Trust is like a marble jar that fills with each trustworthy action and empties when broken. Rebuilding it takes consistent, authentic presence and incremental vulnerability, not trauma dumping. One person practiced this with their therapist, then extended the same approach to friends, family, and a romantic partner.
This is like from, I think, Brené Brown, and she like had this little talk. She was talking about something, but it was like the trust jar. It's like a marble jar that you put like every time you do something that reinforces trust, then you're putting a marble in the jar. And then eventually that jar is like full of marbles and then y'all can really lean into the trust, but it's a slow build process. When there's a rupture of trust, a lot of those marbles are lost and it's a slow process to build it back up. And I think that that also speaks to like each time that we continue to agree to show up, because authenticity means discomfort. It means showing up and feeling our real feelings, not just people pleasing and trying to be like, it's all good, no problem. Uh, but then continually showing like, here's my dark nasties. Not all at once, because that's, that's, you know, trauma over dump, you know, like not a good— Yeah. Um, but bit by bit to build this thing over time, like that, that's how we show each other, oh, he's not gonna run away. Oh, okay, we can handle this, you know. All right, cool, you know, I can do this again. And, and building this with you also then allowed me to do it with other friends, right? And then with family members, and now with her. Partner where it's like, oh, like I'm really building these relationships slowly, mindfully, and continuing to meet that person in vulnerability.
