7 ways to get over trust issues for better relationships

Trust issues can be a barrier to personal and professional growth. They can hinder relationships, collaboration, and self-confidence and prevent you from living a more meaningful life full of deep-rooted love and support.

Addressing trust issues is crucial for developing emotional resilience, healthy boundaries, and strong connections with others. By understanding what trust issues are, their causes, and their signs, you can better position yourself to heal from them emotionally and improve your social health.

What are trust issues?

Trust issues refer to a difficulty believing in the integrity of others. This can cause you to doubt or be suspicious of relationships, without any evidence of betrayal or negative intentions. As the name suggests, this leads to a lack of trust in others and can keep you from developing healthy relationships or good friendships.

When someone has trust issues, they often catastrophize and assume the worst. They may expect negative outcomes from a relationship even when the other person proves themselves trustworthy. They may also self-sabotage by pushing away the other person in their relationship for fear of getting hurt. 

Trust issues are fairly common and can range from mild to more severe. If you have difficulty trusting others, it’s important to address the feeling so you can build meaningful connections.

A number of factors can cause trust issues. They can result from past trauma, previously broken trust in relationships, or the way you feel about yourself. 

A few specific causes of trust issues include the following:

• Abandonment: If you’ve been abandoned by someone you care about, it can cause you to develop a greater sense of mistrust in all your relationships. This is especially true if the abandonment was completely unexpected. You may struggle to feel as if someone will stick around or prevent yourself from growing too close to anyone so they can’t abandon you.
• Infidelity: Cheating in a romantic relationship can be a huge cause of trust issues since relationships around exclusivity rely on trust. Infidelity breaks the promise you made to be faithful and honest with your partner, which can result in permanent distrust.
• Jealousy: Feelings of jealousy can lead to resentment and detective-like measures such as snooping through someone’s personal belongings. These feelings and behaviors can contribute to a lack of trust, which is especially true for people with an anxious attachment style. Evidence published in Partner Abuse found that individuals with this attachment style are more likely to become jealous when they experience distrust in their partner.
• Betrayal: If someone betrayed you, it means you’ve trusted them in the past only to have that trust deliberately broken. Betrayal can lead to trust issues and a belief that most people are deceitful.
• Insecurities: How you feel about yourself can also result in trust issues. If you are insecure or have low self-esteem, you may constantly feel that people are out to get you. This can make it difficult to trust anyone.
• Fear and anxiety: Anxiety can produce symptoms such as overthinking and a fear of rejection. These factors can lead to heightened vigilance and mistrust in relationships.

• An unstable childhood: A history of abuse or neglect by your caregivers can make it difficult to believe that others have your best interest at heart.

• A bad relationship: Being with someone who exhibited toxic traits, like gaslighting or dishonesty, can make you believe that’s how your relationships will always be.

• Mental health conditions: Trust issues can be a sign of underlying mental health conditions such as paranoid personality disorder, which is marked by mistrust and suspicion of others.

• Social rejection: Being rejected by your peers during adolescence or at other ages can make it hard to trust that there are people who would support you.

• Attachment style: Certain attachment styles, such as avoidant attachment style, can cause fears of emotional intimacy and cynicism about close relationships. An anxious attachment style can cause fears of abandonment.

Identifying trust issues takes self-reflection to pinpoint your true feelings about relationships. A few common signs of trust issues include the following:

• Doubt: You have a hard time believing what others say, even when they’ve given you no reason to doubt them. 
• Suspicion: You feel suspicious about other people’s behavior, including when they offer you a nice gesture.
• Commitment issues: You might avoid committing yourself to any relationships because you fear the commitment will get broken. 
• Loneliness: You may feel a strong disconnect from the people in your life because you don’t want to get too close, leading to feelings of isolation.
• Avoiding vulnerability: You might not feel comfortable being vulnerable with anyone because you worry they’ll use the information against you.
• Being reactive: When you lack trust in someone, you may become defensive by picking fights, making accusations, and placing blame.
• Lack of forgiveness: If you have trust issues, it’s almost impossible to forgive someone after a betrayal of trust because you believe it will happen again. This can result in lingering negative feelings such as frustration, anger, and resentment. 
• Focusing on the negative: Trust issues can make you hyper-vigilant about any potential red flags in a relationship, even if there are far more green flags present.
• Avoiding intimacy: Because intimacy is built on trust, having trust issues can interfere with both physical and emotional intimacy, resulting in you avoiding it.

Because trust issues can hinder your personal and professional growth, it’s important to address them to help you fix your relationships and cultivate stronger bonds. Here are seven ways you can start building trust.

1. Be patient with yourself

Trust issues are nothing to feel ashamed about, and they aren’t your fault. Chances are, if you have trust issues, you’ve been given a reason to lose trust in people based on a prior toxic relationship. 

Because of this, it’s important to approach the subject with patience and self-compassion. Remind yourself that trust issues are fixable, and take pride in the fact that you’re actively working to better yourself through self-improvement.

2. Accept the risk

Every relationship you develop comes with an inherent risk of negative consequences. That’s because humans are imperfect beings that make mistakes. There will always be a chance you could get hurt, but there’s an equal or greater chance that you could find a bond with someone that significantly improves your life.

According to the well-known saying, “It is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.”

3. Practice vulnerability

A great way to build trust is to practice being vulnerable. This requires opening a part of you that not everyone gets to see for an opportunity to feel validated and accepted for who you are.

Practicing vulnerability doesn’t mean you need to immediately give away your deepest secrets. Start small and work your way up. For example, you could start by telling a close friend that you have a fear of heights. You could also go a little deeper in your relationship and communicate that you think you might have trust issues. 

Embracing vulnerability helps you develop trust and resilience as the other person learns about you, without them using the information against you. However, it’s important to keep an eye out for a vulnerability hangover, which can cause you to shut down or feel regret after openly sharing.

4. Be forgiving

If you find yourself holding on to a grudge because of a past betrayal, consider what it might take for you to forgive that person. Forgiveness can be freeing and make it easier for you to open yourself up again. This involves intentionally releasing the control that the person and situation had over you to help you start over with a clean slate.

5. Seek to understand

Instead of focusing on what someone said or did to hurt you, try to understand why it happened. Consider whether their intentions were good or bad, and flip your focus to put yourself in their shoes. 

Ask yourself whether the person was going through a hard time that may have led them to lash out or act differently than their true self. While this doesn’t excuse their behavior, it can make it easier to forgive them and find a path forward.

6. Model trustworthiness

One way to help you regain trust in others is to model it yourself. When you model trustworthiness, you can help those you love feel safe opening up to you by providing reassurance and support. When they’re vulnerable with you, it can be easier for you to open up in return. 

Remember that trust is a two-way street. Others need a reason to trust you as well, especially to strengthen your relationships.

7. Seek professional help

If you feel like your trust issues are more severe, consider seeking professional help through relationship coaching or therapy. Working with a coach, therapist, or other mental health professional can help you identify the cause of your trust issues in relationships and develop personalized strategies to regain trust. Sometimes an objective, outside perspective can help you see things you couldn’t on your own.

Trust issues can cause relationship anxiety, isolation, and conflict. Overcoming trust issues can lead to benefits like increased emotional intimacy, better communication, and a sense of stability. 

All of these factors can result in longer, more fulfilling relationships. They can also improve your overall health and well-being when navigating the complexities of life.

Tame your trust issues to experience stronger connections

Trust issues can affect many areas of your life, including your social health, self-confidence, and emotional intelligence. Leaving these issues unaddressed can prevent you from reaching your full potential. 

You don’t have to tackle this journey alone. Improve your personal and professional life by working with a BetterUp Coach to foster more fulfilling relationships.