That is a very interesting dynamic you are describing with your perceptions of trust.

I have had the experience of interviewing a few potential T's that I thought were complete losers. With all of them, my reaction was basically that I wouldn't trust them to give my dog therapy. I thought they were all or so combination of stupid, self-interested, couldn't put a coherent sentence together without psychobabble, failed to grasp what I was saying even though it wasn't terribly complicated (yet refused to ask questions to illuminate it as needed). I was also in group therapy for a brief time with a loser therapist, too (maybe 4 or 5 months, I kept trying to stick it out because I thought maybe it was me, which is what the T kept saying).

And then I've had, or am in the process of having, three successful T relationships where the T's have all been astoundingly different in their approaches, yet I have flourished in all of them. So I feel like I have the experience to both identify a good T or a good T experience and their opposites. This gives me confidence to trust whoever it is that I picked. For me the trust is centered around my belief in them to help me. My belief that they can understand what I'm saying and help me get from wherever I am to wherever I want to be. I guess for me, that trust is primarily located in their competence and my perception of that.

But whatever it is, my feelings of trust definitely shift or have some fluidity to them. My trust shoots up when my current T points out that what I'm currently struggling with reminds him of something he read in my journal five weeks ago. It shoots down when I clearly remember telling him something that was pretty significant, that generated an extended conversation between us, and then he doesn't remember having that conversation, "oh, yeah, I think you told me that." He says, he's a man of a "certain age", his memory isn't perfect any more. There are other examples of how his specific behavior can influence how much I trust him in any given moment. The time that my trust in him was most insecure was when I was trying to give him my journal for the first time and I was all freaky about it, wondering if I should do it or not and what his reaction would be. He said, "how often do you have a conversation with someone about whether or not you can trust them?" It was a good thing, and a conversation I recommend having with your T.

I think that sometimes with me, I have to make a conscious decision to trust my T, and I sometimes do this in other areas of my life. I decide to share something about my life with someone I wasn't expecting to tell, and I am mindful of the fact that this person might be the world's worst gossip or that maybe my disclosure will be hurtful or whatever. Sometimes I think it's not so much about whether or not you can feel trust about someone else, but whether you are willing to trust someone else. It's a leap of faith that when you reach across the abyss that isolates you from other people, that the other person will catch your hand and help you land safely on the other side. I think that trust is maybe more about being willing to leap than trying to accurately gauge whether you'll be helped to safety. Because if you don't leap, you definitely won't get to the other side. If you try, you have a pretty good chance at succeeding.

Anne