Just turn on the TV or your computer, and the news that is being broadcast is frightening! Just this morning three were killed at a rural school in Northern New Mexico – the shooter and two others. How very sad for the other students, the families involved, the school teachers and principal, and the entire community. One begins to wonder where real safety is. Who can be trusted to do no harm and where is there a safe place to be, 24 hours a day and seven days a week?

Being involved in experiences similar to this or having endured abuse or neglect in childhood years, causes pain.

“Pain is very hard to let go of! Many people cannot let go of pain, because the only way to let go of it once and for all, is first to feel it through and through. Many a person fears this would be overwhelming. They keep the pain alive, oddly enough, by not letting it in.” (Worry, pg. 88, by EM Hallowell, MD).

Just yesterday, Dr. Phil interviewed a young woman who had 10 different personalities or alter egos. What a pathetic story! Instead of dealing/working through the trauma she had endured in childhood, she totally blocked out her first 13 years and created these 10 different ways to cope with the original pain she did not want to discuss or re-visit. Bless her heart, she really wanted help, and Dr. Phil offered it at a place he highly recommends – P.N.P. the Psycho-Neuro-Plasticity center, which examines every area of the brain and body to determine one’s physical, mental, emotional and spiritual states. This will be a God-send for her, and hopefully the beginning of a new life. Who do you think she trusts at this moment? No one! But in time and with help (not drugs) she will do well, and be able to live life!

Trust is a reliance or confidence of the good qualities of others, especially their fairness, truth, honor or ability. It also has to do with the future and a reliance on what will occur down the road. A knowledge that someone else is responsible for taking good care of another, like a grandma who will babysit for our precious children. Please understand that this trust is dependent on our earliest in womb and early childhood experiences. In the words of Thomas R. Verny, MD:

Starting from the moment of conception, a child’s brain is wired by his or her environment. Interaction with the environment is not merely one aspect of brain development, as has been thought; it is an absolute requirement, built into the process from the earliest days in the womb. The brain is sensitive to experience throughout life, but experience during the critical periods of prenatal life and early postnatal life organizes the brain. Our brains and, consequently, our personalities emerge from the complex interplay between the genes we are born with and the experiences we have.

Our basic ability to trust is developed during the first 18 months to 2 years of life, remember? This is when we can record experiences, but are without language or the ability to express what happened in our lives. Our bodies record our experience both in the brain and in other organs as well. So often in later life, we suffer with physical sensations or illness that stem from early life trauma; just like the woman, now in her mid-twenties, who could not recall her life or even her relationships with parents before age 13. Finally in the interview with Dr. Phil, who knowingly pressed her to explain the “trauma or worst thing that ever happened to you in childhood,” she was able to say “I am not able to talk about that.” The record was there in her brain, but her desire to recall or speak about it, caused her to stutter and go from understandable conversation to fractured verbiage there with Dr. Phil.

Dr. Verny in His book, “Pre-Parenting” continues:

Every biological process leaves a psychological imprint, and every psychological event, changes the architecture of the brain. A secure relationship with one or two primary caregivers leads to more rapid acquisition of emotional and cognitive skills. Such skills confer not just temporary advantages, but permanent ones, because they are the number one tool for constructing the brain.

So . . .

– Ask yourself, what occurred or was the atmosphere between your parents while you were in the womb and during the first 2 years of your life? After you have thought about this, write it down. This will be a major help in you being able to understand your ability or inability to trust others.

– Think back through your character-forming years (Conception through age 7). What experiences occurred that may have created distrust rather than trust in you? Write a list and explain each item a bit.

– What experiences occurred in your adolescent and adult years that have accentuated your inability to trust? Write about them.

– The hand will write what the mouth cannot speak! This is why we encourage you to write your experiences. Then take what you have written to a personal friend, Pastor or Counselor, and read out loud what you have written. This will give your brain the message, through your senses, that you have taken care of this “trust issue.”

​This is a project well worth doing. God Bless You as you chose to do it!