09/13/2022
The 5th Task of Forgiveness: Rebuilding the Trust
Two and half years after I started this series I come to the last task of forgiveness. My severe procrastination on completing this blog series reinforces why I should never be trusted to do paperwork, an issue of ability that will be discussed as you read on. This task also includes perhaps the most difficult to understand and nuanced of all the tasks of forgiveness.
As we work through the tasks of forgiveness we get away from danger and injury in the process of submitting the safety, we force accountability of what was done and name it and identifying the offense, we take stock of the injury and hurt that we have endured when we recognize the damage done, and we do the most unfair thing, re-victimizing our self, as we absorb the cost of repair. All these tasks are individual tasks that do not primarily focus on any relationships that have been damaged by the offense. In the 5th task of rebuilding the trust we must face the options of rebuilding a relationship with our self and with the offender.
Our society frequently has difficulty seeing trust is something more than an emotional state. We consider trust synonymous with care or virtue. Failures of trust are often seen as character flaws and allowed to destroy relationships, turning into long term resentments that I often hear from my clients with phrases such as “if he really cared about me…” or “if she thought about somebody other than herself….” Failures of trust in this way quickly become reduced down to moralistic insults, setting one person up as morally superior and the other is inferior.
When people are asked to define what trust is, or why they trust another individual, they often put all the burden on issues of care, affection or alternatively the failures of trust are put on issues such as selfishness, arrogance and entitlement. What gets lost in our shortsighted reaction is the role the ability plays in the process of trust.
Trust requires two things, neither of which can rightly be ignored in a healthy relationship but often are to the detriment of both victim and offender alike.
Trust requires Goodness and Ability.
Goodness is the quality of being virtuous beneficial, or perhaps most clearly, nourishing towards an object of value. We use phrases such as “be good to each other” without little thought of what it truly means a built-in to such phrases as incredible wisdom. Goodness is not merely an emotional state. As the state of conviction and commitment. It’s a focus to choose behaviors or to change your behavior in order to provide for the care of something of value. Showing goodness to another is to focus on doing what nurturers the other. We can be a good parent, nurturing our child, a good pet owner, nurturing our animal, good employee, nurturing our role in the organization, a good friend, nurturing both the friendship itself and the life of our friend separate from any benefit and may bring us in the short term.
Goodness ultimately says “I see you; I see your value and I want to take care of that value to protect it and see it grow.” In order for trust to grow we must look at the focus of our trust and ask “are you the kind of person who wants what is good for me and will nurture me?”
Goodness is undermined by two factors which are flip sides of the same coin: cynicism and shame. Cynicism says you are worthless while shame says I am worthless. Both are toxic to the establishment of goodness and ultimately will erode the foundation and formation of trust.
Cynicism is based in the one up attitude. It views down the nose at others in life, counting them unworthy of trust. Every decade has a favorite diagnosis for armchair clinicians. This decade’s flavor is narcissism. Politics surely has something to do with this however the growth of entitlement at various levels society plays a role in this as well. Narcissism says “you only have value to me as long as I can use you for my benefit.” This is the opposite of goodness. Goodness says “even if I do not benefit from it, I will do what’s beneficial for you.” Goodness requires a recognition that the value of another is separate from any personal enrichment or improvement we might experience. Goodness ultimately says, “I will treat you well because you are you.” When an individual is unable to want what is good for another purely because of the intrinsic value the other holds, and not due to some anticipated benefit, their goodness should be called in question. Such individual may be trustworthy but only in so far as you continue to bring them benefit. You are ultimately disposable to them as soon as you stop being useful to them. Narcissists certainly fit in this category as do other harder to define individuals such as psychopaths and sociopaths; labels that get thrown around frequently as insults. However, many others also fit in this category. Selfish individuals that we would never consider that have a mental diagnosis such as teenagers will often demonstrate this form of trust or conditional goodness. Cynicism simply says “I can’t trust you because you don’t see what I’m worth.”
Shame is based on the one down attitude. It views others as constantly better. Shame gets in the way of the process of building trust by never considering yourself worthy of having goodness shown to you. The shame filled person looks at another and asks, what we all ask, “are you the kind of person would want what’s good for me?” However, the shame filled person makes the substitution. When they say “me” they insert in their own mind “I’m a horrible person, a piece of crap, no one in their right mind would want what’s good for me. Anybody who says that they do is just trying to use me.” Shame will take the most virtuous, goodhearted and beneficial act and reinterpret it as an act of pure selfishness, refusing to believe that anyone or anything would actually want what is good for the shame filled individual. Shame simply says “I can’t trust you because I’m not worth it.”
Many stop the development or judgment of trust at this point without considering any other factors. Any failing is seen as a character flaw and simplified down with phrases such as “he selfish”, “she’s only in it for herself”, “they’ll use you up and spit you out.” However, this oversimplified view ignores one other major component necessary for trust, the demonstration and attainment of the ability that is the target of trust.
Ability is the possession of a skill, talent or proficiency in a specific area. Ability can range from the knowledge of human anatomy to perform an appendectomy to the patient’s the deal with the toddler’s temper tantrum. Ability comes in many forms. For some it may be physical strength, tools or experience. For others it might be more internal attribute such as patients, wisdom or perseverance. While Goodness says “I want what is best for you”, Ability says “I can do what is best for you.”
I have a wonderful wife. She works incredibly hard for me and my family and is incredibly self-sacrificing. She is wise and generous and always encourages me to be better. If my appendix burst, would I trust my wife to remove my appendix? Of course not. Not because I doubt her desire for my well-being, because I think she wants me to die or any other reason questioning her heart for me. I would not trust her because she works in the finance industry and has no medical training. This is merely an issue of Ability, not Goodness.
There have been several medical doctors through the years in various countries who have been jailed for the illegal harvesting of organs. They are qualified medical professionals. An appendectomy is a fairly straightforward medical procedure. With a trust one of these doctors to perform an appendectomy on me? Not if I had any other option. Why? Not because of Ability. They have sufficient medical training and experience to perform their job but their attitudes of selfishness, willingness to pursue their own profit to the detriment of patient, has shown they have a severe lack of Goodness.
In a similar way have often had clients with difficulty lying. It would be very easy to go to a place of denigrating their goodness however as I talk to these clients, I frequently find out that their ability to tolerate conflict, face disappointment or embrace the idea of their own failures is so overwhelming that the simply cannot tolerate the discussing the truth, let alone dealing with the consequences of the truth. They lie because they lack the ability to emotionally regulate their own uncomfortable sensations that would emerge if they are honest with themselves or others. When faced with such individuals it’s very easy to forget that emotional regulation is skill and see their failings as nothing but a character flaw, an indication that they are not good. We throw labels upon them such as manipulator, fake, people pleaser, chameleon, etc. During 15 years of working with the criminal system I have certainly worked with my share of people who meet the guidelines for a psychopath. I am not under any illusion that such people actually exist however I frequently find that many people engage in lying and manipulative behavior lack the internal abilities of emotional awareness, distress tolerance and emotional regulation in sufficient quantity to tolerate their own pain.
Trust requires a combination of Goodness and Ability. But how does this apply the forgiveness?
During an injury trust is broken. An offender violates the trust of the victim by causing harm. The victim may in turn lose trust within themselves for not being able to stop the harm. Forgiveness can only completely occur when trust is restored. Hear me clearly this does NOT mean restoration of our relationship. This is not always safe. Forgiveness does not, again, does NOT require you to allow an unsafe person back into your life. When an offender continues to be unsafe forgiveness means you relinquish any burden that you hold over them for payment of the damage they have caused. When an offender changes in safety is possible, trust in the offender may be the end goal of forgiveness. When they remain unsafe, trust in one’s self must be the end goal of forgiveness.
Restoration of trust may have an endpoint in the final declaration by victim “I was unable to stop myself from being hurt, but I have made changes so I will never be hurt like that again.” However, many times a relationship is able to be restored. Trust is often a two-way street in such cases, but not all. A victim may learn to trust in unrepentant offender by increasing their capacity for self-defense and protection without completely cutting off the relationship. In all cases trust is conditional and in a case with an unrepentant offender, trust in the other is very limited. Often times trust is based on mutual self-interest. As long as that self-interest is assured a trusting relationship is able to be sustained. Once that self-interest is been undermined the trust of the relationship is in jeopardy as well. If you have ever argued with the server at a restaurant and then wondered if they will spit in your burger as they bring it out, you know what this dynamic is like.
Trust in self may be a larger factor in forgiveness than most people recognize. It is easier to blame others. We must recognize that in nearly any injury part of us feels betrayed, part of us feels powerless, part of us feels angry, part of us feels a desire for revenge a part of us feels compassion for the offender, a part of us believes we deserved it. We all have a multiplicity of parts and frequently these are in contention with each other, especially in any case when forgiveness is called upon.
Forgiveness frequently cannot happen if we have not faced the part that holds resentment toward our self, allowing the victimization to occur. Yes, our brain may tell us there is nothing we can do/could have done, that we had no role in what happened to us, but our parts do not always agree. Frequently a part is yelling and screaming saying “you left me to suffer there, you didn’t even fight, you didn’t even try to stop it, you’re just as bad as they are.” Restoring the trust within our own internal system is perhaps the most difficult task.
We must gain the skills, knowledge and talent that we did not possess that allowed the injury to occur in order to reassure our parts that even though this happened in the past things will be different in the future and we will not be hurt in the same way. Perfection is not what our parts expect. However, self-loathing, self-anger and self-punishment often comes from a place where we have not engaged with our internal world sufficiently so that our wounded parts know we will make changes to protect your whole self from never being hurt in the same way again. We can never promise our parts we will never be hurt again from anything. This is unrealistic and even the most self-loathing part of us knows that. However, we can say “I care about myself enough that I will gain abilities to do everything within my power and never let myself be hurt that way again.”
Suicidal thoughts often come from this place. Parts of us the been hurt and are unable to trust our self to protect from future hurt and therefore they hang onto the thoughts of death is the final escape. These parts say “I don’t know if I can trust you to handle it, if it gets too much, I always know a way out.” Generally, these parts are exhausted and would love to put mental energy and emotion into a different part of life. These parts often will only stop the thoughts of su***de when we can trust our self to care about the pain and do something different in order to ensure that we never hurt in the same way again.
In my 20 years of working with trauma one consistent factor has been seen time and time again. Trauma victims who have not healed do not trust themselves. Frequently trusting oneself is one of the last tasks of treatment. Many defense mechanisms will be presented to avoid their pain. This includes substance use, s*x, self-harming behaviors, workaholism, anger and many others. These buffering behaviors stay in place even after all the trauma has been discussed, desensitized and daily life has mostly normalized. These behaviors stay in place until the wounded parts are able to hear from the self “I see your pain, care about your pain, and I will do something different so you never have to go back there again.” This is the core of self-forgiveness and often necessary before these parts of our self are willing to allow their protective behaviors to slip away.
We have a society that enjoys seeing things in black-and-white. We like to throw around words like unconditional love or unconditional trust. In truth these are often ways of avoiding the ambiguity and maturity of realizing that all of life includes people. People have limitations and their own agendas. People have agendas which will occasionally match up with ours and occasionally fly in the face our agenda. We are also people. We are just as capable of being stuck in our own agendas, ignoring the wellbeing of others and reacting in anger and hurt. We are just as capable of not caring about the well-being of another and in doing so losing sight of being a good person to others.
Paperwork is not my strong suit and while I do many things try to manage this deficit it remains a great difficulty. I started this blog series with the intent of releasing one per week in 2020 and I could blame it on COVID, distractions of home life with my young children or the difficulties of running a business. However, in truth this is just a weak area for me. You may wonder why making such a big deal of this? Why even mention it in a discussion on Trust?
Often the most trusting relationships are those that are able to take ownership for their own limitations whether in the area of Goodness or Ability. Ideally trusting people would overcome these deficits however I find it more common than not the most trustworthy people are willing to under promise and over deliver. Such individuals have not fallen into the trap of cynicism or shame. They do not overestimate their abilities or try to get you to believe they have abilities they do not. They do not ask you to trust them unconditionally. They recognize their own limitations and ask you to accept them with their limitations, okay with your trust being conditional and tenuous as they prove themselves over time.
To talk to someone about how to move forward in your own forgiveness contact us at (303) 838-5406.
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At Family Integration Counseling we provide mental health services to the mountain community of Jeff
