I trust." The problem arises only when this reasonable caution becomes so generalised that no relationship is ever safe enough to trust, and genuine connection becomes impossible.
Self-trust: one of the most important forms of trust to rebuild after abuse is trust in one's own perceptions and judgment. Gaslighting specifically targets this — creating self-doubt that makes the victim dependent on the abuser's version of reality. Rebuilding the capacity to trust your own experiences, memories, and instincts is a foundational recovery task.
Rebuilding trust gradually: the research on trust repair (Mayer, Davis, Schoorman) suggests that trust is rebuilt through consistent evidence over time — not through a single decision. In the context of new relationships after abuse, this means: moving at your own pace, noticing the difference between past-based fear and present-moment evidence, and giving trust in proportion to what has been earned rather than all at once or not at all.
Therapy as a safe context for rebuilding trust: the therapeutic relationship — with a trauma-trained therapist who maintains consistent safety and honesty — is often the first context in which it becomes possible to trust again. It provides a contained experience of trust that can generalize.
Find a comfortable position · Read slowly
This exercise is gentle — it is not asking you to force trust, only to look for small evidence.
Find a quiet moment and write.
First: who or what do you still trust, even partially? It might be a long friendship. It might be a pet. It might be your own gut feeling in moments of clarity. It might be a therapist, or a small part of yourself that sought out this program. Even the smallest trust counts. Write it down.
Second: think of one recent interaction — with a friend, a colleague, a family member, anyone — that was different from the dynamics of the abusive relationship. Not necessarily dramatic. Maybe someone listened without dismissing you. Maybe someone followed through on what they said. Maybe someone disagreed with you respectfully.
Write it down. Notice what it felt like, even for a moment, to be treated with basic consideration.
Third: what would one small act of self-trust look like today? Not a big declaration — something quiet. Trusting your own read of a situation. Following through on something you told yourself you'd do. Saying what you actually think to someone safe.
You don't have to have healed your trust to begin using it wisely. The two happen together.
Trust given wisely — in proportion to what has been earned, at your own pace, on your own terms — is not naive. It is one of the most courageous acts of recovery.
You get to decide who earns more. You get to decide the pace. You are in charge of this now.
The final lesson is about what is possible on the other side of all of this — and what is being built, right now, even as you read this.