Trust and connection are inseparable. We forget that at our peril.
Hello you wonderful human.
I may be showing my age here, but do you remember the opening credits from the TV show ‘Married, with Children’ from the early 1990s? It’s here if you don’t know it or need a reminder…
I’ve had the lyrics
Love and marriage.
Love and marriage.
Go together like a horse and carriage.
This, I tell you brother,
You can’t have one without the other.
in my head as I’ve thought about this article.
Only, rather than love and marriage, the words I have in my head are ‘trust and connection’. Not quite as catchy, but it’s just as accurate.
We can’t have one without the other. Let me explain.
Have you ever tried one without the other?
Have you ever tried to connect with someone that you can’t trust? Have you ever voted for a politician or wanted to go the extra mile for a boss at work if you didn’t trust them?
Would you share your secrets with someone – your hopes, fears and aspirations – if you felt that they’d then broadcast it to the world?
Of course not. You’d be selective with what you shared. You’d be guarded.
You’d not connect.
Trust and connection
A quick search through a search engine shows that there are hundreds of articles and studies analysing the relationship between trust and connection. It’s telling that some of them are focused on the relationship between trust and connection from a marketing perspective: to make us buy stuff. That says a lot, doesn’t it?
This article could easily turn into a well-researched essay like I would write when I was a student. I could do that if you’d like me to, but I think that a conversation with you without the need to cite and reference will still be just as powerful.
You know innately that you, me and every human on the planet know how indelibly linked trust and connection are to each other.
Connection creates trust.
Trust creates connection.
Both take time to develop and seconds to break
We’re exploring how trust takes time to develop and seconds to break in our house recently. We have teenage sons. They’re doing what teenagers are meant to do: they’re exploring their world with a group of friends. Our sons and their friends are great kids (aren’t they all?), but we know that there are many factors that can turn teenage minds from places where sensible, common-sense decisions could be made into places that defy conventional logic.
They’ve reached the age where there are significant others. They’ve reached the age where there are parties. They’ve reached the age where they’re driving.
I don’t know about you, but I certainly remember myself at that age. It feels like ten years ago. I know how easily swayed teenage minds can be and how decisions can be made that seem like a great idea and that change lives forever.
Together with their mum, Jeff and I have been allowing them more space to grow, evolve and discover themselves and the world around them knowing that we trust them and that they can approach us – connect with us – when they need to. We’ve invested in connection so there’s trust.
So far, so good. But it’s a continual area of focus and love for us all.
The fragility of trust
This sounds great, but do you trust someone just because they say you can? You could, but it’s far less risky if there’s a body of evidence to support their claims.
Do you share your innermost hopes, dreams, fears and aspirations with someone you barely know? You could (and actually this is something that we can do when we’re experiencing loneliness. I call this the ‘loneliness vomit’, but you may know it as oversharing or trauma bonding), but it’s less fraught to do so when you know them.
Both connection and trust take time to develop, but seconds to destroy.
It’s miserable when someone betrays your trust and steals from you and cheats on you because they’ve lied to you. You’re likely to be more wary if they come back to you and say ‘trust me’ next time. It takes time and repeated action to build trust.
Until that happens, you don’t feel that you can fully reconnect with them in the same way you had in the past.
Your mind may be bringing you all sorts of memories about how you’ve felt betrayed, used and disrespected in your past by people you loved or institutions you trusted. You know just how painful and crushing it is when trust is broken.
What happens when trust is broken
In his book ‘The Way We Are’, renowned Australian psychologist Hugh McKay AO mounts a compelling argument of the lack of trust in contemporary Australian society.
Loneliness can make us retreat into ourselves. We retreat into our teams, where there are those who are like us and those who aren’t. We see this reflected in our friendship groups, our families, communities, workplaces, schools and in our political discourse.
What we once saw benignly, we can begin to see as threats.
Starting to see everything as a threat is one of the features of loneliness. Loneliness puts us into fight or flight.
This stems from the time when if we found ourselves away from the safety of the group, we were vulnerable to being picked off by a hungry predator or succumbing to hunger, thirst, the cold, the heat…Incidentally, while we’re no longer likely to be eaten by an animal or succumb to hunger or thirst, that near-constant state of fight or flight that loneliness puts us in – especially when it becomes our default (or chronic) state – is terrible for our cardiovascular system. It’s one of the reasons why humans who experience chronic loneliness (‘chronic loneliness’ being loneliness experienced for 8 weeks or longer (pg 16 of link)) are at higher risk of heart disease and stroke.
Those who aren’t like us – those who aren’t on our team – can be more easily seen as the ‘other’. They can be more easily vilified as wrong, immoral, well, you get the point.
It’s not good and it feels accurate to how society is now, right?
Let’s walk this back
I’m trying to resist using words that will make it sound like I’m writing this while listening to John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’, (I’m big on the music references in this article, aren’t I??…), but we really do need to imagine a different way of doing things, because the current way isn’t working so well. Let’s go back to the basics.
We must do what’s needed to rebuild trust in ourselves and in each other.
Connection and trust both require time to build and grow, so we – you and I – must invest time. We need to be mindful. Deliberate. Purposeful.
We must be better custodians of the trust placed in us and demand better from those in whom we’re asked to place our trust. This includes politicians, our workplaces, organisations whose services we engage, the media.
We also need to be compassionate – rather than being quick to judge – of those around us who have lost trust in those around them. For example, at those events when Uncle Steve arcs up about his latest grievance, or your Mum says something offensive about another group of people, perhaps we can see them as symptoms of loneliness they’re experiencing. Perhaps the trust they’ve placed in someone or something has been broken one too many times.
It's a kinder, more compassionate, approach. Please let me know when it’s easy to do.
Let’s end your loneliness
With a topic like this one, it wouldn’t be fair to leave you without something that I think would really help you take a step forward towards ending your loneliness.
In ending your loneliness, you’ll be taking a step towards ending the loneliness around you.
That step involves some assigned reading.
Dr Brené Brown is my intellectual crush and much of her work combines story with research in a most relatable way. For insights and wisdom on trust, belonging and connection I recommend the book ‘Braving The Wilderness’. The chapters ‘People are hard to hate up close. Move In’ and ‘Speak truth to bullshit. Be civil’ are amazing. If you’ve not read it or listened to it, I can really recommend it.
I found it so inspiring and really influences the work we do throughout HUMANS:CONNECTING. I feel it could really support and inspire you, too.
That’s it for this post
We’ve got some great content coming next to help you become a more connected human. The next article is on social media and how it can be a tool for connection or a tool for distraction and disconnection.
Subscribing to our mailing list means that you won’t be subject to the whims of a social media algorithm to tell you when an article or any future content on our blog and podcast is released.
You’ll get an email from me each week or when there’s something new for you. And you can unsubscribe any time if you’re not feeling it anymore: we’ll still think you’re amazing.
Until next time, be awesomely you.
~ Phil
Important:
All views expressed above are the author’s and are intended to inform, support, challenge and inspire you to consider the issue of loneliness and increase awareness of the need for authentic connection with your self, with those most important to you and your communities as an antidote to loneliness. Unless otherwise declared, the author is not a licensed mental health professional and these words are not intended to be crisis support. If you’re in crisis, this page has some links for immediate support for where you may be in the world.
If you’re in crisis, please don’t wait. Get support now.
Commentaires