#81 Rebuilding Trust | Recovery Secrets Series

Welcome to the Overcoming PTSD Podcast. My name is Brad Schipke, and this is the limited series called Recovery Secrets Daily Coaching. Now, these were private sessions that I originally ran as a paid coaching program, but now for the first time ever, I'm making all 100+ sessions available for free for all of you podcast listeners. And this series is over 100 days of practical strategies that have helped thousands of trauma survivors fully heal. So make sure to subscribe because I'm dropping a new episode every single weekday until the archive is complete. And you definitely do not want to miss it. So without further ado, let's dive on in.

All right, we're live here. Welcome everyone to our Recovery Secrets Daily Coaching Call. It is so good to be here with you to the end of another amazing, amazing week. Big kudos, congratulations on everything that you've accomplished so far this week. I want you to take a moment to kind of recognize whatever you have accomplished this week and celebrate it for sure. But we are excited to be here for our last session. This is a session that you all voted on, so we're really super excited about that, and we're going to jump into it in just a few minutes here. But if you If you're gonna be joining us live, feel free to say hey in the chat box there so that we can welcome you and engage throughout the session here today. And it is great to have you on, this lovely man to my right.

So good morning, everybody. My name is Brad. If you are new, welcome. It's great to have you part of the family. If you are old, welcome back. Today we do have a great topic, like Kayleen said, that people, all you guys voted on, and Kayleen's pulling it up right now, but it's about building trust and it won by a landslide. So this is a topic you guys submitted, and the topic is regaining trust and moving forward from it. Sorry, we had it pulled up and then we switched off of it right, right before we went live. So regaining trust and moving forward from it. So it's going to be a great topic. I know myself, I struggled a lot with, with trust, you know, and, and, you know, in, in our relationship here, because there's a lot of chaos, a lot of pain, a lot of struggle in our relationship. And that broke a lot of trust, you know, on both sides. We, we, we did things and we said things and that broke each other's trust and it took a while.

Yeah.

To regain that trust where we could, you know, open our hearts and feel safe and feel calm in the same room and then in each other's arms and things like that. So it's going to be a really great topic today. But first, before Kayleen welcomes everybody, I want all of you guys to talk or to comment in because I want this to be a little bit more interactive. I want to hear what areas of trust do you need to work on? What are the things that you kind of want us to touch on throughout this, throughout today, since it was a kind of a topic you guys submitted? What areas of trust do you struggle with so we can help you with it? And I think it would be really great to get a little bit more interaction, you know, on these Fridays like that. So let us know what kind of trust— I hate saying trust issues, like for some reason I don't like, I don't like saying that, but challenges you have with trust or what that looks like for you so we can help you at the highest level.

Awesome. So yeah, let's definitely get that in the chat box there. I don't know.

It's just like a weird thing. Like, I don't like saying it because like, I don't like, you don't want to have trust. I don't want to have it. Yeah.

Welcome, Mimi. Welcome, Lena. Welcome, Jeanette. Welcome, Tony. Welcome, Loretta. Welcome, Judy. Welcome, Barbara. Great to have all of you here with us today on this also very hot here, very humid here. This is the most humid day of the week. My workout was like basically a swimming workout. It is great to be here on this Friday. Like I said, amazing job with everything that we've accomplished so far this week. We've covered so many different topics. All of you have done an amazing job showing up, being here. And I also hope, and I can't See this externally, but putting the action in because action is the most important part of this journey. So my hope for you in kind of recovery secrets in general is to be coming to the table every day, just kind of thinking with with this mindset of okay, what can I do today to kind of implement this? Because you're going to hear us talk about a lot of different topics, and at the same time, you're going to hear similar themes throughout those topics, right? And so we talk about the pillars of recovery. And that being mindset, routines, and processing. So you're gonna hear those themes throughout everything that we talk about, but it's my hope that you take a little bit each day and you start to act, put it into your life and take action on it in your life. And you're gonna make really big changes when you actually do that and take action on what we're talking about. Even if it's just a mindset concept, bringing that forward in your day and asking yourself while you're here, how can I bring this into action today? And even if you just practice it that one day, guess what? That's better than not taking action at all. So it is so, so good to be here with you all. Welcome, Jen.

Thank you.

Good morning. Good morning. I know for a lot of you it's hot. It's a hot week this week. We're in a heat wave, but it's good to be here nonetheless. We have this variable AC. I just turned the AC down. It's super hot in here today. Yesterday it was freezing in here. The windows are all messed up, so it is good to be here nonetheless. So trust, right? So Barbara sharing trust in others, trust in authority, trust myself, and then also sharing trust in life.

Those are great.

These are great, great shares. So if you haven't shared yet, this This topic won by a landslide, like no competition in regard to our survey, our poll here this week. So definitely let us know, cuz we wanna interact with you. We wanna make sure we hit on the right elements in regard to trust. What areas specifically you're looking to rebuild trust in? Good morning, Joanne.

Is it a specific relationship that you need to build trust in and kind of, you could tell a little bit, you know, about what, what happened or why, why there's, you're having challenges with trust. Or what challenges you're having just in general with that. So we can again, help you at the highest level. But yeah, but let's first start off. I think, I mean, Barbara, you have a great kind of overview of everything. And that's kind of like what Kaylee and I were talking about before the live, before we even hopped on. It's like trust, like encompasses so many different areas. It's like trust in other people, trust in us, trust in life, like, or just the world being safe. And then what was that other one? Authority. Lena just said that as well. And then trusting. Yeah. Trusting yourself, like Joanne and Lena said again.

So, Sunny.

Oh, Sunny.

Good morning, Sunny.

Sunny. Sorry, I, I totally, uh, skipped over that. Apologize. And yeah, I trust in myself. So lots of great things right there.

Okay. So, so that's a, a really good place to start off. And I think, uh, any, anything in regard to trust, when we're talking about trust, I think by proxy we're also talking about vulnerability, right? We're talking about kind of like putting yourself out there and in, in the case of kind of rebuilding trust. Or having, as Brad would hate to say, trust issues. You know, we're talking about being vulnerable or attempting to be vulnerable in certain situations or with certain people, either again or for the first time, or maybe since we've been hurt or, you know, since something has happened. So by proxy, we're talking about those 2 things. And I think for me, like the, the first thing I wanna touch on, which was really, really helpful to me, was that. Trust doesn't have to be an all or nothing thing. And that was really, really helpful for me cuz at first when I was like working through this issue, it was like, okay, I either trust this person or I don't. And it was very black or white, right? But as many things in life, it's black and it's white, which means there's a lot of gray area in between. And that doesn't mean when I say gray area in this case, what I really mean are stages, right? And so what I was trying to do In, in many of these areas, in regard to the world and relationships and authority and specific relationships with people, in regard to myself, I was trying to go all in or all out. And trying to go all in is what kind of kept me getting into this place where I got vulnerable and then got hurt, and I got vulnerable and then I got hurt. And I started to kind of build this belief that like, okay, like it's impossible to rebuild trust, or it's not worth it, or I'm always gonna get hurt. And it really kind of impacted me in a negative way. And so.

Mm-hmm.

Probably the very biggest concept that helped me in all of these areas regarding trust was understanding that it can happen in stages and it's okay and even encouraged for that to happen in stages. When the trust was broken within our relationship, it wasn't just overnight where it was like, okay, we fully 100% trust each other again.

No.

It was okay. Like we broke it up into certain areas or with certain things. I trust that you're going to show up. I trust that you're going to be there. I trust that you're going to be able to hear what I have to say without losing it, right? Without getting mad at me. I trust that, you know, when you say you're gonna show up, you are going to show up. And so it happened in stages and you can kind of break it out any way that you want, but whether it's with the world or yourself or other people, to me, that was one of the biggest concepts, if not the biggest concepts in building trust. And rebuilding trust was understanding it does not have to be all or nothing. You don't have to leave here today and be like, oh, the world's a safe place and I trust everyone for any reason.

Right.

And, or I, I even, I trust myself completely, or I'm choosing to trust my partner completely. Now, when there's other things involved, what we also want to do is we want to kind of work to gather references of when it's okay to kind of move to that next stage, which is an important thing too, because we want to move at a pace that is going to work well for us and it's going to ensure that we have the best outcome possible. Now, it doesn't mean that there's times where you try to move to the next stage and You realize that you weren't ready to move that to that stage yet. And it doesn't have to be all or nothing, and that doesn't have to break kind of everything.

Mm-hmm.

But I like chunking it up into phases and into parts and kind of pieces because it allows us to make progress and kind of push the, the push the bar in regards to the growth in that area without feeling like if that progress is slowed or stopped, or we try kind of to go too fast in regard to that process. Like we have to go all the way back to zero. Does that make sense?

Oh, 100%. You're talking about basically thinking in a very binary way, right? Like you're flip-flopping. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Where like you would flip-flop between like, you know, I'll use the example of the world. Like you're terrified of the world and you tell yourself, oh, everybody's happy and everybody will be nice to me and I trust everybody, whatever, whatever, whatever. And that's not the reality. So like you would probably be like, if you built that belief and really tried to strengthen that belief, this is a challenge I had in building trust with you in the beginning. as well was like, I really tried to, I tried to convince myself of something that was not true. Right. And I, and I, and I did for a while, but then as soon as I faced reality and discovered that my belief that I created was not true, it instantly crumbled. And I, I, I flipped back to the other binary state of, you know, everything is horrible. So for me, it was, it was developing a realistic view on the world. And also this, this topic, I believe, ties in so perfectly with what we were talking earlier this week about. Acceptance about like, you, you can't, or in things like you, you can control and can't control. It's like, you can't control other people. You can't control the world. And that's something that we kind of just need to accept, but we can control how we feel, how we act. And that is all you need to basically be at peace with all those things. And a lot of times I believe that, or what I was searching for, I'll talk for me personally. When I was looking for like trust in the beginning, I was looking for trust. As I grew, I ended up looking more for Peace within myself and acceptance and accepting that I can't always control what Kayleen does, but I can control me. And I know if I can control me, I can control my level of peace, my level of joy, my level of happiness. So I started doing a lot more inner work and that allowed me to find that peace. And in tandem, it allowed in our relationship there to be more space for us to both do our healing. And in time, it allowed us to ultimately build more trust. And in a weird way, it's like, I don't even really think about trust that often, you know, like I trust you. And at the same time, I understand that, you know, things can happen, you know, like if something happened, it's not the end of the world because whatever, that's, that's the way it is. But I'm a very, I'm a very kind of laid back person like that. So, so I don't know, but I do agree with what you were saying about like doing it gradually. But I think a big focus has to be on the kind of the inner work and the inner Processing and releasing so that you can, I think, cause every, like the 4 things that people said today was trusting myself, trusting others, trusting authority, trusting the world. So I think if you work on trusting yourself first, that's the thing you can control. And I think everything else will stem from there. And I think that's kind of the point I'm trying to say here is to, I early on tried to focus on other people, on the world, on other things. And it didn't work because I couldn't change other people. I couldn't control other people. And then I started in, in, I'm just kind of realizing I started building trust in myself, started trusting myself. I started loving myself again. I started appreciating myself again. And that allowed me to not put myself in dangerous situations, one, but also it built that level of peace that ultimately was what I was looking for in the first place. And it just made everything better. So kind of a round robin type thing there, but.

And I would agree with that, right? So that's the next thing I wanted to kind of bring up is. The trust in yourself, which can also happen in stages, should, should be the first kind of trust that you build, right? And so what's cool about building trust in yourself, and I'm not sure if, if we were kind of expecting to come on here as a group and be like, okay, here's how you trust everything, right? But when you build the trust in yourself, what you're actually gonna figure out is when and where to trust.

Yeah.

And when to kind of move through those stages of trust, right? And so let's use authority as an example, right? So we don't have to have this belief or this trust in all authority. So we don't have to paint the picture like that. That's very black and white, or excuse me, that's very black or white. So if we're just saying, okay, I trust authority, that means anyone that comes through that door with a collared shirt and a badge on, or I don't know what authority—

Lab coat.

A lab coat on is, that means that we're going to trust them. And so, Not all authority is worthy of that trust. And if you've ever heard of the Milgram experiment, that was an experiment specifically designed to see that we have authority bias, right? And so even if you believe something is wrong, if someone of authority is telling you to do it anyway, we're more likely to do it and even do damage to, to others in doing it. And it was just an experiment, but it's worth looking up. If I'll, I'll post a picture of it later so you can kind of see if you, if you haven't heard of that. Right? So we don't have to paint it as like, okay, I trust authority. I trust that the world is a safe place. It can be built in stages and it can be conditional. Mm-hmm. And it's okay for it to be conditional in regard to relationships. Someone else needs to earn your trust. And that doesn't mean you say, hey, you need to do X, Y, and Z to earn my trust. That means you watch their behaviors, you watch their actions, and then decide to kind of move up these levels of trust. Let me know if what I'm saying kind of makes sense to you and is resonating here.

Mm-hmm.

Okay, but that trust needs to start to be built in yourself. So I have enough trust in myself. I trust myself enough to make good choices for myself and to put myself in the right situations and not in bad situations. So I trust myself to make the decisions to say, hey, I can trust this person in this area, but in this other area, I can't, at least not yet. And I'm just watching their behaviors and it hasn't changed. So I'm not going to put myself in that situation.

Mm-hmm.

Or I'm not gonna disclose this information to them. Right. And so the world specifically was something that I really had to work on.

Yeah.

And I just had a situation this morning. I was filling up after my workout, I was filling up my, my tank, and this guy was in front of me in a pickup truck. And honestly, like, I did a little judgment, as many of us kind of do, just to assess a situation. Did a little judgment. He's a little raggedy looking, pickup was a little raggedy, kind of gave me a weird look, but he said good morning to me. Right. And so I just kind of kept an eye out. I wasn't gonna jump in a car with that guy, but I also wasn't gonna assume that he was going to do something bad. Right. And so I kind of di— it was deciding in that moment what level of trust was I gonna be at here. Right. And so I decided, okay, so I'm just gonna kind of keep an eye out while I fill my tank. And then he came back and he was like, I hope you have a great day. And I was like, wow, like, I hope you have a great day too. And he got in his car and he left. Right. And so that was, you know, during that situation, it, it wasn't that I was like, okay, the world is a safe place. So, you know, I'm gonna go up and give this guy a hug and get in the car with him and, and we're gonna have a great day together, right? It was figuring out what kind of level of trust and trusting myself enough to say, okay, in this situation, you know, based on truly and honestly judgments that I've made here, this is the level of trust that I'm at. And so I'm at a level of trust where I'm not taking any action. I'm not getting in and leaving, but I'm kind of just keeping an eye out, right? And so I'm at that kind of in-between level of trust. And so it's about trusting yourself. Trusting yourself is going to help you Figure out when and where to trust others. And again, in relationships, it's about earning trust, right? And so when our— now we both broke trust, right? But when— let me use the example and then I'll kind of explain it. When I was rebuilding trust in Brad, right, he had to— or he had to earn that trust, right? And but that doesn't mean I said, hey Brad, you need to do this, this, this, and this to earn my trust back. He had to earn it by him doing the work and focusing on himself. And with each stage that he grew and changed and the behavior changed, I moved up in those levels of trust. So he earned it without me necessarily saying, okay, X, Y, and Z will earn my trust back. It wasn't an active thing that he did. It was something that I watched for and I decided for myself. So it's a very personal kind of journey to decide when and where to trust. And again, with that kind of foundation of the more you learn how to trust yourself, the easier it's gonna get to figure out. When and where to trust. What are the things that we're looking at? You know, what we want to look at reality. We don't want to go from black to white completely, right? We want to understand that there is gray here. There are levels of this here. And that's a really important thing. And in regard to like building that trust with yourself, one of the things that was so tremendous for me was, was doing the things I said I was going to do, was fulfilling commitments I said I was going to, to go to.

Mm-hmm.

Well, one of the huge things for me was like addiction, right? And so I knew that like my sobriety journey had nothing to do with anyone else. It affected a ton of other people in negative ways for sure, but it doesn't matter what I do when everyone else is watching. That's not me trusting myself. That's me putting myself in a situation where maybe I don't wanna be embarrassed or have them judge me.

Yeah.

When I'm alone, you know, when I'm, no one's gonna be home all weekend, I'm alone, no one would know. And I still hold that word to myself. I still have that commitment to myself. That's me proving, that's a great example of me proving that I can trust myself that I can do this, basically, right? That I can say I'm going to do something and then do it, right? So it's not like going to the fridge for a midnight snack and eating that cake when no one's watching. It's the opposite. It's doing the things, being who you are, basically, or who you say that you are to yourself and others when no one's watching. And that, to me, is one of the best ways to kind of build trust in yourself. I don't know about if you have any thoughts on building trust in yourself.

I think, I think one of the biggest things you can do when, when learning how to trust yourself is, is processing trauma because trauma is the root of so many, so many of the actions that we take and so many of the feelings and emotions and things that we do. And so many of the reasons why we might trust people more than we should.

Or vice versa.

Or vice versa. But I wanted to back up because you said something really, really good, like about the example with you at the gas station this morning with the guy who just said, good morning, have a great day. You, you switch from, I like what Lorena said here. Lorena said, yeah, I don't just blindly trust everyone. And that's exactly what you were, you were saying. And when you were saying that, I was thinking about, okay, there's kind of like 2 different types of trust, right? There's kind of like the blind trust or the blind distrust where like you just assume everything, like everything is good. You can trust everybody or you shouldn't trust anybody in the, like in this example, the world and people are dangerous and All that, all that stuff. What you were talking about and describing was more of a logical trust. It was, it was basically acknowledging and understanding that every situation is unique. Every person's unique and a unique amount of trust, or you get to make a unique decision on based on the information that you are taking in. Right. So it wasn't just this emotional instinctual, oh, this person said anything to me. He's in a truck, whatever. Stay away, whatever.

Right.

You, you assessed the situation, you, you uniquely responded to it at the appropriate level of trust, you know? Yeah. Even though it was like, it happened like probably very quickly for you. Yeah. That's basically what you did. He's like, you weren't in this blind trust or distrust mode. You were in a very logical trust mode, which I think is a, a really—

I wanna draw this on the board.

I was going to.

You mind drawing it?

Yeah.

I really like that.

Well, I have a, I have a different point that I wanna make about that too, cuz I was, I was talking about earlier. How emotions? Well, I'll go back to this. So trauma in general can cause trust trust issues, which is probably we're probably all very much aware of that, right? Trauma can cause us to trust or distrust people or things or places, whatever it is. And also a breach of trust can be trauma as well. So if you trusted somebody in the past and they did something, you might have this trauma that is supporting that belief of. I shouldn't trust this person, or I shouldn't trust anybody. So you're in that mode of when you're dealing with trust from a place of trauma, you're in that emotional blind trust mode, whether it's blind distrust or blind trust. And the way to break out of that is to process that underlying trauma so you don't have this big weight pulling you to either side. So you can think of it more logically instead of being reactive emotionally, right? So when you process the underlying Trauma, you can you can get into that logical mode and be more specific. So this is something that I like to call the trust-o-meter.

Trusty trust-o-meter.

So if you remember in the beginning or earlier, I said I tried to in in our relationship, I tried to trust Keeling 100% before I was ready and before I processed any trauma. So basically, in when we were when we were first in relationship, I I trusted Keeling, and then you know as things progressed. I got hurt and I built a trauma around her and I extremely distrusted her. So I'm going to draw the trauma over here basically as a weight. So I have a weight over here. So this is like 1 ton. That's a lot of weight.

It's a third of a whale.

So in the beginning, my arrow was over here tethered to this, this, this weight over here. Right. And what I tried to do. was I tried to logically just change that belief so that I would trust her 100%. And after I did all the logical, like, belief work and things like that, I actually did 100% trust her, right? But I was still tethered to this weight. So whenever I faced reality and when reality didn't line up with my belief of 100% trust, I crashed back down to 100% distrust. Right. So as soon as something happened, I was unable to—

I broke that trust again.

Yeah. I was unable to, to look at things logically and rationally and understand that, hey, this might be part of the process. Hey, maybe you shouldn't put yourself that far into the situation where you, where you get hurt that much or get that much emotionally invested or allow things to get that heated or whatever it is, whatever it was for me. I, I trusted fully and I just like let myself go all in and then I was pulled right back down. So basically what you need to do, these are scissors. You need to cut the line. You need to process the weight. You need to process the trauma that's causing you to distrust. And then from there, when you're detached from this, you can make logical decisions. So when you face, when you face a situation, you can be like, okay, how much should I trust here? It's not, it's not being influenced by any trauma. It's being influenced by my past experiences that I learned from, right? Because when you process trauma, Your brain, like how the, how the brain processes events, it throws out all the emotional baggage, but it keeps all the things that are, are, are all the lessons for you and all the things that are necessary for you moving forward for you to learn from and grow from. So you no longer have the emotional charge of the trauma, but you still retain all the lessons from that. So it's not like you forget everything and you put yourself back in the same situation, but you're able to look at different situations differently and assess it. And react differently towards it because you're no longer being held down by these traumas. And something else I want to say is like, it may not just be one weight. There could be multiple weights that you might have to metaphorically cut.

In multiple situations, right? And I think what's, what's really cool, not only about processing, you know, your trauma, but also about building trust with yourself. For the most part, this trust-o-meter is just going to be smack in the middle, right? And in each situation, right? So like me this morning at the gas station, It started right in the middle where there's no trust, there's no distrust. It just is, right? And then you can kind of, it, it will, I don't know, what do dials do? Increase, decrease, whatever it will do, right? It'll change here based on as you assess the situation and kind of take in the information right now with certain people, it's gonna be higher, right? So it, you're gonna have a more kind of steady. So like my trust for Brad, right? This, this needle is all the way on this side now. It took a while to kind of get it to that point, right? And so It started at, it didn't start at distrust, but you know, after we had pain and damage, right, it was at distrust. And then we kind of worked it over and we worked it over a little bit more and a little bit more and then a little bit more until we got to where we wanted to go, right? Which was kind of all the way on the other side. So for some people, you might find that it's steady in a certain area, right? So maybe you like 80% trust someone in all these areas, but there's a few areas where, you know, you don't trust them. That's okay. And that needle might stay there. Until you either move to the next stage or it's just maybe where it stays. So the more you process, the easier this is going to get because you're not going to have those weights kind of swaying you to either side. And the more you learn how to trust yourself— and processing will teach you how to trust yourself because you'll be making more logical decisions. It won't be based off of— bless you— it won't be based off of the weight of trauma. It'll be based off of the situation. And you'll know, cuz you'll have this, this data and this information. What you're doing when you're processing in your brain, like Brad said, is learning lessons. So you're gonna be learning these lessons and taking these forward into your life to make better decisions. Mm-hmm. And that's part of building that trust with yourself. But I also think building trust with yourself, I think for me at least, primarily got built and got built quickly in me doing the things I knew I needed to do, me taking care of myself. Me just being the person who I wanted to be, who I said that I was, who I like knew that I was, but I wasn't acting that way. And really kind of getting control of myself first and foremost. So that meant processing, that meant sobriety, that meant showing up when I said I was gonna show up, or just being honest with myself, with the people around me. Yes, I wanna do this thing. No, I'm not interested in this thing. All sorts of things like that helped me build the muscle of trusting myself.

Yeah.

And now I trust myself completely. And I trust myself to the point where I know I could be in any situation and basically figure out what is a perfect level of trust and then make decisions kind of based off that.

Yeah. Something else I want to talk about is I just gave the example of having the weight on this side. The weight could also be on this side, right? So maybe I'll go with the example of like you were abandoned or something, right? So you have this trauma over here. Of maybe abandonment, whatever that is. So now you, you have that weight pulling, pulling the lever down to 100% trusting people because you want to fill that void that was never given to you. So like, there's different, there's different ways, like it could be on this side or this side, and that's when things can like flip-flop back and forth on either side. But I wanted to mention that as well, like, because that can be an equally damaging problem, putting yourself in situations where you, you trust people so much to the point of your detriment where you get hurt. And that can be trauma-based as well. And why, why you can't think rationally about the situation is because you have all that kind of baggage being pulled forward into that situation, pulling you in this, in this certain direction. But yeah, I think, I think a certain level of distrust is, is healthy. And because I, I, I don't, I don't accept, I, I was just, I was thinking about this. It's trust is an interesting thing. And what is trust at its foundational Level, right? Is it just a set of beliefs that you have around a person about what you expect them to do, right?

I would say, yeah.

Like, I trust you to do something, right? It means I believe that you will do this most of the time, right?

So it's just a collection of references to say that they have consistently done this thing. They have consistently been there when, you know, when I've needed them, or have they— they've consistently not been there when I've needed them. So I have references that show me this certain thing. Yeah, absolutely.

It's interesting.

And so you're gonna have these in all different areas. And that I think is something that's interesting too. It's gonna be trust with yourself, trust with a certain person in a certain area. It, this, this covers a, a lot of different things that you'll be facing in your life in general. So it's not just like you have one of these or like one thing, one kind of trust thing to work on. It's, there's, there's a lot of different areas where we trust and where we distrust.

Yeah.

And there's areas where Throwing yourself into, like, starting at a high level of trust is a healthy thing. And there's level with, or there's areas where starting with a level of distrust is a healthy thing. And again, the more you process, the clearer that's going to get for you based on the situation. And the more you trust yourself, the easier it's going to get to distinguish both of those things.

So what do you think about this? Do you think it's, it's Okay to trust 100% because I would argue maybe 100% is the only place where you don't want to be because like, I think a little bit of distrust is healthy because it's, to me, it's like you leave enough room for accepting that you can't control things, right? That accepting that there are things that are outside of your control and that your beliefs may be wrong, right? It's always that level of like questioning of like, okay, well something could go wrong and that's okay. Right? Instead of always believing that something's going to be perfect 100% of the time.

I don't think trusting 100% means that you believe that something's going to be perfect 100% of the time. And I also don't think that it would be to someone's detriment to trust 100%. So let's say in a relationship where you have a healthy relationship and there's 100% trust on both sides, I don't think that means that the other person can't make mistakes. It, it, like, let's say, I don't know, I, I trust you 100% and then You know, I don't know, 5 years down the road, like, I, you know, I'm like, hey, can you pick up the kids from school today? And you like forget or something. Right. Right. I don't think— sorry, kids. Yeah. Oops. I don't think that, at least for me, that wouldn't diminish the trust. Like part of trust and just part of relationships in general is understanding that we're human and that we make mistakes. If you do that time and time and time again, then that's going to diminish the trust. And I think it's okay for that in some cases to be a sliding scale. It's gonna be diminish the trust in that area, but I think it is okay to trust 100%. And I think it's also okay to distrust 100% depending on your situation. That's fair.

That's fair. So when you, here's another thing, when you start to, let's say I forget the kids for a week straight. Sorry, kids. The, your trust will go down.

I think it's really situation dependent, right? Because if you forget the kids once, we're going to have a conversation about it, right? And we're going to figure out what is actually going on. Right. And so I'm not going to let that happen for a week straight, even 2 days in a row. Right. But I think it's about figuring out what's going on. I don't think it necessarily has to do with trust or not trust.

Okay.

So I don't think everything will increase or decrease trust. Trust is more of a foundational thing. So it's not that every action is going to increase trust or decrease trust. I think there's plenty of actions that just are, even if they're kind of mistakes.

You're saying that. So there's a level of acceptance to your trust-o-meter. So let's say, but let's say, let's give an example where I did do something that broke your trust, right? And it went down. You, depending on what it is, let's say it's something that caused your trust, trust to go down. Are there emotions associated to that? It doesn't flip-flop, right? Because you're, you're still thinking about it logically. So like, okay, this happened. It's almost like you're course correcting.

Well, it's in one area, right? So they're like, If you—

I'm probably getting too nuanced. I like, I love getting nuanced though. I, I—

This is our life. If you broke trust in one area, it wouldn't put this at a zero or at 100% distrust. It would ding that area for sure.

Right.

It might bring that specific area to a zero for sure. Right. And then it would be about me deciding, okay, how am I going to build? When am I going to build this back up?

Mm-hmm.

So for me, it's a process of like constantly kind of climbing, at least in the relationships that I wanna have in life. I keep people in my life that I know want to get better, that I know want to, you know, basically like the future that I want. And so I would work on bringing that back up and rebuilding that basically again. But it would be that specific area. So I could trust you 100% except in like one area. That's the way that I think of it. It's not like a perfect percentage point where it's like, I trust you 100% or just 99%. It's like, I trust you 100%. But there's one area specifically where there isn't trust yet. And so I'm just kind of focused on building that area. Does that answer your question?

I think so. Yeah. Yeah. Cause I, I wanted to, I think I wanted to talk about that again, because it's not like a, it's not a fragile thing, right? It's not like something that, I mean, it can be destroyed, but not destroyed completely. Not with everything. Not, not every little thing will cause it to kind of flip back and forth.

Yeah. Even if you're in a relationship, say like, so this would be a huge one for me. You're in a relationship, right? And, and someone, you know, kind of steps outta that relationship. You know, say this is 10 years down the line. Brad does that, right? And we have kids together now. He, I know already he's gonna be an awesome dad. He's gonna, like, I can trust him 100% with our kids and not trust him within our relationship. Right. And so that would end our romantic relationship, but it wouldn't end us as parents. Right. So I could trust him 100% with our children. But not trust him to be a part of this, this kind of pairing here. So there's different levels of trust, or there's different areas of trust, and I think that's the important thing to understand. And I, I think it's also important to understand, while there are certain things that would ding a huge amount of damage, that it's— it doesn't have to be such a fragile thing.

Hmm.

And it can be a thing where You know, you're, when you're working on building it, you're going to know when it's time to move to the next stage. And the more that you process, the more that you trust yourself, you're gonna build that trust in yourself, the more you're gonna understand what these stages kind of look like and when it is time to kind of level up in that stage and choose to kind of take that step and choose to kind of take that leap, if that makes sense.

Yeah, that makes sense. 100%.

Okay. Don't forget our kids.

Trust is an interesting thing. I don't think about it very often. Our kids, cuz I don't, I don't think I associate, like, I don't think about trust very often.

Okay. So if you have any questions, feel free to get them in the chat box there. Amazing, amazing job with this session here. We'll go through these comments, make sure we kind of hit on everything. Judy sharing. So I'm thinking basically that trust level has nothing to do with how much you love someone. That sounds simple and logical, but not really what I felt in the past. Yeah. I mean, yeah. Mm-hmm. Right. I can love him and there were times when this, Trust meter was at 100% distrust, and I loved him with my whole heart. And because I loved him, I wanted to work on rebuilding that trust. I wanted him again, in a very private way, to kind of earn that trust back as I was earning his trust back. And the trust and the love were 2 very, very separate things. Yeah.

So, but you understood what you, you could trust me for, what you couldn't trust me for, right? And you didn't put yourself in harm's way. Because of the love. So you're leading more with your head than your heart, but you were also ultimately leading with your heart.

Yes, because I was choosing to kind of continue even though we were at a point of 100% distrust. And I believed that he would— again, now I'm not asking him to do this, but I believe that he would earn that trust back because I know who he is as a person and I know he's always looking to kind of grow and get better.

Right. That was always a foundational thing for us in our relationship is like I always trusted that Kayleen was going to put the work in. Right? If she wasn't willing to put the work in, I wouldn't have been able to be with her. And for better or for worse, I believed in her and it hurt. And, you know, I trusted her and that was something that allowed us to work through it. And I know you had that trust, that trust in me. Like you had that overall trust of like, hey, he's going to work on it. It's like, I might not trust, be able to trust him with this thing right now, but I trust that he's going to work on it.

That was the one area I would say for me, if it wavered at all, did not waver very much. I always believed even, even in our worst times, That you would be working to get better and you would be working to grow. And I always believed in you in that regard.

But it's important. So like Judy, you said, could you scroll down again? It sounds simple and logical, but not really what I've felt in the past. So I think like if anybody's having problems with trust or like a lot of emotions when it comes to trust, look for the trauma, look for the trauma and see what's attached to that trust to see if you can process that, see if you can release it. And again, we have a ton of great coaching sessions on branding in the coaching library. Which you can just filter through by pushing any one of those tags. So you click on processing tools and it'll come up with all the processing tools that we've covered. So if you need help with that, that's how you can, you know, kind of work your way through that as well.

So Barbara asking a good question, isn't trust based on safety? And the way that I would describe it is those levels that I'm talking about, kind of building that up more and more, are different levels of safety. And so let's say that you are terrified of, of swimming. Right? Like, you, you maybe you can't swim and you're just, you're, you feel unsafe in the water. Well, the first step is let's get on a cruise ship, right? And we're going to feel safe on a cruise ship. It is a floating building, so it basically doesn't feel any different, right? Or a cruise ship attached to a dock. And as long as it's not the Titanic, right?

I know.

And then what we're going to do from there is, okay, so now let's go on like a ferry. So a little bit smaller. So we're kind of getting closer to that. We're building trust. The cruise ship was fine. And now we're going to go on a ferry, and next we're going to go on a fishing boat. Okay, and that was fine too. And next what we're going to do is we're going to have a life jacket on, and we're going to go into a pond. Okay, and that was fine too. So maybe we'll take the life jacket and we'll go into the ocean, right where it's a little bit rougher, and that was fine too. And then maybe we'll go back to that pond, and we'll just kind of wade in the water. We'll sit there, no life jacket, maybe a little boogie board or noodle, right? And that was fine too, until we get to the point where. We're in the water and we're feeling safe on our own, right? And so that's what I would describe that these building that trust is like, is like, okay, we're safe here. Now let's watch for the next step. And sometimes it is going to feel like a little bit of a push or a little bit of a leap.

Yeah.

And that's an okay thing to do. And what you might find is sometimes you leap and you're like, that was a little too soon. We're going to take a little bit of a step back. And that's all that it is, right? So maybe you do the life jacket in the water and you're like, you know what? A little bit too soon for this. Let's go back on the fishing boat and then you try again. Right. And so that's how I would describe it. Are those levels are also levels of deeper and deeper safety.

Yeah. Yeah. I had to do that in my life. I apologize for ruining your metaphor. I knew I was going to ruin it and I thought it was just kind of funny.

Why did he do that?

I know, because I thought it'd be funny because I would ruin it. But that sounds really mean and not at all how I intended it. I had to do that, you know, gradual, you know, building relationships with with people, or it was scary. Like, I, I, if I listened to my emotions, I didn't want to, but I knew I, I, I had to. And long-term, I did want to. Mm-hmm. You know who I'm talking about. But, but it was that gradual thing, and I took the steps that I wanted to take when I was ready. And I also understood that there was discomfort, there was discomfort and there was fear, and I had to face the fear to, to trust because it was something that was worthy, worthy to me of building that trust.

Love that. Joanne sharing something that I think is a great addition to this metaphor. Joanna sharing, this past 2 years, I've healed a lot and I've oiled the trust-o-meter, so it's working a lot better. That is awesome, right? And that's what's going to happen when you clip those weights away. It's going to function the way that it's supposed to function. For a lot of us experiencing trauma, no matter what age, right? But you experience trauma and you're just like, if you find yourself flipping back and forth, you're not crazy.

That's trauma.

That's what trauma does.

Yeah.

So I love that addition to our analogy. Sunny sharing confidence in me equals trust in me. And I would equate those synonymously. Yeah, for sure. I'm confident that I'm going to do what I say I'm going to do. I'm confident that I'm going to take care of myself. I'm confident that I'm going to put myself first, that I'm not going to put myself into dangerous situations. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I'm going to let you read these for a minute.

Sure. Got to go. Take a little break. Alrighty. So I'm going to scroll up here. Mimi said, this was a while ago, but I'm gonna go through them. Mimi said, for me, I've always been too trusting in relationships and then betrayed in all sorts of ways. So now I have problems trusting without questioning, um, in the back of my mind. Questioning isn't necessarily a bad thing. You know, if you're, if you're looking at things logically and you're learning from, you know, past mistakes, if it's not kind of fueled by, by trauma and extreme emotion, that can be a good thing. You know, where you, you learn, you know, like you got hurt in the past. Yes, you don't want to go back into that situation, and you can take the lessons you learned and bring them forward and to not put yourself in that situation again. But if you feel like it's being fueled by— because you might have, you know, kind of weights on both sides where you trusted too much for whatever reason, or maybe just you just threw yourself all in because you love the person, whatever it was for you, then you got hurt. You probably have some traumas around there, but it sounds like You know, questioning is, is never a bad thing. You know, there's nothing wrong with questioning something. I think there's something wrong with more just blindly trusting something. But so I think that's, I think that's good. I like what Barbara said here. So being logical would mean being an adult rather than being in a traumatized child. 100%. Yes. You're able to, you're able to just discern and look at reality of what's unfolding in front of you and make a decision based off the, the re— the real facts that like what's actually happening versus what happened in your past and reacting, taking the information that's happening and then putting it through the filter of your past and then reacting it as, as reacting as if it was the trauma you experienced when you were a kid or in the past, whenever that was. So I love that. Helene says trauma can cause trust issues, either blind trust or blind distrust. Love it. Processing the underlying trauma is crucial, crucial for trusting yourself. 100%. I would never be able to trust myself if I didn't process the trauma. I would never be able to trust Kayleen, you know, cuz my distrust in Kayleen, it came out as, as anger, as lashouts, as destruction of myself and her. Not like physically, but like I would eat a lot. I would do unhealthy things. I would yell and scream in the relationship. That's what I mean by kind of destruction.

But I would never— I never eyesored our walls.

That only happened once. It only happened once. Once moving on once, but I'll never let you forget it. Do you cover this?

Yeah, that's the first one we covered.

That's what I thought. Wasn't sure if I forgot, and then I covered everything else.

Great, awesome job. So little housekeeping: remember, this coming Monday is our first session with Ryan, our health and wellness coach. It's gonna be 12 p.m. Eastern time. It's gonna be noon. I created an event in the Facebook group. He's gonna talk about the four pillars of health. Which I'm really excited for. I know he's also really excited to do it. And I hope everyone, if you can show up live, absolutely show up live. He's going to do a Q&A. It's going to be so much fun. It's going to be awesome. He's super smart. He's super knowledgeable on this topic. And honestly, a lot of different topics that like he sent me his bio and I was like, this doesn't even cover like how many, like how much he knows about so many different things when it comes to health and wellness and fitness and nutrition. And all sorts of stuff like that. So he has a lot of knowledge. We're really excited for the next year. He's gonna be with us once a month doing a session. So if you can't make it, there will be a recording, but if you can make it live, absolutely.

Yeah.

Be there live. I cannot wait. I'm so excited for that.

He's like a, like a hidden gem, like a hidden secret.

He is like a hidden gem.

'Cause he's, he's like, he's very local on one hand. He's not like, he doesn't have like this big online presence, but it's like, I remember when you first found him, I'm like, dang, he lives, he lives in Rhode Island.

Like he lives right next to us.

He's a, yeah, he's a smart dude.

Yeah, he is. He is a hidden gem. And yeah, no, we should not be able to get in touch with him. He should be be that kind of, he's that level of, of smart and knowledgeable on his topic.

So I, I missed Lorena's thing here. I, I apologize, Lorena. I, I scrolled over that. So Lorena said this in the beginning, right at the beginning.

Do you want me to read it? Yeah, you can read it. Probably trust in myself. How is that different to having faith in myself? Trust and faith seem very similar. So those would be other things I would use fairly synonymously. They're pretty close, at least in my definition. It's definitely going to depend on your definition. The way that I see faith when it comes to this topic is like future trust. And so I had faith that my relationship would get to the point where it was all the way on the positive side, the 100% trust side of this meter. I had faith that I would be able to kind of trust him. So I see faith as like future trust, and faith is like the next step of trust. So we're doing trust in stages. And we're at stage, let's just number them 1 to 10. We're at stage 3. I have faith that stage 4 will come and will, when I'm ready, it will kind of present itself and I'll be able to pick it out and I'll be able to know, okay, now it's time to move to stage 4 is how I see it. That it's going to depend entirely on how you kind of define those words for yourself.

How I see faith is something that is just so deep, something so deep that you believe that you don't need any references to support it, that you just believe that this will happen. Over time, like I had so much faith in, in Kayleen that, you know, had I just looked at the reality unfolding in front of me, it didn't make any sense, but there was so much faith that, you know, like unwavering, like faith to me is like unwavering, not supported by anything.

Anything rational.

No, it's just, it just like, you believe it at your core. And to me, it's different than trust. It is. It's like, it's different. It's like, it's what, what you said earlier. It's like, I, like, I believe Brad will get better. You had faith that I would. I would get better and rebuild the trust.

Well, I think what's interesting for me, just in— because you're bringing this up, there were points in our journey where like I had absolute faith in our relationship. I had absolute faith in him. And if I looked at the data, everything told me to go in the other direction. Everything, everything that we were going through, everything that we had been through, the things that were going on would have been very obvious, like from an outside perspective looking in, to like both— for both of us to turn away and like do our own thing, and that would be the end of everything that we had. But we both had this underlying faith. And I don't know, I feel like I like the definition of like future trust. But again, it depends on you and depends on how you feel about it, that we would be able to get to this point. And it wasn't supported by any facts. It was not supported by any reality. It was—

I guess it was supported by one thing, which was the belief that, like you said, that I guess I trusted you that you would do whatever it took to get better.

Yeah.

But I constantly leaned on that faith, you know, because it didn't make sense based on reality, but based on that one belief, I had faith for the future. So, I mean, that's a, it's a very interesting conversation. Trust versus faith. Faith is a beautiful thing though. It is like a warm blanket in a blizzard. Wow.

I want to ruin your metaphor, but I'm not going to.

Do it. Nope. Do it. Do it, please.

12 PM Eastern time, Barbara, is Ryan's chat on Monday. 12 PM Eastern time. I believe that's 9 AM Pacific for those of you on Pacific time.

Yeah, 3 hours.

So 9 AM for you West Coast people, 12 PM noon, noon for you East Coast people, and for everyone else, you're on your own. I'm sorry, I can't, I can't convert it all. No worries. Judy, Judy sharing, looking forward to the health coaching, but I'm not gonna be able to make this first one, and I'll probably miss a few sessions next week because we're celebrating our 25th anniversary with my husband. Which is awesome. Judy, have a great weekend. Have a great time doing that. You definitely deserve that time together with no alarms. With no alarms. Oh, no alarms vacation. That's right.

I missed that.

A no alarms vacation. No phone, no alarms, something like that. It was beautiful. It was unbelievable.

Highly recommended to bring no technology on a vacation. No technology.

Like we rented a place in January, no TV.

It was awesome. Yeah. Oh, it was so peaceful. Like I, like me, myself, I kind of want to, like I was saying this the other day, I kind of want to be a hermit and just like, like, just like go back to the roots and like not have technology and not be connected literally at all. And just, I don't know.

And so this will be our last session and, um, we'll never see you guys again because we're going to be hermits instead.

I think it would just be really fun to have a house in the woods.

And Barbara sharing 5 PM UK time. So for Ryan's talk on Monday, for those of you in the UK, 5 PM. I almost said 5 PM Eastern. 5 PM UK time. But if you can show up, he's going to do a live Q&A at the end, which is super exciting. They're gonna share, it's 2 AM in Australia, so that's a recorded view for me. Yes, if it's at 2 AM for you, probably a better idea to catch the recording. If you happen to find yourself up or you're a night owl, but it's gonna be a ton of fun. I can't wait. So you can look forward to that on Monday. And then Monday, or excuse me, next week we will have another kind of round robin week in to content. We'll vote on another topic for next Friday, just like we did this week. Joe, it's great to have you here. A hello goodbye, but it's great to see you nonetheless.

And you said when I was 12, I told my parents I wanted to be a hermit and be self-taught. Well, I am just like your 12-year-old self.

That could be the future. You know, you could be a hermit but also a YouTube star so that you can— YouTube star to hermit. Anyways, great to have you all. I hope to see you bright and early on Monday morning because it is Friday. Have an amazing, amazing Weekend.

Only if I had a, a videographer that would do everything else for me.

Yeah.

But even then I'd be like, no. Okay. Or you could get some of those like, uh, maybe just like hidden cameras, like game cameras.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. A bunch of game cameras on.

So if you—

my life would be probably pretty boring though.

It's probably because he's gone off to be a hermit. We're going hiking tomorrow.

Mm-hmm.

So it's probably because I left him there and he's gonna be a hermit.

If I had enough money to go and do that and buy like 100 acres or 1,000 acres and just plop a house in there. I'd probably do that for a few years, to be honest. Like, to be perfectly honest, if I had enough money to do that right now, I'd probably do that. Okay.

Well, I know someone who has 100 acres that you also know that you could go down there and stay for a little while.

For 2 years?

A little while. All right, everyone, have an amazing, amazing day. Have an amazing weekend. Thank you so much. Amazing job so far this week. I want you to celebrate your wins always, always, always. But it's a great time to do it right now. To think about the week, to think back what things went well. Let's celebrate them. What progress have we made? Let's celebrate that as well. And like I said, love you, believe in you at the very highest level, and look forward to seeing you bright and early on Monday.

See you later.

Bye, Brian.

Hey everybody, thank you so much for listening to this podcast. If you want to learn more about how you can coach with me directly, there's a link in the description you can check out. There's absolutely no pressure. The main thing is I wanted you to get value from this episode here, but I hope you have a fantastic day and I'll see you in the next one.