There's no universal rule that states "it is acceptable and normal to trust someone after X condition is met."
From my observation and experience, I'd argue that everyone has a different trust threshold, shaped by their experiences, conditioned expectations, and neurology.
Consider person A and person B:
A's experience with people through their childhood development was largely positive. They were surrounded by trustworthy and respectful people. As a result, they view untrustworthy people as exceptional and trustworthy people to be the majority, even when they move to new communities. A is unprepared when their trusting nature is taken advantage of by others.
B's experience was largely negative. They were surrounded by people who betrayed their trust and mistreated them. As a result, B expects people to be untrustworthy, and believes each interaction with people carries high risk. In doing so, B also precludes any possible interactions that would challenge this assumption and convince them that some people are in fact worthy of trust.
A and B are hypothetical extremes - the sum quality of interpersonal interactions in a given individual's life is rarely if ever 100% positive or negative. Someone might have 70% negative and 30% positive, others might have 64% positive and 36% negative, etc. Sampling error ensures that no two people ever perceive the same exact experiences the same way over the course of their lifetime in the same order.
Consider also that no two interactions are considered equally (an acquaintance forgetting to call you on Saturday may not have the same emotional impact as a close friend behaving abusively toward you 5 years ago), and two people may not consider the same event equally (maybe your friend forgetting your birthday isn't a big deal to you, but you forgetting their birthday is a big deal to them).
Finally, consider the nature of probability. Probability can tell you how likely something is to occur, but it can't tell you how to feel about that likelihood. Two people can make very different decisions in response to the same perceived odds.
I don't think there's some key subtext or nonverbals to be learned that will make you trust people. You sort of have to make your own subjective assessment of how much risk of alienation or harm you feel is personally acceptable in exchange for social intimacy for each environment you find yourself in.
In my experience, I had the desire to interact with others beaten out of me by negative reinforcement over many years due to alienation on account of my narrow interests and atypical mannerisms. How alienated I feel and how willing to trust I am is still greatly dependent upon the social environments I place myself in. So part of it is pursuing and maintaining environments and relationships where I feel safe enough to open up to others and avoiding places and people where I don't, so that when I *do* attempt to open up, my chance of feeling alienated will be lower, and I can have more opportunities to condition myself to associate positive interactions with other people. I'm effectively tricking my brain to override its previous risk assessment by imposing a bias on my sampling that favors social interactions with lower alienation risk. It also helps to avoid generalizing a risk assessment made in one circumstance or environment onto new circumstances or environments. E.g. Feeling alienated when socializing with a group of people who didn't share my interests doesn't mean that a new group of people will necessarily make me feel alienated.
Note that I'm still working on trusting people myself. Whatever level of trust you want to work toward, I think it's important to remember to be patient with your progress. Any time I've tried to force myself to trust people I wasn't ready to trust yet, it's just made me anxious and uncomfortable and less willing to try to be trusting of people the next time.
14 Apr 2018, 7:03 am
