First of all, trust is confidence in a person and in his actions. There are always two sides to trust and a person can always get something other than what he originally wanted. In psychology, the term trust is interpreted as a state of a person in which he consciously becomes dependent on another person whom he trusts.
Absolutely any relationship between people is built on trust in each other. Be it relationships with strangers on the street, when asking for help, or communication with loved ones. Trust always carries with it certain risks for a person; he can be understood or, conversely, rejected. Every person who enters a state of trust in people must take into account several simple factors:
Trust is a change in distance
By revealing his experiences to someone, a person automatically changes his distance, he becomes closer. It is not surprising that people do not trust their problems and thoughts to people in whom they are unsure. Simply, they keep their distance from them.
Every person who wants to improve relationships with people must remember the rule - if you want to change relationships with people, learn to trust. Naturally, you can not try to get closer to other people, not open up and not trust, but, for example, wait for the moment when people themselves begin to reach out and will be the first to open up about their experiences. But it is worth remembering that trust is often mutual. “If I trust, they trust me.”
A person who decides to trust should understand that there is a certain degree of risk when he may be misunderstood or even rejected in his revealed experiences.
Is there a standard for trust and how to measure it?
We all have different levels of trust in specific acquaintances and in people in general.
Someone leaves their phone on the cafe table when they go to the restroom, because they believe that none of the visitors will take the device. And some even keep their distance when communicating with loved ones. It is unknown whether they will stick a metaphorical knife in the back if you relax. Regardless of the level of trust, you can find an abandoned bag and get hit by a loved one. In this situation, it seems that it is unsafe to trust people. It's better to be safe than sorry. But it is not so.
Irina Aigildina
Cognitive-behavioral psychologist.
Without trust, it is impossible to build friendly and loving relationships. A distrustful person has to spend a lot of energy on controlling his children, partner, colleagues, subordinates and other people around: “You can’t rely on anyone, you can’t trust anyone, everyone can deceive.” But in the end, this behavior results in stress, emotional burnout and apathy. The joy of life is lost.
A trusting person approaches the world more creatively, expresses himself openly, is relaxed, calm, more friendly and surrounded by equally friendly people.
According to Irina Aigildina, the concept of a normal level of trust does not exist, because there is no unit for measuring it. In every situation, the criterion of “normality” is found within ourselves. But that's not all.
Trust is the belief that a person will meet our expectations. But he is not at all obliged to do this and can respond to kindness with kindness, with nothing, or even with ingratitude.
Andrey Smirnov
Master of Psychology, practical psychologist.
It turns out that the principle of the golden mean also works in the case of trust. It is irrational not to trust anyone, but it is also reckless to trust just anyone. Each case is individual, and in any relationship, even very good ones, there is some risk. But, as you know, whoever does not take risks does not taste the well-known pleasant drink.
Risk levels
By trusting people with their experiences, the person himself becomes vulnerable to some extent.
Having experienced failure once, he risks closing himself off and becoming a loner, distrustful of others. By trusting those closest to you, a person can get negative experiences, experience pain and disappointment because he expected a different reaction. Thus, we can say that trust is a kind of lottery that a person can win or lose. Read more: Development of a preschooler: myths and realities If a person is dependent on outside opinions and has little self-esteem, then the degree of trust in people may be higher. For example, a person who does not know what to do in a given situation often looks for someone to ask for advice, someone to trust. The degree of risk in trust can be in two directions:
- determined by the state from the inside;
- determined by a person’s readiness for undesirable reactions.
Be that as it may, if you learn to assess the degree of risk, you can avoid many unpleasant situations both for yourself and for others. After all, to trust or not is the responsibility of the person himself. No one can predict what another person's reaction to trust will be.
The need to trust people
Trust is an exclusively psychological category found in people - in the animal world such a feeling and relationships built on it are absent. It always implies endowing a person with unique, special powers. This can be expressed in complete emotional openness, with an unspoken demand for secrecy, or given the keys to one’s own apartment - everyone has their own unspoken set of such concepts, where they will not be betrayed.
Naturally, since everyone has different understandings, people behave in different ways, and the purity and depth of feelings do not always coincide. So it turns out that the trust shown disappears as a result of certain actions. The more a person gets burned, the more difficult it is to give away important pieces of the lives of others, but at the same time the moment of being able to trust remains significant - it gives a feeling of security and the ability to mentally relax. Everyone needs a place where there is no need to constantly scan the situation and defend themselves.
Trust concerns all spheres of life or just one, for example, a person can trust someone with a secret, but not money, and he can entrust someone else with babysitting, but will not tell an ounce of personal experiences. Absolute and total trust, affecting all areas of life, is extremely rare, since most often people cannot meet such high expectations of others.
Usually, by the middle of life, so many unpleasant experiences appear that a person searches for strength in himself, how to trust people if you have been deceived more than once and whether it is worth doing it. The opportunity to do this immediately and naturally disappears, but the need for a person standing behind you never disappears. Trusting at least one person helps to maintain emotional balance, strengthen the nervous system and not feel lonely. It is this kind of communication that makes life full, and not the number of formal acquaintances and imaginary friends, who cannot be trusted with even the slightest information.
There is also a special mental mechanism that increases the coefficient of trust in people depending on the duration of acquaintance. That is, unfortunately, even the most reliable person present in our lives for a couple of hours will not inspire as much trust as acquaintances from school. This is understandable from the position that people have already proven themselves over a long period of time and you can understand what to expect from whom, but this in no way characterizes personal characteristics. This is why the betrayal of friends and family is so painfully perceived - the level of trust in these people was overestimated from the very beginning. I remember marriage scams or deliberate infiltration of trust solely for the purpose of profit, which means it is necessary to develop the skills of not only subconsciously setting boundaries, but also conscious control and evaluation of a person, no matter how much time has passed.
It is inappropriate to trust everyone or to do this from the first minutes of acquaintance, but the opposite attitude is also destructive, when a person is closed from everyone and cannot trust even those who are considered his family. The adequacy of intimacy and the level of trust provided directly characterizes a person’s psychological maturity, his ability to listen to his own feelings and evaluate the people around him. This all comes with a certain, not so much life, but spiritual experience (events of personal life and those around you, books read and real stories - all this helps to form close relationships and establish their type).
Unfortunately, many lose the ability to trust because they incorrectly use the experience gained and, instead of applying the skills of assessing a person in the first stages, they simply drag out the pain of betrayal, closing themselves off in advance, without even giving the other a chance to demonstrate their qualities.
Trusting a person means being prepared for any reaction.
You can learn to control your emotions and feelings, but you cannot control another person. Most often, by trusting, a person expects that his experiences will be perceived positively, they will respond to them and will always help. But the fact is that to trust means to be prepared for any reaction, even not the most expected one.
So, for example, a girl telling her friend that she is pregnant expects a positive reaction from her, congratulations and discussion of plans for the future. But in fact, a friend’s reaction cannot be predicted; she can be either happy or upset, and these will be her experiences.
In order for the reaction to trust not to cause frustration and despondency, it is necessary to be prepared for negative reactions and accept that a person cannot always react the way he would like.
WHY DO PEOPLE WANT TO BELIEVE IN LIFE AFTER DEATH?
. Do we continue to live after death, after the death of our brain cells? This question has worried humanity probably as long as it has existed. By the way, why is a person so concerned about this: will he die completely or will he live, albeit in a different capacity?
But because people don't want to die.
Why don't they want to? Well, let’s assume that you were suddenly deprived of something familiar to you (for example, due to the crisis, you lost your job, and therefore the means of a prosperous existence, and therefore the usual personal car, personal apartments, personal service.), and then you begin to experience discomfort - you will feel bad. And the strength of this “bad” depends on how many familiar things you—God forbid, of course—have lost.
A striking example of this is the period of perestroika (2nd half of the 80s) and the beginning of economic reforms (1st half of the 90s). Almost all of us were deprived (almost overnight) of many familiar things, psychologists say: stereotypes. And we are talking not only about material things, but about moral ones.
So, in our minds, death will lead to the deprivation of not just many stereotypes, familiar things, but also to the deprivation of everything that surrounds us (and the fact that we will not feel all this then does not fit into consciousness), I will add: surrounds you in this life. And we, naturally, do not want to be deprived of all this, we do not want all this to die (disappear) for us. And since, on the other hand, we know that this is inevitable, then - due to psychological defense - a saving thought arises: maybe we won’t die, huh? And they take with them “there” the things of this world that are familiar and which will be useful “there” (and in ancient times the pharaohs took people with them “there”).
Thus, through the mechanism of psychological defense in the form of “rationalization,” it would be possible to explain the belief of many people in life after death, in “life after life” (as one doctor of medicine and philosophy called his book). At the same time, it should be noted that psychological defense (itself not conscious, not felt by people) is not yet able to “come up with” something that a person will sacredly believe in (see Psychological defense).
But here’s what’s surprising: messages began to appear that life continues after death, that that other world really exists. Witnesses appeared who saw all this “with their own eyes.” You saw it, do you understand?
- Author, but you are a psychologist, you know that “a frightened crow is afraid of a bush”, that a person can see something that in fact is not there at all. By the way, in one of his books
or in your lectures - I don’t remember - you talked about this and argued that there is such a thing, there is such a defense, you called it, it seems, “the illusion of reality.” Because?
(Wow, what an opponent I came across! Well prepared, and most importantly, he uses an almost irresistible technique in the discussion - “his own weapon”!) You are absolutely right, indeed, due to a great desire, a person can see not what is, but what he wants (subconsciously or consciously).
It’s the same with the afterlife: I want to believe that life continues after death - that’s what he sees.
But let us still listen to them - those who testify: life continues after death (albeit clinical, but - according to medicine - death):
(1) “After the anesthesia, I came to my senses and, although my head was completely foggy, I got up and went to the bathroom. I felt weak and dizzy. I felt like life was leaving me. I wanted to grab onto something, call for help, but I couldn’t make a sound. Suddenly I realized that I was looking at myself from the side, from above, as if from the ceiling. I noticed that I had turned terribly pale and sank to the floor near the toilet. I saw the ward, heard the voices of people in the corridor. Then I noticed a nurse who came, probably having heard my moans, and began to call someone. Then I saw people appear in the bathroom, crowd around me, give me an injection, and start massaging my breasts. Then it was as if I was squeezed back into my bodily shell, and I woke up in bed. The worried faces of the doctors looked at me. They had already decided that it was the end for me - my blood pressure had dropped sharply. I remember being on the train back to London and feeling euphoric. I have never been very religious, but after that incident I stopped being afraid of death” (11-337).
This is one of the thousands of cases of the so-called near-death experience accumulated in parapsychology and medicine: in a state of clinical death, a person begins to realize that he is alive, experiences certain sensations: absence of pain, peace, sees his body and everything around him from the outside. in the other world.
- Yes, but, author, these same examples do not change anything: a person’s subconscious mechanism is triggered and a person sees what he wants to see: life after death.
- That’s how it is, but. If we follow your position (and your point of view is very, very widespread), then the individual subconscious should create pictures of the afterlife, so to speak, in an individual form: after all, each of us in our own way represents both that world and the path there (unless, of course, read the same books describing all this). And, of course, these visions should be influenced by individual worldview (including religious) views, positions, and their own, if you like, philosophy. And you must agree, this assumption is quite logical, because unreal vision - in your words - is determined by the individual psyche of a person, right?
- Well, like this.
— So, your conclusion: visions of the other world are the result of the activity of the individual psyche, right?
- So. And, as you said, many people agree with me.
— I said it, I confirm it, although, as you said, it doesn’t change anything. But let's get to the point.
3.
What is mistrust?
Mistrust is the easiest path to loneliness. It is impossible to build any normal relationship if there is no trust in each other. Distrust is a defensive reaction of a person who is unsure of people and their reactions to their actions. If you look and look for the roots of mistrust, then most likely the reaction comes from a person’s own lack of confidence in himself, the fear of being rejected, deceived, or not accepted. By refusing to trust, a person closes himself off, thereby trying to protect himself from negative experiences. There are several reasons for mistrust:
- lie;
- betrayal;
- failure to keep promises;
- envy.
Read more: Underage, or How not to raise a mama's boy
Mistrust can come from a person's family. When a small child opens up to his parents, he shows them his fragile soul. If parents overestimated, punished or humiliated the child in his desire to be open, then in adult life such a person will avoid trust, realizing that those closest to him can cause pain, what to say about strangers.
Why do you need to trust people?
As has already been said, mistrust leads to loneliness. Therefore, it is important to make new acquaintances and friends; for this it is important to be able to win people over. Man is a social being who requires relationships to function normally. Without society there would be no man himself. Lack of communication and trust in people leads to loneliness and recluse. Although trust can easily turn into mistrust, it is worth talking about the positive aspects.
Trust allows you to build strong and harmonious relationships between people. People who want to build comfortable friendships definitely need to trust each other, because this is the only way to get closer and get to know a person better. By revealing his experiences to another, a person unconsciously includes him in his life.
Whose side is the government on? To trust or not to trust?
At first glance, it may seem that people who choose distrust are less vulnerable to society.
Nobody knows anything about them, they do not open up about their experiences and, in principle, do not tell anything about themselves. But there is a downside, such people do not have the power to approach people on their own initiative. It turns out that someone who trusts others can freely change the distance in a relationship - moving closer and further away. These people tend to have more power in relationships because they have more choices.
