Trusting Myself, Others, and God
Learning to trust again is rarely simple.
If trust feels slow, confusing, or even unsafe for you, that doesn’t mean you’re failing at recovery. More often, it means trust was broken somewhere along the way.
Most of us were not taught how to build trust.
We were taught how to survive.
Survival teaches us to manage risk, avoid pain, and protect ourselves. Trust, on the other hand, requires safety, consistency, and truth. When those things are missing, trust doesn’t disappear because we’re broken—it disappears because it no longer feels wise.
Recovery isn’t about forcing trust or shaming ourselves for not having it. It’s about understanding how trust actually works and how it gets rebuilt over time.
In my experience, that rebuilding usually happens in three interconnected areas: trusting myself, trusting other people, and trusting God.
Trusting Myself
For many years, when someone asked me a question, my first thought was never, “What is the truth?”
That option didn’t even show up.
My first thought was usually:
What do I need to say to make them happy?
What answer will keep the peace?
What will keep me from getting in trouble?
This wasn’t because I was intentionally deceptive. Somewhere along the way, truth stopped feeling safe.
When truth feels unsafe, people learn to manage impressions instead of living honestly. Over time, that does real damage. Others may sense something is off—but for me, the deeper damage was internal. I stopped trusting myself.
Because if I’m not telling the truth, even I don’t know who I am or where I stand.
Here’s a distinction I had to learn the hard way:
Self-trust isn’t about confidence. It’s about integrity.
I couldn’t jump straight to “I’m trustworthy now.” I had to earn my own trust back. That meant telling the truth when it was uncomfortable, when it disappointed people, and when it exposed weakness or failure.
It started in small, ordinary ways:
- Saying “I don’t know”
- Saying “I’m not okay”
- Admitting when I messed up
- Letting go of the habit of softening the truth
Many of us have learned how to share just enough to protect ourselves if we’re accused of lying—while still not telling the whole truth. Every time I chose honesty instead, I rebuilt a little self-trust.
If you struggle to trust yourself, that’s not a verdict on your character. It’s information. It usually means honesty hasn’t felt safe in the past.
Trusting Others
Trusting other people creates a real tension. We don’t want to be naïve—but we also don’t want to be alone.
So it needs to be said clearly: not everyone deserves your trust.
Trust is built through patterns, not promises.
At the same time, there’s danger on the other side. When trust has been broken enough times, we can start living as if no one is safe. That’s where isolation creeps in.
Isolation doesn’t feel dangerous at first. It feels quiet. Controlled. Predictable. But over time, isolation feeds addiction. It cuts us off from the connection recovery actually requires.
Recovery doesn’t mean trusting everyone. It means learning discernment.
Trusting others doesn’t mean full access—it means appropriate access.
Some people get information.
Some people get vulnerability.
Some people get your story.
Not everyone gets everything.
If you find yourself isolated, that doesn’t mean you’ve failed. More often, it means you’ve been hurt—and your system learned to protect you.
Trusting God
For many people, trusting God is the most complicated part.
Especially if God was presented as easily disappointed, primarily angry, or only accessible through performance.
Here’s something that matters deeply:
Trusting God includes being honest with God about your lack of trust.
God does not require sanitized prayers.
Scripture is full of raw, honest conversations with God. In Psalms, David cries out,
“My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?”
He remembers God’s faithfulness and still feels abandoned in the present. Both realities exist at once.
In Job, Job tells God,
“You have turned cruel to me.”
God never rebukes Job for this honesty. In fact, God later says Job spoke more rightly than his friends who tried to defend God with tidy explanations.
And in Lamentations, God is described as blocking escape and shutting out prayer—yet the book is called Lamentations, not Unbelief.
Lament is faith that refuses to disengage.
Trusting God often grows not through answers, but through staying in the conversation—especially when it’s painful. God can handle the truth about how you feel about Him.
Moving Forward
Trust is not rebuilt all at once.
It’s rebuilt in small, consistent steps.
You don’t rebuild trust by forcing yourself to feel safe. You rebuild trust by telling the truth and taking wise steps toward connection.
If trust feels fragile right now—whether with yourself, others, or God—you are not alone.
And you don’t have to figure this out by yourself.
Which area of trust are you working on right now—yourself, others, or God?
Working on all 3 but most difficult is “others”