17 – Trust/ Confidence

I deliberately chose a slightly vague title because it evokes several facets, that I will now detail.
Trust in me (self confidence); in others; and in the future.

First, self confidence: I grew up for years hearing words depersonalizing me. These words had also a demoralizing effect, reducing my confidence almost to nothing, and by someone who should have been helping me build my confidence by creating positive references.




The result is a difficulty to trust others, even for mundane things. I need lots of time to learn who to trust, and to what extent. I am certainly not the only one who misplaced confidence in someone who happend to be unworthy of this confidence, but when you lack of confidence and suffered abuse of power by individuals supposed to protect you, any betrayal or disintegrating friendship can have unexpected consequences, sometimes disastrous for future choices: either I no longer trust at all or I'm too trusting. 




The goal is therefore to learn the balance between these extremes, and not be discouraged in the face of bad judgments. After all, to error is human and you have to learn from your mistakes. Time and experience help and I have learned more recently how to better discern and choose trusted friendships.
The last point (possibly?) Is the confidence in the future. Again, my misinformation and dis-education mentioned above by destructive words had reduced my confidence in the future. It is hard to have confidence that things will go better "later" while a past and present are experienced very painfully and one has little or no confidence in self and others ... Again it's all a learning curve that requires patience, and sometimes to just trust in others blindly until that trust is truly earned.