Overcoming trust issues is best done with the assistance of a behavioral therapist or couples counselor, but individuals can take personal steps to communicate their uncertainty, be mindful of their past trauma, and be willing to take the risk to trust again.
Yes, it's possible; however, rebuilding trust comes down to making the decision to remain in the relationship, having the discipline to do the work, believing that trust can be re-developed, and being vulnerable and open to change.
Just as trust can exist without love, love can exist without trust, but this usually happens under a specific set of circumstances. We may have family that we love but don't trust.
Trust Issues
You may feel like your partner isn't telling you everything. Or it might seem like there is much you don't know about him (or her), and that he is unwilling to share. If you feel like your partner has a hard time trusting you or telling you the truth (or vice-versa!) it's a serious red flag.
Is Having Trust Issues a Mental Illness? Having trust issues as a singular issue isn't a mental illness. However, it can be indicative of an actual mental health condition, particularly: Anxiety disorders, especially PTSD.
Essentially, overthinking often boils down to a lack of trust in others due to being hurt or abandoned, past relational trauma, feeling insecure, or wanting to control things that are external from oneself.
Rebuilding Trust
Make a conscious decision to love by trying to let go of the past. While achieving this goal fully may take some time, committing to it is what's key. Be open to self-growth and improvement. You can't repair broken trust with just promises and statements of forgiveness.
Chronic distrust can come from a traumatic incident, an unloving childhood, or experienced betrayal in other relationships. Overcoming trust challenges often involves understanding where these feelings come from. A mental health professional can help guide you in the process of recovery.
When a relationship lacks trust, it allows for the potential development of harmful thoughts, actions, or emotions, such as negative attributions, suspicion, and jealousy. Over time, this can lead to bigger problems, such as emotional or physical abuse.
Paranoid personality disorder (PPD) is a mental health condition marked by a pattern of distrust and suspicion of others without adequate reason to be suspicious. People with PPD are always on guard, believing that others are constantly trying to demean, harm or threaten them.
People with low esteem, anxiety, depression, or loneliness can also have trust issues. Another key indicator is if you regularly get in relationships with partners who are mistrustful. Being attracted to people with trust issues might mean you have them yourself.
A whole brain analysis also shows that the tendency to trust is reflected in the structure of dorsomedial prefrontal cortex. These findings advance neural models that associate the structure and function of the human brain with social decision-making and the tendency trust other people.
People with OCD often lack trust in themselves and in whether or not an action has taken place. It can seem as though the parts of the brain that remember past events—even events that took place minutes before—are sometimes hindered.
Trust issues often come from early life experiences and interactions. These experiences often take place in childhood. Some people do not get enough care and acceptance as children. Others are abused, violated, or mistreated.
Trust issues are often connected to negative experiences in the past. Being let down or betrayed by people who you trusted–whether it was a friend, partner, parent, or other trusted figure or institution–can interfere with your ability to believe in others.
If your partner makes you angry, miserable, or bored often and if it is very hard for you to explain the reasons why you still love this person, it's an obvious sign that you should go your own path. If you feel suffocated in a relationship and if the negatives overshadow the positives, it's time to move on.
Without trust, a relationship will not last. Trust is one of the cornerstones of any relationship—without it, two people cannot be comfortable with each other and the relationship will lack stability.
Rebuilding trust takes a significant amount of time and patience. It might take us several months or even years to fully be able to trust our loved one again. Along the way, we need to continue working on reestablishing trust slowly under the guidance of family counselors.
A significant proportion of variance in trust is due to heritability and unshared environment but not due to shared environment; accordingly, the best-fitting model assumes a role for heritability and unshared environment (AE).