Ann

From the book Language of Letting Go - Melody Beattie

Learning to Trust Again

Many of us have trust issues.

Some of us tried long and hard to trust untrustworthy people. Over and again, we believed lies and promises never to be kept. Some of us tried to trust people for the impossible; for instance, trusting a practicing alcoholic not to drink again.

Some of us trusted our Higher Power inappropriately. We trusted God to make other people do what we wanted, then felt betrayed when that didn't work out.

Some of us were taught that life couldn't be trusted, that we had to control and manipulate our way through.

Most of us were taught, inappropriately, that we couldn't trust ourselves.

In recovery, we're healing from our trust issues. We're learning to trust again. The first lesson in trust is this: We can learn to trust ourselves. We can be trusted. If others have taught us we cannot trust ourselves, they were lying. Addictions and dysfunctional systems make people lie.

We can learn to appropriately trust our Higher Power - not to make people do what we wanted them to, but to help us take care of ourselves, and to bring about the best possible circumstances, at the best possible times, in our life.

We can trust the process - of life and recovery. We do not have to control, obsess, or become hyper vigilant. We may not always understand where we are going, or what's being worked out in us, but we can trust that something good is happening.

When we learn to do this, we are ready to learn to trust other people. When we trust our Higher Power and when we trust ourselves, we will know who to trust and what to trust that person for.

Perhaps we always did. We just didn't listen closely enough to ourselves or trust what we heard.

Today, I will affirm that I can learn to trust appropriately. I can trust my Higher Power, my recovery, and myself. I can learn to appropriately trust others too.

Published by Hazelden

Ann

When I first found recovery I didn't trust anyone or anything. I had been lied to and worse, I had been living a lie, believing that it wasn't so bad and believing that I could change that which was not mine to change.

First, I had a tiny bit of trust that maybe, if I went to meetings and found what I saw in others who had been, just maybe my life might be a little bit better. I was wrong...my life became a whole lot better, better than I could ever have imagined even in my wildest dreams.

At first, I trusted God until Tuesday. If He didn't take care of business by then, I took back MY will and tried again, in futility, to make things happen MY way. After a bad night at a crack house, trying to rescue my son, I surrendered in exhaustion and told God that I could not do one more day of this and asked Him to please take over. He did.

Today I trust my heart, my instinct and heart almost always tell me the truth. I trusted my mind again, and learned that I could make healthy choices and decisions, as hard as it might be sometimes. I trusted my program because I saw first hand what it had done for others and just knew there was hope for me.

I found faith, that life and God would take me to where I was supposed to be. Sometimes I felt lost and couldn't see the path ahead, and that's when I traveled in blind faith, just believing that all was exactly the way it was supposed to be and knowing my path would be lit.

This didn't happen overnight. It took time, proof and truth before I could see that it was so. But the important thing is that it happened and I will be forever grateful to all those who went before me and showed me that this program and this process could be trusted.

Hugs