Trust Issues: Definition, Examples, & How to Improve Them
How do we define trust issues, recognize them, and work to improve them? Read on to find out.
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Have you ever done one of those group-bonding days at an outdoor adventure center, where everybody solves puzzles together, navigates an obstacle course, or overcomes their fear of heights on the rope course? While many of these activities can push people’s limits, one of the most challenging is the trust fall. If that’s not a familiar term, imagine this: with a group of people standing behind you, you close your eyes, cross your arms in front of you, and fall backward – into their waiting hands and arms, which catch you. |
Trust is variable like that – depending on the context, and who we are, trust may come very naturally or barely at all. This article will explore where trust issues come from, give examples and symptoms of having trust issues, and point to some ways to heal one’s trust issues.
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What Are Trust Issues? (A Definition)
Trust is believing that it is safe to be vulnerable with somebody else, because they are willing and able to respond to you in a way that will meet your needs, or at least not harm you. The amount you trust another person comes down to how confident you are that they will respond that way. The more confidence you have, the more consistently you believe they will meet your needs, or even respond with the same level of vulnerability and trust that you showed them.
By the same token, having trust issues means suspecting that another person does not have the ability or the integrity to meet your needs in a situation (Covey, 2006). Somebody with trust issues does not believe it is safe to act on the actions, words, and decisions of another person; in fact, people with trust issues often think that the other person is acting in ways that will deliberately harm them (Lewicki & Weithoff, 2000).
Social scientists have studied closely how consistent trust issues are for people. They have found that while our levels of trust vary a lot from one situation to the next, most people have a range of trust that they show others (Fleeson & Leicht, 2006; Weiss et al., 2021). In other words, most everybody trusts a close friend more than an acquaintance or a stranger, but some people will trust their close friends more than other people will. Our perceptions of the trustworthiness of other people are important determinants of how trusting we are in each situation (Weiss et al., 2021).
Trust Issues Symptoms
What are some symptoms of having trust issues? First of all, we know that people who are regularly jealous of others have lower levels of trust (Guerrero et al., 2014). For example, somebody who gets jealous when they see their romantic partner talking to somebody else probably does not trust their partner to be faithful.
Second, we know that people who see others as threatening, lacking integrity, or generally incompetent will be less likely to trust other people (Mayer et al., 1995). I think this finding makes a lot of intuitive sense – if you thought other people were going to mess things up or hurt you, even if it was unintentional, how much would you rely on them? So people who make frequent statements that indicate they believe others are dishonest or unable to do their jobs may be experiencing trust issues.
Trust Issues in a Relationship
We can easily see how these elements of an interpersonal situation can lead to trust issues. Relying on other people, and having potential risk of not being helped, makes trusting a high-stakes decision, especially in close relationships where topics related to trust are often quite personal. The possibility that the person you’re trying to trust might disengage entirely can make it difficult for many people to trust others. And yet trusting others is key to having successful and loving close relationships (Wieselquist et al., 1999).
A big component of how much we trust in our relationships is how much self-control we believe other people have (Righetti & Finkenauer, 2011). This may be because what we want and what other people want are often at odds, and only people who can consistently control themselves can be trusted to respond effectively when we make ourselves vulnerable and show trust.
Trust Issues in Friendships
It is through the accumulation of many such interactions that deeper trust is built (Holmes & Rempel, 1989). However, if one’s trust is not returned – if, for example, you confide in your friend and they turn around and discuss it with the third party with whom you have the dispute – you can develop trust issues over time (Schneider et al., 2011).
Examples of Trust Issues
In modern times, an easy example of trust issues is what psychologists call online surveillance, or the monitoring of a lover’s social media activity (Marshall et al., 2013). If we do not trust our partners are being faithful or fully honest with us, we may turn to tracking their posts to know where they are, what they’re doing, and with whom they’re doing it.
Trust issues can occur between family members and between coworkers as well. A parent who secretly puts a tracking app on their teenager’s phone may not trust their child to tell the truth about where they go each day; an employee who finishes a project late because they did not involve colleagues they believe will do a subpar job is compromising work performance because of trust issues.
What Causes Trust Issues?
Although our closest relationships in childhood are the strongest influence on our ability to trust (Bowlby, 1982), our relationships in adulthood continue to influence whether we have trust issues or not (Cassidy & Shaver, 2008). For example, research tells us that people who get married for a second time are strongly influenced by their first marriage; if they experienced a lack of trust in the first marriage, they will have a harder time building and maintaining trust in the second marriage (Brimhall et al., 2008).
In this way, we are constantly changing our ability to trust others. Sadly, this means that people who experience huge, painful breaches of trust in adulthood, even if their early relationships were solid, can develop trust issues. Indeed, many adults who have trouble keeping a romantic relationship going report that broken trust in past relationships is a big reason why (Peel & Caltabiano, 2021). At the same time, it also means that people who had few trustworthy relationships in childhood can work on and heal from their trust issues in adulthood.
Trust Issues and Anxiety
It appears that people with trust issues are more likely to experience anxiety, especially about their relationships (Fitzpatrick & Lafontaine, 2017). Anxiety, particularly of the avoidant kind, can create trust issues if it is present in either person in a relationship. Think about it: if one person in a relationship withdraws from the relationship when they are anxious, the other person will eventually have a hard time trusting them to meet their relationship needs.
Therapy for Trust Issues
Can therapy help people with trust issues? Indeed, therapy has helped distrustful couples connect with each other, and it has helped individuals who are isolated by their inability to trust become able to build close relationships. This suggests that trust issues are a good target for psychotherapy (Johnson, 2008). There are several kinds of therapy that are known to be effective for helping people change their “working models” of close relationships in order to expand their capacity to trust others. Below are some ideas for how to address trust issues outside of therapy.
How to Improve Trust Issues
What might this look like? It could involve activities that help one intentionally focus on instances when trust has been rewarded. Identifying positive instances of trust throughout one’s day could help: from the other drivers who stayed in their lanes during one’s commute to the family member who calls regularly to say hi, people are being consistent and trustworthy more often than we might give them credit for.
In relationships where trust has been broken, we can also learn how to seek greater trust. If there are people in our lives who have withdrawn from us or let us down, we can find new ways – often, softer and gentler ways – to state our needs, describe how meaningful it would be to have the other person meet them, and hope for the best (Burgess Moser et al., 2015).
For more ideas on how to decrease one’s trust issues, I recommend the following video:
Video: How to Deal with Trust Issues
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Final Thoughts on Trust Issues
Trust issues happen for almost all of us somewhere in our lives. I think that’s natural and good. If you can find somebody who’s never been betrayed or hurt or let down, don’t be jealous! That person has never had to figure out who is trustworthy and who isn’t, and how to make sure their trust is better returned next time. We are all constantly in this process of figuring out where and when we can be vulnerable.
If trusting others has been hard for you, I want you to remember how common this is and that you probably are this way for very good reason: somewhere along your life’s journey, there’s been at least one relationship that taught you not to trust. That’s not your fault. I hope you now feel a little more empowered to take action to help yourself, or somebody else, with trust issues.
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References
- Bowlby, J. (1982). Attachment and loss: Vol. 1. Attachment (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Basic Books.
- Brimhall, A., Wampler, K., & Kimball, T. (2008). Learning from the past, altering the future: A tentative theory of the effect of past relationships on couples who remarry. Family Process, 47(3), 373–387.
- Burgess Moser, M., Johnson, S. M., Dalgeish, T. L., Lafontaine, M.-F., Wiebe, S. A., & Tasca, G. A. (2015). Changes in relationship-specific attachment in emotionally focused couple therapy. Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, 42, 231–245.
- Cassidy, J., & Shaver, P. R. (Eds.) (2008). Handbook of attachment: Theory, research, and clinical applications (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Guilford Press.
- Covey, S. M. R. (2006). The speed of trust: The one thing that changes everything. New York: Free Press.
- Fitzpatrick, J., & Lafontaine, M. F. (2017). Attachment, trust, and satisfaction in relationships: Investigating actor, partner, and mediating effects. Personal Relationships, 24(3), 640-662.
- Fleeson, W., & Leicht, C. (2006). On delineating and integrating the study of variability and stability in personality psychology: interpersonal trust as illustration. Journal of Research in Personality, 40(1), 5-20.
- Guerrero, L. K., Andersen, P. A., & Afifi, W. A. (2014). Close encounters: Communication in relationships (Fourth ed.). Thousand Oaks, California: SAGE Publications.
- Holmes, J. G., & Rempel, J. K. (1989). Trust in close relationships. In C. Hendrick (Ed.), Review of personality and social psychology: Vol. 10 (pp. 187-220). SAGE Publications.
- Johnson, S. M. (2008). Attachment and emotionally focused therapy: Perfect partners. In J. Obegi & E. Berant (Eds.), Clinical applications of adult attachment. New York: Guilford Press.
- Lewicki, R. & Weithoff, C. (2000). Trust, trust development and trust repair. In M. Deutsch and P. Coleman (Eds.). The handbook of conflict resolution: Theory and practice. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
- Marshall, R. C., Benjanyan, K., Di Castro, G., & Lee, R. A. (2013). Attachment styles as predictors of Facebook-related jealousy and surveillance in romantic relationships. Personal Relationships, 20, 1–22.
- Mayer, R. C., Davis, J. H., & Schoorman, F. D. (1995). An integrative model of organizational trust. Academic Management Review, 20, 709-734.
- Miller, P. J. E., & Rempel, J. K. (2004). Trust and partner-enhancing attributions in close relationships. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 30, 695–705.
- Peel, R., & Caltabiano, N. (2021). Why do we sabotage love? a thematic analysis of lived experiences of relationship breakdown and maintenance. Journal of Couple & Relationship Therapy, 20(2), 99-131.
- Righetti, F., & Finkenauer, C. (2011). If you are able to control yourself, I will trust you: the role of perceived self-control in interpersonal trust. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 100, 874-886.
- Schneider, I. K., Konijn, E. A., Righetti, F., & Rusbult, C. E. (2011). A healthy dose of trust: The relationship between interpersonal trust and health. Personal Relationships, 18(4), 668-676.
- Simpson, J. A. (2007). Psychological foundations of trust. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 16, 264-268.
- Suwinyattichaiporn, T., Fontana, J., Shaknitz, L., & Linder, K. (2017). Maintaining long distance romantic relationships: The college students’ perspective. Kentucky Journal of Communication, 36(1), 67-89.
- Weiss, A., Michels, C., Burgmer, P., Mussweiler, T., Ockenfels, A., & Hofmann, W. (2021). Trust in everyday life. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 121, 95-114.
- Wieselquist, J., Rusbult, C. E., Foster, C. A., & Agnew, C. R. (1999). Commitment, pro-relationship behavior, and trust in close relationships. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77, 942-966.
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