Sometimes we violate trust, it happens all the time. How do you rebuild a
relationship after trust is broken? That's today at Live On Purpose TV.
Trust, it's one of those issues that once it's lost, it's kind of hard to regain it, in a
relationship and really, it's one of the most troubling or damaging things that
can happen in a relationship if trust is violated. There's a book that I read
several years ago that gave us some insight into what's going on with this
by Bishop Desmond Tutu, it's called The Book of Forgiving. He's got a four fold
process in here that he walks us through related to forgiveness but one of the
quotes that the Bishop Tutu mentioned in in his book is that we are all
broken and from that brokenness, we hurt each other and then he sets up
forgiveness as the healing path that we can take to mend the brokenness that
occurs or the hurt that occurs because of our brokenness. Is this true? In my
life, I think it is. I constantly do things that hurt the people that I love,
I think it's part of being human and as we as we do these things, sometimes trust
is affected. Think of trust for a moment as a bank account. You know, if you've got
a bank account and you make deposits into that bank account and it grows up
gradually over time until you've got this nice balance and then what happens
if you go in and you make a huge withdrawal from that bank account?
Well now you don't have the same balance that you had before and if you really want to
purchase something that requires a higher balance, you're going to have to
again make some deposits into that bank account. Trust is very similar in a lot
of ways. We make little deposits. I think the best way to build trust is to do
what we say we will do, to have intergrity. In my mind, integrity is when what you
say and what happens match. Think about that, when what you say and what actually
happens are a perfect match, that's integrity and the more you can make
those deposits of integrity by doing what you say and saying what you'll do,
that helps to build up the trust. Now let's talk for a minute about what
happens if you're on the being hurt end of things, okay. Someone has done
something that has violated your trust or hurt you in some way because of their
brokenness. Okay, that's where we're going next. Anytime we are offended, we create a,
story. Now notice that this is true, the story and some stories are true, I'm not
saying that it's not, I'm saying that anytime we get hurt or offended, we
create a story. I think part of the process of letting it go or healing or
rebuilding after trust is broken is to tell the story. Tell the story, where do
you have a confidant or someone that you can share what has happened. You know I
did treatment for several years with people who had post-traumatic stress
disorder when a traumatic event happens, an important part of healing is being
able to tell that story to actually just share what happened. It helps our mind
somehow to wrap itself around what has occurred so that we can start a
healing process. Now there's a caution here because sometimes in telling the
story, we choose to attach ourselves to a story that doesn't serve us well. Can I
give you an example? One of my clients, this was probably about 25 years ago,
early in my career, I had a client who came to see me about something very very
difficult that had happened in her life and the quick version without sharing
anything that's confidential. Her now ex-husband had accused her of committing
a crime for which she was arrested while he absconded with her daughter, took off,
left the state, so that created a child custody issue, anyway, that was the basics
of what had happened. I got to meet with her for several sessions over the course
of many months. At one point in this process, I had observed that she had
attached herself to a story about this that was not serving her well. Yes, she
was telling the story about how her ex-husband had taken off with her
daughter and had her arrested so that she couldn't chase him, that's all kind
of the factual part of this story but what this had evolved into for her was a
victim story and by that, I mean, this story starred him and she showed up in a
supporting role as the pitiful victim that was getting beat up in the process.
You know what I'm talking about here with the victim story. I called this to
her attention by saying, "Hey, have you noticed in all of the sessions that
we've been having over the past several weeks and even a couple of months,
have you noticed who the story is about?" Oh, she gets this look on her face like,
"Oh my gosh, it's him, isn't it?" I said, "Yeah, who's paying for these
sessions?" Different answer. It wasn't him,
she was paying for it and yet he got to be the focus of every session, this
didn't sit well with her, we talked about how this is kind of like if the story
of your life, just think about your story for a minute, is a staged production and
we're pulling up to the theater, you're in the limo and the butler opens
the door for, you get out and you walk down the red carpet right to the
premiere of your story and we look up at the marquee and it says your story
starring all those dirty nasty terrible people who broke your trust. Wait a
minute. That doesn't feel right and that image helped her as well as she realized,
you know what I'm letting him be the star of this this story. Okay, so yes, you have to
tell your story but the caution is, let's not get sucked into a victim story where
we're the pitiful victim and that other person is the one who is the star of the
show. We don't want to go there. So in selecting your story, realize that
you can rewrite this thing is a hero story, a hero story. What's the difference?
In the hero story, you show up as the amazing powerful hero and yes, there's
other supporting actors including the one who broke your trust but they're
just there's a supporting actor and their role is to illuminate your genius.
You think about any of the movies that you've seen, you know those hero movies.
Why are the villains in those movies? Well the villains are simply there to
illuminate the hero. So we're going to be selective in which story we select and
attach ourselves to as we start to move on and rebuild this relationship of
trust. Going back to Desmond Tutu's book, I think he had a brilliant suggestion
that once the hurt occurs and we've decided that we're going to move on, we
have a choice to make and the choice that he suggests is that we are either
going to release or renew the relationship. I had a great opportunity
several years ago to interview coach Larry Gelwix, you might remember him from
the movie Forever Strong about the Highland rugby team, he was the coach of
that team. Coach Gelwix did an interview with me, you can link to that right down
here in the description, and during that interview, he told the story about one of
his rugby players who had been bitten by a snake. Well as he went to visit,
the young man's name was Mike, as he went to visit Mike in the hospital, he
was asking him, "Mike, this was a, you were out in your garage and you were
playing and you found a snake, am i clear on this?" And he's like, "Yeah
yeah yeah." "You knew what it was?" "Yeah." "You picked it up?" "Yeah." "And then you ran
around with this snake trying to scare the girls?" "Yeah."
"The snake bit you?" "Yeah." See, he's affirmatively answering all of these
questions. The coach was, it was just his mind was blown.
Okay, so you knew what it was when you picked it up. Going back to Bishop Tutu's
book as he says, you got a choice to either release or renew the relationship.
What if, no I'm not saying that the person who hurt you is a snake, but what
if they are? You know what I mean. This is just someone who's not healthy for you to
have in your life. Can you release that without holding a
grievance in your own heart about that? I think that's one of the options.
Well what if we choose to renew the relationship? Okay, there are principles
that will allow us to do that and we've talked about that in some of the other
videos. When you decide which direction you're going to go, either way, you get to
move forward with forgiveness in your own heart because going back to the
snake for example, if a snake bites you, what are you gonna do? Try to chase it
down, find a rock and smash it or let the snake go, make haste to get the venom out
of your system? That's even more important so no matter
which choice we take here, we can choose forgiveness which allows us to get the
venom out of our own system. Once that trust is broken, it can be hard to
rebuild but it is possible. Hopefully you got some good ideas about that today at
Live On Purpose TV. We'll see you tomorrow.