Trust Issues, Anyone?

Wooden swings, red bicycles & digging deeper

Wooden Swings

When I was a little girl, I used to go to the park by my school with my father. We did not go often. I’m not sure how old I was exactly, but I’m fairly certain I was in the first grade, so maybe about six years old.

I remember that the park we would go to was the playground at my elementary school. I remember that this was where I learned how to spell my first curse word. The school was called Buckley Elementary but somebody had vandalized the school sign and broken little bits off of the ‘B’ in Buckley. This of course turned the name of the school into a word my father very clearly let me know I could never say. He repeated this word I could never say loudly to me as we approached the playground.

When we went to the park, we only did one of two things. I would either swing on the old wooden swings, or my father would teach me to ride my little red bicycle. Both of these experiences taught me not to trust my father.

Photo by Ivan Pergasi on Unsplash

Remember those old wooden swings? They were usually made of a sort of splintery, warped and weathered, hard wooden board, thick, bulky metal chains and chunky bolts attaching the plank of wood to the steel skeleton of the swingset. Often times when we would arrive at the playground, some naughty older kids would have spun the swings, each one individually, around the top bar, from where the swings were meant to be suspended. From a distance, it would look like a sloppily mangled birds’ nest resting atop the structure; the hunks of wood perched at the top, wrapped in clusters of thick metal chain.

One day when we arrived, my father lifted me up onto the one swing that remained dangling down, still wrapped too high for me to jump on or off on my own. He pushed me once and let me begin swinging. Then he started leaping and grabbing at the wooden boards that were up at the top of the swingset.

He shoved one of the boards over the top bar on one of his jumps, and that swing clattered from the top by just one rotation, so it still hung fairly high. I of course became instantly concerned that this solid wooden plank was going to hit my delicate little six-year-old head, so I efficiently attempted to slow myself down by flailing my arms and legs wildly while desperately shrieking at my father to stop messing with the swings and get me down immediately. He yelled, called me a baby told me just to stay put and keep swinging.

My father proceeded to clumsily unwrap the tangle of board, chain, and bolts; with each soaring rotation the swing jangled lower and closer to the ground. My fear intensified, but I was also fearful of my father, so I did not stop pumping my little legs.

Once he had successfully unraveled that first swing, he then began on the second one, still strung up high. This second swing was closer; the one that should have hung directly next to me. Again I begged him not to unravel this next swing while I was dutifully pumping my legs and keeping myself air bound directly next to where that swing should land once unraveled. He grew more agitated, frustrated with my silly concerns and piercing whines. He told me he’s fine, he’s going to unravel this swing just fine, just like the last one, everything is fine.

He furiously flipped that swing over the bar one time, two times, three times, four…each rotation, bringing the heavy wooden board closer to the earth, closer to my head. On the fourth and the fifth revolutions, the swing became erratic and started spinning less straight downward and more side to side with the chains nearly folding into themselves, almost as if the wooden board was bouncing in the air, not tethered at all.

Of course, this crazy board behavior was of significant concern to me and I began to cry. Tears were an ultimate irritation to my father, who continued to holler at me as he turned his back to the dangling board to scowl at my tear-soaked cheeks before sending that swing with another fierce flip of force over the top bar one final time at which point that hard splintered wooden board crashed into my six-year-old skull.

A Little Red Bicycle

The other activity that we would engage in at the playground near my elementary school involved my little red bicycle. My father said that he would teach me to ride my little red bike, but he was ‘old school’ in that he believed the only way you learned something was to try it, get hurt, and try again. He taught me to swim the same way, throwing me into the deep end of the pool and then yelling at me to tread water, a skill of course I did not know at the time. He taught me to ride my little red bicycle similarly.

I loved that little red bike. It had a bright red seat with sparkly glitter encased beneath a glossy clear liquid-like plastic covering. The bike glistened in the sunshine with its white double stripe on the sides and flippy, little red and white plastic streamers appearing to drip out of the red rubber coated handlebars. My dad would put me on my little red bike and hold the back of my sparkly seat with his right hand and one of the red rubber handlebars with his left hand. Then he would run alongside me, as he propelled the bicycle forward, telling me to pedal, pedal, pedal as he pushed. I did not know how to ride the bike. I had no concept of balance, momentum, equilibrium. I had no sense of where my feet should rest on the pedals or how to hold my body steady. I would be screaming and crying and saying, “don’t let go, don’t let go, don’t let go, daddy.” And he would say, “I won’t let go. I’ve got you, I’ve got you, I’ve got you,” as we went faster and faster. And then he would let go.

My little red bicycle was the exact same shade of red as my bloody knees, scraped palms, ragged elbows, so it didn’t look quite like the violent crash that it had been when we returned home to mom. My father’s reprimands for failure filled me with shame for crying like a baby and for not keeping the front wheel straight like he had apparently told me at some point. It’s funny how when you’re a kid, maybe just when you’re a person, when you love somebody, or when you idolize somebody like your father, even when they have decimated your trust, destroyed any faith that you had in their care for you…It’s funny how when they say, “trust me, I’ve got you,” you still think, maybe this time they will.

These are probably the two earliest memories I have of trust being broken by someone I cared about. And I do believe that those earliest experiences are what most deeply impact our ability to trust others as we grow into adulthood. When we struggle with trust as adults, it may be helpful (and sometimes painful) to think about where the lack of trust originated.

Trust Issues: Digging Deeper

Identifying a time, place, or person does not serve the purpose of assigning blame, rather it allows us as adults to make connections to other experiences and relationships we’ve had after that initial trust was broken. For example, those of us who lost faith in a father, with the one man we innately expected to care for us during our youngest years, we may find ourselves struggling in similar trust-less relationships in our adulthood. Sometimes I think it is our instinctual desire to repair pain in anyway that we can, maybe by giving it one more go.

Trust is a very very delicate thing, and once it has been betrayed, we humans tend to carry that pain around with us. Admittedly, I trust very few people in my life, but I do believe that those of us who are naturally kind, empathic, giving and especially caregivers should, in fact, be cautiously guarded with our precious trust. In working with clients who have trust issues, I typically don’t share personal anecdotes, but I will share that I too have struggled with trust. Ironically, when a Coach says that she struggles with trusting others, this shared vulnerability will often build trust between a Coach and a client.

Trust is probably the most important element in any relationship, and because working to develop trust is such a delicate process, we need to allow ourselves time, patience, and grace as we do the work. In coaching, this often takes several sessions, even just to define our own personal meaning of trust, or to identify the root cause of trust issues, and definitely to be able to acknowledge who a person actually does trust or who they do not. For me, I really like using these questions to help anyone begin this work:

Name one person in your life who you trust.
How has this one person earned your trust?
What qualities are non-negotiable when choosing to trust someone in your life?
How will you honor your non-negotiables of trust moving forward?

These are definitely some heavy-hitting questions, but they are incredibly effective at digging through layers of feelings while remaining in the present moment. These questions are all about now: Who do you trust now? What qualities do you identify as vital to your own self-awareness and care now? How will you honor these non-negotiable expectations now as you move into the world as a strong, prepared, well-equipped adult human? How will you commit to caring for yourself first so that you are able to care for others more completely?

The first four questions highlighted above make for a lovely quartet in a coaching session focused on establishing or enhancing trust. However, the first two questions (Who do you trust and how did they earn your trust?) make fantastic two-day journal entries or writing prompts to use not only with students of virtually any grade or age level, but also with adult teams that are working toward building trusting relationships in work or social environments.

Adults often define trust differently from one another and life experiences have long-lasting impact on how individuals trust one another. Being open to sharing our own ideas and feelings about trust while listening carefully to how our team members define and feel about trust can invite powerful change into a relationship. Trust is everything to the human experience.

Love all, trust few, and do wrong to none. ~William Shakespeare