Serving couples and individuals in Roseville, Shoreview, Lauderdale, Saint Paul, Falcon Heights, New Brighton, Little Canada, Arden Hills, and anywhere in the Twin Cities

How to Build Trust

Trust

Whether your relationship is relatively new, or if you have been married for decades, trust is something that takes time to build up and only moments to tear down. When trust is breached, it can feel like things can never go back to the way they were before. If trust has never been there the way you'd like it to be, building it can seem like a daunting and mysterious task.

My role as a counselor in building trust

Our emotional brain – the part of our brain where we feel trust and know in our guts that someone is or is not trustworthy – trades in experiences. When we have the experience of someone violating our trust, we begin (sometimes suddenly) to feel that person is untrustworthy. Likewise, when we have the experience of a person being worthy of our trust, we begin to feel that too. As they say, talk is cheap: it's experience that counts.

My role is to help both of you experience each other as trustworthy again. In our work, we'll look at emotions and the actions and reactions they prompt, and how your specific pattern of these things is getting in the way of a trusting relationship. As we move forward, we'll identify a pattern that works better for everyone: where each person feels safe when they're vulnerable to the other. As they get better at having trusting experiences on their own, many of my clients are surprised at how much trust they find, and that it often feels different than they thought it would when they started.

Related:

How to Build Communication

Surviving Infidelity