How to Know If Someone Is Trustworthy (And Why Safe People Don’t Demand Trust)

In this week’s episode of The Baggage Reclaim Sessions, I tackle a question that weighs on lots of us well into adulthood: “How do I know if I can trust my friends and other people?” I break down what trust actually is, why it feels tricky when ease seems suspicious because struggle feels more familiar, the debit and credit trust system for navigating the tension of giving access before you have proof, the difference between healthy and unhealthy familiar, and why safe people don’t feel entitled to your trust or brush off your discomfort. If you’ve been carrying shame about trusting too readily or finding it hard to trust at all, this episode offers guidance for learning to trust yourself so you can more easily recognise other safe people.

IN THIS EPISODE…

• Trust isn’t just a feeling; it’s a conclusion you arrive at through living the relationship. It’s getting a sense of how someone shows up over time across different situations, not just when things are easy but when they get harder too.
• The debit and credit trust system: start with 70% trust and build or roll back based on evidence. You can’t get evidence of trustworthiness without giving some access first, which creates tension, especially if you’ve been hurt before.
• Ease can feel suspicious when you’re used to struggle. Watch for unhealthy familiar. When feeling secure feels foreign because you’ve normalised monitoring, performing, and low-level bracing, someone you can actually exhale around can feel too easy, like something must be wrong.
• Safe people don’t do shady things to get you to trust them. They don’t pressure you into trusting them, make you feel guilty for being uncertain, ask you to keep uncomfortable secrets, or do things that serve them at your expense. Be wary of people who make you feel bad about yourself or subtly encourage you to doubt your own instincts so you rely on theirs instead – they’re investing in your dependence, not your trust.
• The Age of Obedience taught us to extend automatic trust to adults and authorities. We were raised to believe questioning whether an adult deserved our trust wasn’t allowed, that feeling uneasy around authority meant we were bad and should ignore ourselves.

LINKS MENTIONED AND RECOMMENDED RESOURCES

• Ep. 217: Trust is a gamble, but we can learn to make good bets
• Ep. 240: Oh-Oh for Intensity and Fast Trust
• Mr Unavailable and the Fallback Girl
• The Joy of Saying No
• Love, Care, Trust and Respect
• Ep. 24: Dating as a Single Parent, Help vs Support, The Debit & Credit Trust System
• “Why did you get me to trust you?” Why walls can make us ripe for the charmers…
• Revisited: Understanding what your trust points were in your shady relationship
• ‘Am I Self-Aware?’ Do You Trust, Listen To, Care For, and Know Yourself?
• Unclench Your Trust Fists So You Can Experience More Self-Trust
• Consistency Creates Trust in Ourselves and Our Relationships
• What It Means to Trust Someone
• We’re Much Happier, Intimate and Connected When We Give From a Place of Trust
• Ep. 112: The Trouble With Emotional Blackmail
• There’s a big difference between giving the benefit of the doubt and giving the benefit of magic eraser
• Ep. 180: Time For A Second (Or Umpteenth) Chance?
• Ep. 179: Better The Devil You Know?
• Ep. 253: Was your intuition ‘wrong’ though?
• Ep. 273: Ignoring, Dismissing and Overriding Ourselves Always Leads to Problems

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