We all want to believe that the people around us are good and moral. There are layers to it. We want to see the best in the people who we love or respect. That is both for them and for ourselves.
To see the best in someone and see it is to know that your judgment is sound. When are betrayed by someone, though, it changes the way we see both them and ourselves.
How good are you at putting your faith in people who deserve it? Do you invest in friendships and relationships that are healthy, sound, or otherwise balanced? Or do you struggle to trust anyone…including yourself?
Learning how to trust is hard, and it’s a skill like any other. We have to allow ourselves to see the patterns and allow ourselves to change. There are good and loving people out there, but we have to sort through serious dross sometimes to find the gold and the light at the end of the tunnel.
Sings you’re putting your faith in the wrong people.
Are you putting all your faith in the wrong people? To uncover the answer, we have to take a look at the bigger picture and the bigger patterns. Examine your friendships, your romantic relationships, and the way you move through this world.
Your friendships never last long
Humans are social animals. We thrive when we’re connected to people who can support us and communicate with us. That communication is how we grow, and it’s how we learn how to see the world (and ourselves).
Friendships are an important part of this social need. When we have a thriving and loving friend group, we can feel complete in unimaginable ways.
The opposite can be said too, though…
Are you someone who always seems to pick the wrong friends? Do your friendships implode or fade off before you have a chance to grow into them? You could have a hard time connecting with others, but you could be picking the wrong people to be friends with.
We have to lean into relationships that complement our needs instead of settling for friends who don’t have what it takes to support us.
Your relationships go the same way
How’s it going in the love department? Would you describe yourself as a veritable Casanova? Or have things been chaotic, heartbreaking, and weird in terms of the romance in your life? Bad relationships can’t be denied as a sign of bad faith.
We invest in the love we think we are worthy of.
When you invest in the wrong partner, everything else seems to go wrong too. If you can’t hold on to a stable relationship, it’s a pretty good sign that you have a hard time picking healthy partners.
An endless parade of abusers, narcissists, and neglecters, indicates that we have not yet learned our worth (or the crucial relationship skills we need to set and maintain standards and boundaries).
You feel terrible about yourself
How do you feel about yourself as a person? How do you feel about your body? Your job? Your hobbies and interests? What about your friends? Your family? The direction you’re taking in your life?
A lot of us feel terrible about ourselves. Every time we look in the mirror, we rip ourselves apart with an awful inner voice that sounds a lot like the negative people we keep in our lives.
While it’s certainly not the whole cause, bad people are absolutely to blame for our struggling self-esteem. Surrounding ourselves with people who prefer to rip us down over building us up, we come to hate ourselves and doubt our own ability to thrive.
Take a second to consider the relationships you have around you. Do you really feel terrible about yourself? Or are you putting your faith and love into people who encourage you to feel terrible about yourself? It’s incredible what a difference a shift can make.
You’re always getting swindled
If you are someone who always getting swindled, ripped off, or otherwise betrayed, then you have to accept the fact that you put your faith in the wrong people. It’s okay. It’s noble to be a trusting person. The problem is putting your faith in the wrong people.
When you’re stuck in a wheel of pain it’s crucial that you stop and look at the patterns.
Why do you keep trusting people like this? Why are they appealing to you? Were you conditioned by equally untrustworthy people? Did they erode your self-esteem or train you to be gullible to their manipulation?
You’ve got to find the underlying cause for your constant betrayals. Then, you have to work on recovering your self-esteem and your relationship skills. That’s how you prevent yourself from getting played again.
You don’t trust anyone around you
Do you have a hard time trusting the people around you? This isn’t generally something that comes from nowhere. Distrust is learned from a multitude of betrayals or disappointments.
It can also be conditioned in us from abuse and traumatic experiences that are linked to our childhood and adulthood. If you are never allowed to feel safe with the people around you, it creates the belief that everyone else is bad too.
That simply isn’t the case. There are people out there who won’t betray your trust, but you have to learn how to build the skills that are needed to identify them (and the untrustworthy too).
You feel like you’re totally alone
Do you feel like you’re totally alone in this life? Feel like no one is ever going to understand you? Like no one will ever just be kind and loving to you? This is one of the final signs that we have spent our lives putting faith in the wrong people, and that we continue to do so.
Lies like this are taken on and internalized in brutal ways. Because we become afraid to love (thanks to the untrustworthy and cruel) we come to think that all the world is bad. But it’s not.
There are absolutely people out there who are willing to give you the gentle and compassionate love you deserve. They are healthy, happy, fulfilled people who are waiting for you to realize how much you are worth so they can find you and connect with you.
Do the work to recover yourself. Do the work to find your faith and your self-esteem again. You don’t have to throw in the towel because of a few bad choices and a lot of bad people. You’re lonely. You’re not alone. The right people are out there and waiting for you to shine again.
How to get better at investing your trust…
Ready for those forever relationships and friendships? Ready to stop being a loner? Distrustful of everyone and everything? You can get better at investing your trust in the right people. Just as you learned to be distrustful or gullible, you can learn to be strong and secure.
It all starts with the way you treat yourself. People who are confident and self-loving don’t settle for subpar treatment. When they see red flags (or even yellow flags) they act. They set boundaries and they protect them at all costs.
You have to love yourself enough to set high standards. The bar needs to be too high for bottom feeders to get through. You have to be ready to defend it in an instant.
Then you can begin to elevate the quality of people in your life. As you lean into environments that reaffirm your self-love, you will find people that honor you. You will find people that love your life and their own. They will choose to lift you up when others chose to lead you astray.
Choose better for yourself. Be proactive. Never settle.You only get one chance at this life. Don’t live trapped in a prison of your own making. Be determined to be happy at any cost.
Behere, A., Basnet, P., & Campbell, P. (2017). Effects of Family Structure on Mental Health of Children: A Preliminary Study. Indian Journal Of Psychological Medicine, 39(4), 457–463. doi: 10.4103/0253–7176.211767
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