The Causes of Lack of Trust

Lack of trust can be a tough obstacle in any close relationship. Understanding its causes can be a tremendous help in learning to trust again, enabling you to achieve greater intimacy with others. Past hurts and fears may be having more of an impact on your present relationships than you realize. Childhood trauma, low self-esteem and unresolved pain can all contribute to your lack of trust.

Childhood Trauma

• Trauma that you experience during your childhood can have an impact on your ability to trust. If you witnessed an abusive or violent relationship between your parents as a child, or if there was infidelity or divorce, it may make it very difficult for you to trust those who say that they love you or say that they will not leave you. For some, these traumas can also result in a kind of cynicism about intimate relationships in general; they feel that, no matter how wonderful a relationship may be at any given time, any intimate relationship is doomed to fail.

Low Self-Esteem

• Having a low or negative opinion of yourself can make it very hard to trust others. If you don't feel that you are good enough or worthy enough to receive the love and attention of another person, it may cause you to view all their gestures of kindness with suspicion. Some people are so convinced of their worthlessness that they automatically assume that people have an ulterior motive behind kind actions. Low self-esteem can also lead you to believe that someone else's love is simply too good to be true, and the more a loved one tries to show you otherwise, the more you doubt him.

Conditioning

• Your conditioning may lead to problems with trusting others. Conditioning occurs when you gradually acquire the behavior patterns of others without realizing it. People are often conditioned to behave in certain ways by their environment, and by their friends and family. If you grew up with a mother who had difficulty trusting men, for example, you may have unconsciously emulated this behavior and it may be the cause of your lack of trust in the present.

Past Relationships

• Pain from past relationships may make it difficult for you to trust others. If you were fairly naïve about relationships in the past and you were with someone who took advantage of this trait, then you may have experienced a tremendous amount of emotional suffering. In such cases, people often go to the other extreme of not trusting anyone, in order to protect themselves from ever feeling so much pain again.