Betrayal can damage trust in ourselves, not only in other people.

Self-abandonment often begins when we ignore our own boundaries to keep a connection.

Self-trust means believing we can face reality and protect ourselves when necessary.

Healing trust issues involves rebuilding trust in our own judgment and emotional boundaries.

I used to think that after betrayal, trust issues were always related to another person – whether “I trust you, and you trust me.”

But after years of friendships, relationships, and self-reflections, I realized that trust issues are not about the other person. They are about who we are in the relationships.

When I was in my twenties, I blindly trusted my friends, especially my best friends. They betrayed me later, but that is not my point.

What I learned from those experiences was that I made people sacred in my mind. Once I loved someone, I removed all borders between us. Their pain became my pain, their enemies became my enemies.

I thought friends should be friends until death, like in “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” (Twain, 1876), where they lock their friendship with blood.

I thought this level of loyalty made relationships stronger, but later I realized it slowly made me lose my own boundaries.

When you make someone sacred in your mind, you stop seeing them clearly. You stop judging their actions adequately because, emotionally, they become part of your identity. Losing them starts feeling like losing yourself.

People who fear losing connection might develop unhealthy relational behaviors such as emotional dependency, avoidance, hypervigilance, testing partners, or ignoring their own needs in order to preserve attachment (Peel & Caltabiano, 2021).

Looking back, maybe my biggest mistake was abandoning my own judgment to keep people I loved.

The........

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