Trusting others

[I am Matt]

I found a quote that sums up my thinking about trust: "It's not that you don't trust other people, it's just that you trust yourself more".

I figure that I am not the only trustworthy person on the planet, but my issue is I can never know who can really be trusted. The only fact is I KNOW that I am trustworthy.

 

[Mia]

It's one of those things you learn throughout life, I know I did and I was as naive as they come. Probably still am to a certain extent and I'm getting close to retirement. I've found over a long period of time, to go with my body's reaction and to trust it, a little funny feeling in my stomach, a little confusion about mixed messages on first meetings. It's never failed to inform me, and it's helped me a great deal in life.

 

[Adora]

I know I'm a trustworthy person but sadly had my trust betrayed by numerous of people in my life,i sometimes didn't realise that not everyone is as trustworthy and because of that I have been hurt for assuming that they were as trustworthy as I am.

 

[Progster]

I've learnt that the best person I can trust is myself. Other people are too unpredictable and unreliable, and often don't do things the way I like them done. I prefer to do things myself rather than rely on others. But I must take full responsibility. If I succeed, it's my glory, and if things go wrong, it's my fault alone.

 

[Harrison]

I will trust someone until they prove me wrong, sadly, the odds are not good so far. Trust is such a personal concept that it can be broken in many ways. I continue to be as I am and trust until proven wrong.

 

[Beverly]

I've been screwed over too many times to trust anyone by default. People have to earn my trust and few ever manage to do that. I also don't expect people to automatically trust me, I expect to have to earn that trust and, I strive to be worthy of the trust I do gain.

To me trust is a valuable commodity and not something to give or take lightly. If you trust me, I am honored and, if I trust you, I hope you recognize the value of that gift and, how great a person you are to have won my trust.

 

[Harrison]

I've been screwed over too many times to trust anyone by default. People have to earn my trust and few ever manage to do that. I also don't expect people to automatically trust me, I expect to have to earn that trust and, I strive to be worthy of the trust I do gain.

To me trust is a valuable commodity and not something to give or take lightly. If you trust me, I am honored and, if I trust you, I hope you recognize the value of that gift and, how great a person you are to have won my trust.

Interestingly, if I replace the word trust with respect in your reply, it is exactly how I see the respect issue

 

[Beverly]

Interestingly, if I replace the word trust with respect in your reply, it is exactly how I see the respect issue

Yes Harrison that goes for respect with me too.

 

[clg114]

I know I'm a trustworthy person but sadly had my trust betrayed by numerous of people in my life,i sometimes didn't realise that not everyone one is as trustworthy and because of that I have been hurt for assuming that they were as trustworthy as I am.

This is exactly how it is for me. I am way to trusting for my own good and it has bitten me many times. I just want to believe the best about people. This mindset is not the result of any decision that I have made, it is just the way I am. It is not as bad of a problem now as it was when I was a young man, but it's still there.

 

[tree]

Trust vs Mistrust - Stage 1 of Psychosocial Development
Trust is one of the basic issues of existence (will someone come when I am hungry?/
can I even trust the ground to be there when I crawl?) An ability to trust is developed
or shaped at an early age.

That doesn't mean the rest of a person's life is determined by infantile experience.
Sometimes people get carried away with the idea that past experience means you
you are doomed/fated/programmed to respond the same way when you are grown.

One term that is leaving me unsatisfied is "trigger." Because an event was/is highly
stimulating, does not mean that subsequent behavior is involuntary. The story you
tell yourself in between the 'trigger' and the behavior is what determines the behavior.

What does this have to do with trust? I think these thoughts are connected by the
concept of stimulus/intervening thought/behavior.

 

[Mia]

The story you
tell yourself in between the 'trigger' and the behavior is what determines the behavior.

Very few people are aware of the 'story' between the trigger and the behaviour. Most simply react.

 

[Slithytoves]

I found a quote that sums up my thinking about trust: "It's not that you don't trust other people, it's just that you trust yourself more".

I figure that I am not the only trustworthy person on the planet, but my issue is I can never know who can really be trusted. The only fact is I KNOW that I am trustworthy.

I just answered another thread about trust. Your contribution summons a new question:

If you feel you have misplaced your trust many times, should you really trust yourself more than anyone else? You've pretty much proven you can't rely on your own confidence.

(This isn't about you. It's just my Next Thought on the subject du jour, for possible feedback. )

 

[I am Matt]

I just answered another thread about trust. Your contribution summons a new question:

If you feel you have misplaced your trust many times, should you really trust yourself more than anyone else? You've pretty much proven you can't rely on your own confidence.

(This isn't about you. It's just my Next Thought on the subject du jour, for possible feedback. )

That's a good question. I think if person after person after person screws you over, then you have proven the obvious (that there are bad people in the world), but you have also proven that you're a bad judge of character if nearly everybody is screwing you over. In my case, I typically treat people with a "guilty until proven innocent" mindset. That doesn't mean I treat them bad, but I just don't place my trust in them and even when I've known someone long enough to put some trust into them, I don't believe that just knowing someone a long time means that they can be fully trusted. Perhaps I'm just over protective of myself though.

 

[RidingDutchman]

For me trust often seems like a switch that I can't really control, I either fully trust somebody or get completely paranoid. I tend to trust people I know or with a trustworthy function a lot easier, but strangers often get filed under paranoia. Exceptions always available though

 

[ancusmitis]

I just answered another thread about trust. Your contribution summons a new question:

If you feel you have misplaced your trust many times, should you really trust yourself more than anyone else? You've pretty much proven you can't rely on your own confidence.

(This isn't about you. It's just my Next Thought on the subject du jour, for possible feedback. )

This is something I struggle with all the time. How can I know anyone offline can be let in? Not that anyone's knocking, of course. I could knock myself, of course...but worse than the idea of being rejected is the idea of it going horribly right!

 

[Slithytoves]

Very few people are aware of the 'story' between the trigger and the behaviour. Most simply react.

I don't know how I missed this post before. It's very true, and I think it's a big problem with real-time, in-person communication. There's a sense of urgency that makes a lot of people act before they think. What always amazes me is the number of people who respond just as reflexively online. There's all the time you want to think about that "story", yet some people still go off half cocked (with "cocked" in this case meaning informed/aware).

I typically treat people with a "guilty until proven innocent" mindset. That doesn't mean I treat them bad, but I just don't place my trust in them and even when I've known someone long enough to put some trust into them, I don't believe that just knowing someone a long time means that they can be fully trusted. Perhaps I'm just over protective of myself though.

Maybe you are. I guess only you can know. A lot of people -- a lot of Aspies -- seem to take the "guilty until proven innocent" approach. It protects us from disappointment, and I can't say I don't see sound logic in it. I only wonder how they feel about the idea that others might take the same approach with them in return. That can make life hard for a person who doesn't always read/respond to social situations well. Should we expect others to give us more advance credit than we give them? If so, how do we justify that?

Again, this is just me musing. I'm not suggesting there's any wrong with your viewpoint. My own husband's is more or less the same.

I'm more like RidingDutchman, in that trust often creeps in independently of my cognitive judgment. I can always go back and submit my assessment to tests to make sure it's reasonable, though. I try to reserve all judgment for a while, not letting first impressions sway me too much. Not everybody makes a very accurate first impression.

I often assess people better in writing than in person. I wonder how common that is.

 

[Tom]

I don't think of trust as an all or nothing thing.

For one I have different levels of trust, almost like the different levels of classified material (secret, top secret, etc).

Second, a trustworthy person is still a person and might betray a trust under certain conditions, but then not do it again.

The only way I know to evaluate a person is by past performance, either with me or with others. Until then they are an unknown and probably best not trusted at a high level.

But like I said, I've had friends fail me and I have failed friends in a single episode or rare occurance. But if it gets faced and regretted/apologized for it can be patched up. We are only human.

 

[Aspergirl4hire]

...A lot of people -- a lot of Aspies -- seem to take the "guilty until proven innocent" approach. It protects us from disappointment, and I can't say I don't see sound logic in it. I only wonder how they feel about the idea that others might take the same approach with them in return. That can make life hard for a person who doesn't always read/respond to social situations well. Should we expect others to give us more advance credit than we give them? If so, how do we justify that?

Again, this is just me musing. I'm not suggesting there's any wrong with your viewpoint. My own husband's is more or less the same...

I often assess people better in writing than in person. I wonder how common that is.

I found this interesting because I assume other people are going to distrust me until I have some kind of track record with them. Consequently I tend to carry "proofs"--often physical ones. I was really irate this morning to find out that thanks to my almost-fixed email migration screw up, something I wrote a week ago was sitting in my Outbox unsent...so it looks like I sent it yesterday. And disproves something I was otherwise about to prove.

I think people read this behavior of collecting evidence, when they see it, as unnecessarily defensive. Still, I can't help it. I chalk it off to growing up in an environment where I was repeatedly told not to believe what I saw, even when it was in plain sight. If you learn to distrust your own perceptions, what do you have that you can believe? When words don't match actions, but the words are the living witness after the fact to things that didn't happen and deny things that did, words themselves become the root of distrust.

Distrusting my own perceptions because I trusted other people's--is that naivety? Gullibility? Stupidity? Hard to say. Distinguishing them, I might suggest naivety is about innocence, gullibility is about a refusal to be critical (it's "not nice"), and stupidity is the inability to learn. I wonder about this whenever I see the assertion that aspies are naive. I think it might be a lot more nuanced than that.

 

[ancusmitis]

I found this interesting because I assume other people are going to distrust me until I have some kind of track record with them. Consequently I tend to carry "proofs"--often physical ones. I was really irate this morning to find out that thanks to my almost-fixed email migration screw up, something I wrote a week ago was sitting in my Outbox unsent...so it looks like I sent it yesterday. And disproves something I was otherwise about to prove.

I think people read this behavior of collecting evidence, when they see it, as unnecessarily defensive. Still, I can't help it. I chalk it off to growing up in an environment where I was repeatedly told not to believe what I saw, even when it was in plain sight. If you learn to distrust your own perceptions, what do you have that you can believe? When words don't match actions, but the words are the living witness after the fact to things that didn't happen and deny things that did, words themselves become the root of distrust.

Distrusting my own perceptions because I trusted other people's--is that naivety? Gullibility? Stupidity? Hard to say. Distinguishing them, I might suggest naivety is about innocence, gullibility is about a refusal to be critical (it's "not nice"), and stupidity is the inability to learn. I wonder about this whenever I see the assertion that aspies are naive. I think it might be a lot more nuanced than that.

That sounds to me like gas-lighting. The simplest definition is trying to convince someone that they are "crazy." In short, telling them they cannot tell truth from fiction, or that they imagined something when they know it actually happened.

 

[Slithytoves]

I think people read this behavior of collecting evidence, when they see it, as unnecessarily defensive. Still, I can't help it.

It may be defensive to a degree. Unnecessary? Yeah, sometimes. I'm definitely a collector, both of evidence to prove my own words and of evidence to verify the words of others. I keep proofs re: myself since I once ran into a case where my veracity surrounding an incident was seriously called into question (ironically, by someone I had just caught in a humongous lie ). I was eventually vindicated, but not having readily available documentation made it drag on for a lot longer than it could have. I've been known to keep/seek proofs on others ever since I first worked in retail as a kid and learned some basic loss prevention skills. I guess it's a natural extension of my interest in what makes people tick. If I suspect that someone isn't on the level, sometimes I go a-hunting just for my own amusement.

Distrusting my own perceptions because I trusted other people's--is that naivety? Gullibility? Stupidity? Hard to say. Distinguishing them, I might suggest naivety is about innocence, gullibility is about a refusal to be critical (it's "not nice"), and stupidity is the inability to learn. I wonder about this whenever I see the assertion that aspies are naive. I think it might be a lot more nuanced than that.

I agree completely with this.

Your question about Aspie naivety makes me wonder if something I said may have been misunderstood. I could be wrong and your comment could be an entirely separate thought, but just to be clear:

"I only wonder how they feel about the idea that others might take the same approach with them in return. That can make life hard for a person who doesn't always read/respond to social situations well."

I wasn't asserting that Aspies are naive. What I meant is that some Aspies may have a hard time proving themselves trustworthy to someone who takes the "guilty until proven innocent" approach. I've seen people say several times on AC that they get nervous/agitated/defensive if they sense they're being scrutinized or a barrier is in place and don't know why, or aren't sure how to respond appropriately. That can make a very trustworthy person look pretty shady.

It makes me wonder if it's really fair for someone who has this problem to be too distrusting of others up front. It could be a tad hypocritical.