acoas under-trusting

ACoAs UNDER – Trusting & the Brain (Part 3)

dmtorbi 12-step, ACoAs, al-anon, Alcoholics Anonymous, alcoholism, coaching, mental health, Problem-Solving, Psychotherapy, recovery, self growth, self-help , , , , ,

untrustworthy

I DON’T WANT TO BE ALONE – but I’m afraid to let anyone in 

PREVIOUS: Under-Trusting (#2)

POST : ”Lack of Trust”

QUOTES: “Our distrust is very expensive.”  ~Ralph Waldo Emerson
“He who does not trust enough, will not be trusted.” ~Lao Tzu

INFO
🪴 Perception of competence = A person’s self-evaluation of their abilities, skills & readiness to succeed in specific areas
POS : The assumption that when we need to cooperate with other people, we’re capable of providing each other with what’s needed
NEG  :  In abusive situations, an obvious violation of competence is the neglectful parent – those doubting their skills experience higher stress & may withdraw from interacting with their children.

Perception of intention – the ability to infer another person’s motives, goals or underlying plans – just from observing their behavior.
POS : In a trusting relationship – it’s believing that everyone’s working towards a shared desire, & no one’s going to be exploited
NEG : However, we can’t / should not trust someone we think or know is trying to use us for their own benefit

🔶 WHY ACoAs DON’T Trust (Part 2)

🔶 RESULTS of UNDER-Trusting (UT)
🥀 EMOTIONAL
• we miss out on the joys & challenges of intimacy by never letting our guard down, AND we don’t find out what’s really going on with others
• it makes us bitter & cynical about people, missing out on great friendships & love – which would be healing
• we miss out on fun & companionship, which would alleviate some of our loneliness, AND provide relaxation

🥀 PERSONALdeprivation
• Keeps us isolated : if we became suspicious / paranoid in childhood, then the isolation makes us more so – because we don’t know what’s really going on around us
• Makes it hard to fulfill our potential, because we don’t trust genuine praise, NOR helpful info from friends, bosses, teachers….

🥀 SOCIAL
• Don’t let others know who we really are – not just our needs but our abilities, SO don’t get the mirroring & validation that’s crucial for success
• Lose respect & ‘street cred’ at work for not being more social or a team player
• Miss outlonely-senior on available info & opportunities that are better suited  to us
• People won’t easily come to us for our knowledge, expertise, help… SO we don’t get the admiration & honors we’ve earned & desperately want
• Possibly lose loved ones, friends, even jobs – by being suspicious, stingy, unfriendly, uncommunicative

🥀 BEHAVIORAL
• Deprivation – we end up having to do everything ourself & what we can’t do alone gets left undone – even if it’s important
• Keeps us from taking legitimate risks (requires trust in the possibility of good outcomes), because we don’t have help when truly needed (sick, moving, fired, divorce, kids…)
spiritual disconnect• On a broader scale, under-trusting separates us from the world at large. It can make us suspicious of anyone ‘not like us’, potentially leading to anti-social behavior
• IT makes it hard to have a spiritual connection, which prevents us from the sense of belonging to the human race, leaving us ‘out in the cold’ just like we were in our family.
*    *     *    *    *
🟩 The BRAIN & Trusting
1. A 2015 study with 82 participants showed differences in brain structure based to how trusting someone is of others.
Most important finding :  the ventral medial prefrontal cortex was larger in those who tended to be more trusting, the area that evaluates social rewards.

ALSO :  the volume of the amygdala was greater in 2 groups – those who were most trusting & those who were least trusting of others. This brain structure helps encode & remember things that are emotionally important to us.

2. Many of our decisions hinge on how much we trust others, built on past dealings with a person OR their reputation.
Another study used MRI to brain-scan participants while playing a Trust Game with various partners who – by social reputation – were pre-labeled as fair, unfair & indifferent, in order to make trust-based decisions together.

Any activated part of the brain uses more oxygen, so the more oxygenated blood that flows into an area, the stronger the signal.
RESULT : the area called the caudate (deals with decisions & responds to reputation) “lit up” most strongly in the ‘trusters’ when dealing with unfair or indifferent partners, but not with the fair ones.

NEXT: Patterns of Mistrust – #1

ACoAs UNDER-Trusting (Part 1)

dmtorbi 12-step, ACoAs, al-anon, Alcoholics Anonymous, alcoholism, coaching, mental health, Problem-Solving, Psychotherapy, recovery, self growth, self-help , , , , , ,

one eye openALWAYS KEEP ONE EYE OPEN –
you never know where danger lurks!

PREVIOUS: OVER-Trusting (#2)

POST : ‘What is Shame’

See “Acronyms” for abbrev.

🏴 MISTRUST = Suspicion  — the lack of trust rests in us, by not following our intuition, observation, experience…. This shows up as feeling a general sense of unease about someone or something, but without proof (yet) WHEN :
• you have no immediate reason to think someone will do the wrong thing, but you don’t have a reason to trust them either
• OR: a person or situation really does seem questionable, because your intuition is picking up a hint from their words, action or manner
• OR: there’s actually no reason to be suspicious, but your mistrust is not deserved (paranoia)

🏴‍☠️ DISTRUST = Certainty — the lack of trust rests in ‘them’, WHEN :
• you have good reason to not trust someone based on your many experiences with them, not just once
• you’re given reliable information about someone or something which lets you know they’re not safe / trustworthy

🔶 UNDER-Trusting (UT) as Adults 
The way we think & react emotionally to how others behave – not even necessarily toward us – has a direct impact on our lack of trust (our Ts – CDs and Es – FoA).paranoid  This is usually based on all our disappointing & painful relationships with unsafe adults in the past, mainly those with our parents.

Those experiences can easily lead to a subtle, underlying paranoia that colors everything. Going forward, what’s necessary for mental health & peace of mind is to see & understand who people are individually, not lumping them together as all bad or unsafe.

REALITY : We incorrectly ‘mistrust’ some people WHO —
•  are simply not interested in us. It’s nothing personal – we’re just not a good fit, or they’re caught up in their own world
•  really are insensitive, mean or otherwise unavailable, which hurts
•  are just taking care of themselves instead of focusing on us – at the moment – This may feel like they’re turning their back, because we’re expecting them to be the good Inner Parent for us – as comfort & companionship

Without a Healthy Adult ego-state the WIC in us can’t tell the difference between these 3 groups – so when disappointed, we regress into that old ‘slough of despair” (Pilgrim’s Progress), where “all is cloudy, hopeless & no one is ‘good’!”

🔶 WHY ACoAs DON’T TRUST
cling /rejecteda. Abandonment (too many PMES losses)
Because we were raised by untrustworthy people, as adults we’re still longing to be taken care of by someone else. So WE —
— continue to cling to people, places & situations (PPT) which do not have to the inherent capacity to provide even our most basic human needs, much less compensate for all we missed out on in childhood. The combined of old & new deprivation adds up, which can be deadly for us & to those around us.
Accumulation over the years : the less we’re treated with respect —> the more abandoned we feel —-> the more wounded we get —-> the more demanding the WIC becomes —> getting angrier & angrier.

When our core abandonment button is pushed we may resort to using familiar character defects: freaked out
• withdraw, sulk, withhold          • be paranoid & accusatory
• get controlling & micromanage     • be clingy & desperate

AND when our anxiety reaches the level of hysteria, we can’t stop ourself from making a painful situation worse, setting others up to fight with or withdraw from us, increasing our sense of loss & mistrust.
Then we say “See, I knew it all along – no one is there for me!” even though in some cases we contributed to it by our behavior & choices

b. Self-Hate – As a result of original abandonment, WE:
wrongElliInternally: • don’t know who we are, fundamentally
• can’t identify most our needs (even the basic, normal human ones) much less have the right to get them met
• are convinced we don’t deserve to be treated well, so don’t notice or reject anyone who is actually capable of being kind
• don’t trust our own knowledge, experience & observations

Externally: • we stay too long with unhealthy people
• don’t trust that anyone will ever be able or willing to help us
THEN we say “I hate everyone, no one likes me, I don’t belong anywhere”….

NEXT: Under-Trusting (Part 2)