Trust And Verify

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

Reflections on trust as a basic human quality came to me after the first lessons of Argentine tango, which my husband and I attended a few days ago.

A man always leads in tango. It determines what the dance will be like, where you will move. The role of a woman is to follow her partner, feel and trust him, without trying to predict what the next movement will be like, what the dance will eventually turn out to be. In short, I had to blindly trust my husband.

It turned out to be incredibly difficult for me, not to anticipate thoughts, not to anticipate, not to understand in which direction we will move further, but only to feel my partner and follow him. For me, this is about trust … About my ability to trust a partner, space, music, and the whole world, and not just rely on myself (as I used to).

Etymologically, "to nourish trust" (in the Latin language credo) means "I give my heart" or "I put my heart." Trust is one of the most important mental states of a person. Even for communication, trust is important to us, because at the same time we open up, trust our thoughts and feelings.

Let's take a look at how and when the foundation for human trust is formed.

Basic trust as a feeling is laid in the earliest period of our life - in the first year of our life (according to the theory of M. Erickson). By trust, Erickson meant trust in oneself and the feeling of unchanging disposition of other people towards oneself. The feeling of deep trust in oneself, in people, in the world is the cornerstone of a healthy personality.

Since trust is formed in the earliest period of our life, when we are defenseless, not at all independent and unable to survive without the care, attention and love of loved ones, the basis for the formation of trust is our very first relationship with another - that is, with a mother (or another a significant adult who replaces her).

Impaired ability to trust and impact on life.

The formation of trust as the basis of the child's future relations with other people depends on how close the mother was, guessing the child's needs and satisfying them, on her ability to withstand the child's different feelings and continue to love. Indeed, at the very beginning of our life, the whole world was located in one person - in my mother.

And if the mother was absent, was cold, did not meet the basic needs (food, sleep, physical care) of the child, then our trust in the world as a whole will be violated. It will be difficult for us to trust ourselves, others and the world in general.

When we grow up, we cannot believe that we will be accepted, supported and stayed close. We experience an insane infant fear that we will be abandoned, and then, not trusting, we get used to relying only on ourselves, on our own strength. But since interaction with people is impossible without mutual trust, we begin to test others in various ways.

I found my inability to trust in the dance. I am asked to close my eyes in order to disconnect and focus only on my sensations, and it is better to feel the movements of my partner, but it’s difficult for me. It’s very difficult because I’m starting to feel anxious. It’s as if they’ve left me again, left alone (as, perhaps, then in early childhood), and I forget about the dance, about the partner with whom I’m dancing, although we have been together for 6 years, and he, however, often supports me, and never does not leave me in difficult periods. But with my eyes closed … I am no longer with him … I am alone again, and small.

First steps towards trust.

We remember almost nothing from our infancy, because there are no words, this is the so-called pre-verbal period. But there are a lot of bodily sensations, emotions, feelings experienced by the whole body, this is a period when we live only with the body, without awareness, without words, without control.

All the more acutely and painfully felt the emotional trauma received during this period, they seem to be, felt in the body, affect our life, but it is impossible to do it consciously, by an effort of will or thought. After all, often we do not even recognize them so clearly.

Where is the exit? As they say, the exit is the same as the entrance.

We cannot go back to infancy, turning back the clock, but we can turn to our body, in which everything lives and remembers everything.

And in order to regain trust in others, it is initially important for us to learn to trust ourselves, our body.

WHAT CAN I DO IN DANCE? I hear my anxiety, I feel the desire to freeze and not move, and I do not ignore these signals, but accept them, listen, allow them to be. I voice to my partner that I am anxious, and I ask him to be careful with me, not to pressure, not to expect that I will respond quickly, and not to judge if I am wrong. After all, for me these are the first steps towards trust - in the literal sense of the word, the first bodily steps in order to change something important in yourself? how to concretize the change in the body?

Do you think I will immediately start to trust my partner in dance, even if he is careful with me?

My answer is no, I won't. And now I'm checking it out.

I continue to listen to myself, my body, learning to trust it. I voice my feelings and sensations to my partner, and check how he reacts to me and my requests, and what my body tells me. I will check this for as long as I need.

The important thing is that I take steps towards trust, I experiment, I continue to dance, I expand the range of my body's reactions to uncertainty. The first seeds of trust in dance are already beginning to appear. They still need to be watered, fertilized, made sure that they have enough sun and warmth so that they are not accidentally stepped on. And it is already my responsibility to make sure that these sprouts of trust are remembered, and if the support of others is needed, I want to ask them about it. Then, over time, the sprouts will grow and become a strong and resilient tree.