Our experience of trust is not an on or off switch. It’s a continuum. Our ability to trust is effected by our past experiences, and the state of our nervous system.
Trust isn’t a rigid experience, it ebbs and flows, like emotion. It can change day to day, moment to moment.
In EMDR we use the subject unit of distress scale (SUDs) to quickly get a read on the amount of distress in a given moment. 0 is total calm. 10 is the most distressed you can experience.
I find it useful to also rate trust in the same way, on a scale of 0-10. 0 is no trust at all. 10 is ultimate trust, the most you could experience. (1) It’s a simple framing to develop a deeper understanding of our experience of trust.
Seeing trust as a continuum means we can observe what factors in our world and other people's behaviour makes us feel more or less trusting. It can give us a read on how we journey in and out of trust with the world, ourselves, and others.
Footnote
(1) Credit goes to Dr. William Lammers, who’s book first introduced me to the idea of working with trust as a continuous scale.
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