Trust Me: You Can’t Trust Me!
How the Brain Processes Trust and Distrust
Trust me, there have been seasons in my life where the last thing you’d want to do is trust me. In the mid-1980s during heated conversations with my now ex- wife, she would exclaim, “How can I ever trust you again!?... You’ve broken my trust…I can’t trust you with anything!” The conversation would go on for several minutes and then end in tears. “How can I stay with someone I can’t trust? It will take years, or maybe never, for me to trust you again.” She was right. I had severely broken her trust, and it would be “never” before she would trust me again. However, it was because of this “never” that what happened next confused and intrigued me: In the midst of distrust’s debilitating pain, my ex nonetheless handed me her most prized possession: a little girl clutching a pink, child-sized My Little Pony suitcase, our daughter . How could she vow to never again believe anything I ever said and yet still have confidence in me with our daughter? Can high levels of trust and distrust exist at the same time?
How the Brain Processes Trust and Distrust
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