You are probably here because someone told you that you have trust issues, or because you have started to suspect it yourself. Maybe a relationship ended with the other person saying you never really let them in. Maybe you noticed that you keep everyone at a polite distance and cannot remember the last time you told anybody something that could hurt you. Whatever brought you here, you want to know the signs you have trust issues, and you want to know whether that is something to fix.
I am going to give you the signs, and I am going to tell you what most articles will not. Every one of those signs is a form of protection. I spent my career in law enforcement, fire service, private security, and federal government, and the habits people call trust issues look a great deal like the habits I was trained to have. The trouble is not that you have them. The trouble is that they are running without supervision. Let me show you what I mean.
The Signs You Have Trust Issues
The most common sign is that you assume the worst about people’s motives before they have done anything. A compliment lands as manipulation. A favor lands as a setup. When a coworker is friendly, your first thought is what she wants. You may not say any of this out loud, but it is the running commentary in your head, and it colors every interaction before it starts.
A second sign is that you never fully rely on anyone. You would rather do the job yourself than delegate it, because if it is in someone else’s hands it might not get done. You keep a backup plan for every person in your life. If a friend offers to help you move, you quietly line up a second option. If a spouse says they will handle something, you check. People experience this as being managed, and they resent it, even when you mean no harm by it.
A third sign is that you keep the real version of yourself hidden. You can be charming, funny, and helpful, and nobody actually knows what you are afraid of or what you want. When conversations turn personal, you steer them back to safe ground or ask questions so the other person keeps talking. You have friends, but you do not have anyone who could hurt you, because you have never given anyone the material.
A fourth sign is that you test people without telling them they are being tested, and you leave at the first failure. A missed call becomes evidence. A forgotten detail becomes a verdict. You do not give second chances because in your mind the first failure already told you everything. A fifth sign, related to the fourth, is that you feel a strange relief when someone lets you down, because it confirms what you already believed and you can stop waiting for it.
Why Every One of Those Signs Is Doing a Job
Now look at that list again through the eyes of someone whose job was to keep people and facilities safe. Assuming the worst about motives is called threat assessment. Never fully relying on one source is called redundancy. Keeping your real self hidden is called operational security. Testing people quietly is called vetting. In a security context, every one of those is a discipline that I taught and expected. They are not character flaws. They are defensive skills that you learned from experience, usually painful experience, and they have kept you from being hurt the way you were hurt before.
I want you to sit with that for a minute, because most people who struggle with trust have been told they are broken. You are not broken. You are armored. The wounds that put that armor on you were real. Someone you trusted lied, or left, or used what you gave them, and your mind built defenses so it would not happen again. Those defenses worked. The cost is that armor is heavy, and you cannot embrace anyone while you are wearing it.
The Difference Between Protection and Imprisonment
The doctrine I carried through my whole career is that trust should be tested, not assumed. That doctrine sounds like exactly what a person with trust issues already does, and in a way it is. The difference is in the second half. A tested trust is one that can grow. You extend a little, you observe, and when the evidence is good you extend more. That is a gate. What most people with trust issues have instead is a wall. They test everyone and nobody ever passes, because the test has no passing grade. The guard was never told what a safe person looks like, so he treats everyone as a threat.
David spent years in Saul’s court learning, the hard way, that the man who honored him at dinner would try to kill him by morning. He came out of that with every sign on the list above. He assumed the worst about kings. He kept his own counsel. He tested the men around him carefully. And yet he also built the deepest friendship in the Bible with Jonathan, Saul’s own son, and gathered a band of men who would have died for him. He kept the protection and still let people in, because he learned to tell the difference between a Saul and a Jonathan. That is the skill, and it can be learned.
How to Keep the Guard and Open the Gate
Start by writing down what a trustworthy person actually looks like to you. Be specific. Someone who keeps small confidences. Someone who does what they said by when they said. Someone who can be told no without retaliating. Someone whose story about themselves matches what other people say about them. When you have that list, you have a passing grade, and your tests finally have a purpose other than confirming that everyone fails.
Next, tell one safe person what you are working on. Pick the person who has already passed more of your quiet tests than anyone else, and say plainly that you have a hard time trusting and you are trying to change that. This does two things. It gives you a chance to practice being seen, in a controlled way, with someone who has earned it. And it lets them understand your behavior, so the next time you double check something they said, they know it is your history talking and not an accusation.
Then practice giving second chances on small things. When a friend forgets to call back, say something instead of filing it away. Give them the chance to explain, and watch what they do with it. A trustworthy person will own it and do better. An untrustworthy person will get defensive or make it your fault. Either way you learn something, and either way you have broken the habit of convicting people in silence. Joseph tested his brothers too, but he let them respond, and their response was what told him they had changed.
Finally, keep your backup plans but stop hiding them. There is nothing wrong with redundancy. There is something corrosive about secret redundancy, because it means you are living a double life with the people closest to you. If you need a second option in case your spouse forgets the school pickup, say so, and work out a system together. Honest caution builds trust. Hidden caution erodes it.
What Changes When You Do This
You will not become a person who trusts everyone, and you should not want to. Judas sat at the table with the best of us and still sold out his friend, and no amount of openness would have prevented that. What you will become is a person whose caution serves a purpose. Your guard will still be on duty, but he will know what he is looking for, and he will have instructions to open the gate when the right person shows up. That is what discernment looks like. It is not the absence of trust issues. It is trust issues that have been given a job and are finally doing it well.
Go Deeper
If your armor was forged under a leader who turned on you, a boss who honored you in public and worked against you in private, I wrote about that pattern at length. The book follows David through the years he spent surviving Saul, and it lays out how to protect yourself from a leader like that without letting him make you into someone you do not want to be: The Spirit of Saul.
Commissioner William Epps is an author and security leadership consultant with a background in law enforcement, fire service, private security, and federal government. His books are published through E.P.P.S. Method Publishing Co.
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