In mental health work the trust you’re developing is like a bank account.
You deposit and withdraw.
Over the time you have with your help seeker, the level of trust in your account will change. Sometimes due to stuff you can control (like what you say / income you generate), sometimes due to stuff you can’t (like how what you say is interpreted / the economy).
You’ll have to take risks in order to increase that trust to begin with, for example by showing that you’re willing, capable and available to sit down in the dark.
The underlying skillset required for creating a wealth of trust is psychological cartography.
Internal map making.
The more overlap between your map of their world and their own map of their world, the better your connection can grow.
Higher map accuracy = higher trust capacity.
Like any currency, you can earn it, spend it and lose it.
Perhaps you want to ask something personal.. about suicide maybe, or grief.
When you take the risk and ask what you want to ask, the trust you’ve earned acts as a buffer for the connection you’ve built. A buffer that even protects against mistakes, for example if you’ve fallen out of alignment or had something personal (thoughts, feelings or judgements) get in the way and block your empathy.
If you’ve accumulated more trust than the enquiry costs, you can stay on the journey together. If not, you’ll have a lesson knocking at your door – whether you let it in is up to you.
Self awareness plays a critical role in trust management.
Imagine you had a big surprise payment suck your savings dry.
Imagine how you’d respond to finding out your financial situation is a lot more dire now than it was even five minutes ago.
How would you handle that experience? What emotions would come up? What would your self talk say?
When we rupture connection with our help seekers it can be scary, like finding less in our bank account than we thought.
How we navigate our own feelings and thoughts during this time has a huge impact for everyone.
If we’re able to stay self aware and in control of our responses, it’s possible we can stay flexible enough to repair the ruptured connection, but there’s no chance of this if we fall into berating or criticising ourselves for taking a risk and having it go the wrong way.
Like with our financial health, our relational wellbeing depends totally on our level of self awareness.
Through receptivity to our internal reactions we develop receptivity to the reactions of others.
You can’t hold space for someone else until you can do so for yourself.
That’s just how it is.
How can you repair trust?
An incredibly powerful way to develop your practice is to do the thinking without the urgency, in other words, when nobody’s awaiting your reply.
If you’d like to try some homework, try modifying the Workshopping Exercise and creating a list of at least 7 canned responses titled ‘Repairing Trust’.
If you do let me know how you go down below!
This post is written specifically for crisis support and mental health work, if you’d like to read more, click here.
I would really appreciate every stray thought and piece of feedback you have so please do reach out via socials if you’d like to chat.