Trust Me I Am A Doctor…..Just Not The Kind That Helps People!

Just not the kind that helps people!

Is trust necessary in a relationship?  This is a silly question many of you think and I agree to some degree.  How much trust is necessary in a relationship?  That is a better question.  This was the topic of my session to day and we were quick to realize that I have never fully trusted anyone my entire life.

I don’t have anyone that I will ever share every part of me.  I cannot even comprehend how that it is possible.  It sounds awful that I cannot tell my wife every minuscule part of my entire life.  I don’t know if anyone else feels like this but I just don’t understand how to do that.  It has never been part of my life.

My session actually started on how I needed to be a better me.  I need to improve myself to help our relationship but I could not tell him what I needed.  Everything that I need to improve on is specifically to improve our relationship, not me personally.  Take sharing my initial feelings to our conversations without filtering them.  I understand how that can help her in understanding me and feeling close to me but that is a relational aspect to our relationship.  How does that make me a better person?  How does that help me find who I am?  I clearly see how it will help my relationship with my wife but how does it help me.

This led us to talking about trust and me trusting her with my feelings.  My problem is not so much sharing it is understanding and sharing in a short time span.  She wants me react with unfiltered reactions, but I don’t know how, when I don’t know what I am feeling.  He asked me why I was scared to let out the emotions.  What was the worst thing that could happen?

That’s easy.  She may not think I am who I am.  She may judge me and treat me differently.  She may share these private moments with other people not knowing that I don’t want them shared and even sometimes when she does know I don’t want them shared.  And worst of all, I may hurt her with my reactions that if I think about and process may be a completely different reaction.

So trust.  All of those reason boil down to trusting someone with who I am, even though I have no idea who that is.  Can I do it?  I don’t know.  I know I have told her things that she has shared in the past when I did not want those things shared.  Most she did not see them as a big deal but I do because I am extremely private.  I don’t want anyone to know about me or my life.  If they do they see the picture I paint for them not the reality behind the screen.

How do you build trust?  If I have never fully trusted anyone in my entire life, how in the hell to I start now.  How do I let someone in?  I never had parents to trust, siblings, friends, …nothing.  So where do you begin?  I do not think it is possible.  I don’t believe that anyone can just start trusting.  Everyone knows you have to slowly build it up, but I think you have to have a base to start from.  If you don’t then how can you know where to start from or how to build it.  Is it sad that I don’t have anyone to trust?  I don’t know.  Now I do trust people with different aspects of my life but no one know my full story and there are many part no one will ever know.  So I have some levels of trust, but keeping certain things closed up and locked away means they cannot come back and haunt you.  It keeps you safe.

What happens if I open those things up?  I am no longer safe.  I am no longer in control.  I am no longer the only person who has something that can be used to hurt me.  So I don’t know that it is a bad thing that I cannot fully trust.  I don’t know that it is a good thing either.  My counselor was actually stumped and said I had ran him in so many circles he did not even know what to say or how to help me, but he was going to do a little research and then give me more information next time.

So now what?  I don’t know how to improve myself because I don’t know what is wrong with me.  Our joint counselor thinks we need to work on ourselves before we can get anywhere as a couple, but what if that is not possible.  Do I have self-esteem issues?  Sure, but they are tied into my relationship.  How do you work on that as an individual?  Do I have identity issues, not really, other than I could not tell you how I was.  I don’t have the 30 sec elevator speech selling myself.  I have always thought that once people saw me in action they could judge for themselves.  This has worked great in the job world, but if you take the same look at a relationship, not so much.  My actions would not demonstrate a good partner in a relationship.  Maybe this is why I judge myself so harshly. I view myself in regards to my actions.  So the only way I can better myself is through action.  Emotions and relationships are not nearly as much action as they are feelings educed.  So where do I go from her.

I guess I will just have to trust the process….  But that is not encouraging.

Trust me I am a doctor. – Dr. Seuss