Early trauma can make mistrust feel safer than openness; with uncertainty something to defend against.

Such experiences can shape how we read other people and leave us doubting our own thoughts and feelings.

Building trust happens in relationships when underlying feelings can be explored, understood, and repaired.

A former patient of mine told me, with some anxiety, that they didn’t trust me. Rather than trying to provide reassurance or challenge their experience, I said, “Of course you don’t. How could you?”

I knew enough about them to get a sense that, while they were hoping that therapy would help, they also feared that I will be another person who would be hurtful or disappointing.

Many people come to therapy having a hard time trusting themselves or others. While it may not always be their initial concern, such challenges lie underneath a wide range of issues, from people wanting to be in relationships to being able to live the life they want. Trust issues can look very different from the outside: Some people might seem overly dependent on others, while others may have crafted an entire personality that denies any dependence or vulnerability.

Trust is not a switch, something we either experience or we don’t. It’s also not a simple dial, something that grows or declines in a linear way. Trust is complex and has many layers. Trust in others may include how we anticipate that others will respond to our needs, whether we believe they will tell us how they truly feel, or whether we feel they will keep our best interest in mind. Trust in ourselves may include believing that our thoughts and emotions are meaningful and valuable, believing that we will survive other people’s judgment or rejection, or believing in our capacity to make a difference in the world.

Trust does not develop in isolation. Trust, including trust in ourselves, is relational, a capacity that unfolds through our interactions with others. When early experiences are marked by trauma, whether in the form of abuse or neglect, the development of trust might be distorted and derailed. A childhood shaped by chronic fear, lack of safety, loneliness, helplessness, or despair may lead in adulthood to a life of disconnection from ourselves and others.

Trust and Uncertainty

Trust is one of the ways humans find to live with uncertainty. None of us can ever fully know what others will do, what is in their mind and heart, how relationships will unfold, or whether we will be seen, welcomed, or safe. Trust is a psychological bridge that allows us to move forward despite the uncertainties.

When early experiences are marked by reliability, consistency, and responsiveness, uncertainty becomes tolerable. Trauma alters this process. If a caregiver is frightening, neglectful, inconsistent, or overwhelmed, uncertainty becomes charged with danger. Uncertainty stops becoming a space that could be filled with possibility or imagination, instead turning into dreadful anticipation of something hurtful, frightening, or overwhelming.

Mistrust, after all, is another way to live with the unknown. Hypervigilance, control, avoidance, and emotional withdrawal can be seen as expressions of a deep mistrust instilled to manage the intolerable anxiety created by uncertainty.

How Trauma Impacts Trust in Others

If someone who was meant to nurture or protect us during our childhood was chronically harmful or neglectful, such experiences may give form to a relational template through which we learn to see the world. The templates might include not only an absence of trust but active mistrust, leading us to read harmful intentions between the lines.

Trust or mistrust in others in the aftermath of trauma may have different layers. It may impact our “epistemic trust,” our belief in the reliability of the information we receive from others, leaving us wondering about unspoken intentions or threats. Our sense of relational trust can also be compromised, making it difficult to trust whether others will care about us or recognize our value.

In adulthood, such dynamics may reappear in subtle ways. We may expect betrayal or harm even when there is no clear evidence, or distrust kindness and care, anticipating that they will be withdrawn or that they mask judgment or aggression.

In trauma therapy with a psychoanalytic lens, such patterns are understood not as overreactions or distortions but as deeply held relational templates, internalized expectations shaped by early experience. Such templates can also emerge in the therapeutic relationship itself: A patient may wonder whether the therapist truly cares, whether they are judging you, whether they will leave. As such fears become speakable, the possibility of a new relational experience begins to form.

How Trauma Impacts Trust in Oneself

While the impact of childhood trauma on our trust in others may be more apparent, its impact on how we trust ourselves can be more insidious. We come to this world almost fully dependent on others to meet our needs and make sense of our experience. Those early attachments to caregivers are so important that we often do whatever it takes to maintain them, even when those relationships are the source of pain, fear, disappointment, rejection, or despair.

Rather than recognize a caregiver’s limitations, we may develop a sense that there is something wrong with us. Through this desperate attempt to keep the attachment, we may internalize shame, anger, or helplessness. This is one of the ways trauma can undermine a sense of trust in ourselves. If our feelings were dismissed, minimized, or punished, we may have learned to doubt them, see ourselves as the source of the problem, and, eventually become detached from them.

In adulthood, we may develop a deeply held sense of unworthiness and internal disconnection, perhaps wondering whether we are too much or not enough. We may question whether we can trust our instincts and our experience, as we are surrounded by paralyzing questions: Will I? Could I? Should I? Am I allowed to? In some cases, it might be hard to trust in our own emotional survival. A difficulty trusting that the other will listen or be receptive often hides a fear that we will not be able to withstand or survive potential rejection or retaliation.

How Trauma Therapy Helps Rebuild Trust

One of the main challenges of addressing trust problems in therapy is that they are not always apparent or part of how people think of themselves. Especially when we have experienced chronic relational trauma, they can become part of how we organize our personality.

Issues of trust may lie at the core of someone who is convinced that they are unlovable, that no matter how hard they try, they will never find someone who genuinely cares. Trust issues can make people build a fortress of independence and a sense of superiority as a way to protect and hide old feelings of longing and humiliation.

Because trust issues can run deep and look very different on the surface, therapy to work through them takes time and patience. Psychoanalytic trauma therapy creates a space to understand how we came to be, to discover the painful reasons why the development of trust was thwarted, and to mourn the losses entailed in those experiences. Trust is not restored by reassurance alone. It develops through repeated experiences of reliability, attunement, rupture, and repair.

For this reason, it is important to keep in mind that trust towards the therapist is not to be assumed. It is OK not to fully trust your therapist at first.

Trust is not something that can be asked for blindly or that will emerge from good intentions. Trust develops gradually and is born of experience. After trauma, it can be a hard-earned step towards a life that feels more purposeful, intentional, authentic, and fulfilling.

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