One more question before I finally go to bed...

After years and years of repressing a lot of things...how do you open up again?  I'm not referring to gender identity for myself, although I'm sure many people have a hard time expressing that as well.  When I was a child, for various reasons (we won't go into that too much here), I basically shut down my entire personality to try to make everyone happy.  My grades were never good enough (but I never made less than a B), there was always something wrong with a play I made in sports, I wasn't quiet enough, etc.  Basically, there were some severe parental issues that made me in effect, destroy myself and recreate a hollow shell of a person.  There are also some severe trust issues that go along with all that.  Then, as an adult, I overcame a lot of that stuff and became who I am now, but when I trusted people, most times it did not work out well, and I am down to a very few real friends.

So, how do you start to trust people again?  It's a hard question, but if anyone knows any sort of personal "excersises" that might help, I would appreciate it.  I've become rather cold hearted and apathetic these past few years, which, on one hand, helps me not care about what other people think, but on the other, it makes it very difficult for me to care at all.     Well, I'm just a confused mess.   

I felt like you did for a long time, Jaimey, especially in the period when I was recovering from heroin addiction.  Like you I've spent much of my life stamping out my personality in order to please people.  When i stopped acting that way, people reacted badly and I found myself liking and trusting less and less people.

The way I learned to trust people again was the hard way:  I had to become isolated enough to really start to value human company again.  Once my loneliness got so bad, I became much more receptive to taking risks in order to have more people in my life.  So I guess the answer is that for me I had to become miserable enough to make myself change.  I'm sorry if that sounds bleak, but from reading your post it seems your well on your way to taking such risks again. :-)

How to trust again is a very difficult question and I don't have a simple nor easy answer. I guess the most important thing is to start with people who are so wholey trustworthy that there is no way that they would ever betray you. Then let them grow on you, let that attachment build. And go from there.

Trust is a very difficult thing to cultivate once you've lost it.

This is one of the areas that my therapist helped me with. Here is what she recommended plus some things I latter added.

1. Start from the inside and build self knowledge: Journal is easiest. Introspection, trying experiences, researching things and other ideas listed in this post https://www.susans.org/forums/index.php/topic,15998.0.html.

2. Address Fears and obstacles. Recognize your strengths and find ways to overcome your weaknesses.

3. Learn to feel emotions. After holding it all in, this can be a foreign concept, at least it was for me. I had to learn to let me experience all emotions from good to neutral to bad. Learn what each means and why one is feeling them. Allow one to experience all emotions openly.

4. Learn to come out to others. This was very hard but I broke it down to small steps.

5. Allow one to experience expressions little by little. Start with the easiest ones that one has always wanted to try.

6. Having openned and allowed one to be themselves in the open, then one can meet others with less fear of being fake, hollow , and "found out".

In other words, I couldnt trust others till i trusted myself and had higher self esteem. And adressed my fake shell or mask that the real me hid behind. This is just one method I suppose.

Quote from: jacqui on September 09, 2007, 07:21:19 AM
The way I learned to trust people again was the hard way:  I had to become isolated enough to really start to value human company again. 

Yeah...I'm pretty much there.  Thank you all very much!  I will do my best!

PS...Jacqui...I LOVE RITSU! 

take the trip..

Y' keep giving in to little urges.