Shaking, Breaking, and Re-Making Trust

Weathering the storms in friendship as social change

“Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery

None but ourselves can free our minds.”

- Bob Marley, Redemption Song

A few days ago, I saw the newest Bob Marley biopic, One Love. I walked away feeling deeply moved by his life, his music, and his message of unity, respect and love for all, in the face of incredible violence and division. So many places in our hurting world where I wish I could inject some Marley spirit right now…

And, it got me thinking about what it takes to rebuild trust when it is broken.

Marley was nearly assassinated in his own home in Jamaica, just a few days before his first unity and peace concert was set to happen there. While he and his band (several of whom had been shot) did offer a set, Marley soon left for London in a self-imposed exile. It took him a few years to return and continue the work on healing and reconciliation he had begun. (In the interim, he channeled his suffering into creativity, recorded Exodus, and became a global phenomenon.) What did it take to rebuild his trust, release his fear, strengthen his courage, so he felt like trying again?

I am one of those naturally trusting people. (Shout-out to the other ones of you out there — you know who you are.) I extend my trust freely and walk through the world mostly believing that it is full of folks who are trustworthy and who, in turn, can trust me — to be respectful, to hold their confidentiality, to give them the benefit of the doubt, to show up, to honor my word, and simply, to care.

Yet, anxiety around trust has been coming up a lot in my current work with various clients. I am hearing questions like, Can I trust them? Do I trust myself to change? Will I trust this effort? Do I trust things will be okay in the future? In that spirit, I send a shout-out to the folks who lean towards skepticism and not trusting. (You know who you are too, and I love you for it.)

In my last post, Leadership Is Friendship, one of my dear readers asked me to expand on what I called Stage 3 — when a friendship hits a bump, a misunderstanding, or a hurt — and how to move through that to come out stronger. I recognize that so much has to do with trust: internal, interpersonal and systemic. It takes practice to extend trust, with someone and in myself, and when it shakes and breaks, to re-make it as well. Layered trust has been vital to weathering the storms in my leadership experience, and I want to peel back some of those layers today.

Before I get into that, I want to acknowledge all the hurt, anger, and anguish that show up when a friendship breaks. I have felt that pain several times in my life, and it is horrible. I have thought to myself, “We have been through thick and thin together. We have built so much and supported each other. I thought we were solid as a rock. How could a rock crumble like this?” I am not talking about the little bumps that happen, those hiccups we don’t sweat and move through with ease. I’m talking about the big hurts, betrayals, breakdowns, that happen in our relationships as friends and collaborators — the ones that rock our worlds and bring us to our knees.

I want to acknowledge that some of those, I have not been able to repair. Despite my/our efforts, we couldn’t come to the table together and talk it through. Over time, I have released the pain around these broken friendships, so it’s more of a knee that aches when it rains — not terribly present and yet not totally gone. Some friendships I have been able to partially repair — to the point where we could understand and accept each other, and yet didn’t want to work together or be in deep relationship again. Those I think about with equanimity: honoring the positive, accepting the negative, and recognizing the trust that couldn’t quite be fully rebuilt. And then, there are those friendships where I and we had some big hurts, and we were able to re-make trust and come out stronger. Those inspire me, and make me believe it is possible to get to the next level together.

I am remembering a conflict I had with a cherished friend a few years ago. We had been Jamming together for over 12 years and had been very close, traveling the world, organizing and facilitating together, co-creating magical community, and supporting each other so many times. And then we had a rupture. When I finally learned what it was, it seemed to boil down to two things I did that she felt were out of alignment and integrity to who I am. I was angry, and underneath that anger, I was very sad (as is usually the way with anger). I couldn’t believe that all of the trust I had with her over the years could disintegrate from just two things. Was our relationship that fragile? That possibility scared me. I couldn’t understand what I had been building if the solidity could crumble so fast.

If someone demonstrates a pattern of disrespect over time, that's one thing. Even then, I wonder if there is feedback to that person (or me) about how the pattern affects me (or them), so they (or I) have the opportunity to change it. Sometimes, I have done and seen this happen in inspiring ways, and other times, I have experienced being withdrawn from and/or shutting down with no explanation. That hurts extra if I have demonstrated care and love over time. If connection is our pattern, then when there is an incident or moment of breakdown, what does that mean? Was I and/or our friendship put on a pedestal so high that a few bumps could knock it down? Or was it not really about me at all, and more about a ‘convenient’ way to enable self-punishment and self-isolation? Was I just the easy target to be projected on?

Instead of spiraling out on my own, or with my inner critic, what emerged was a series of practices to re-make trust. This experience, along with several others — both the incomplete and the complete — made it clear to me how I and we move in Stage 3.

First, I slowed down. My friend was going to be married, and I had begun rushing to figure out how to get to the wedding. I realized I was going too fast, with instability and imbalance. I had quickly shifted to focus on the many prior years of relationship, instead of facing this past one year of hurt and withdrawal, punishment and blame. While I would like to think that a broadened perspective is the better thing to have, and forgiveness is vital, I also felt sad and hurt by the sadness and hurt.

In earlier moments, while I thought we were clearing things up between us, she said she was just going through the motions, and thought I was, too. So, more of my trust was shattered, because I now felt like those moments weren't honest. What to do when one side thinks we're in a clearing process, and the other side doesn't believe it's true? Talk about walking away with different senses of reality.

I realized that I had more questions to explore first before I rushed into buying tickets and re-arranging my life and work for her wedding. While there a bit of urgency with timing, there was also my own need to be clear before I jumped in too fast and then had regrets by side-lining my feelings. I recognized that I needed to rebuild, internally, as much as externally. I had to acknowledge and face the broken trust.

Next, I got some support. Shortly after the breakdown had come to more light, I had dinner with a dear mutual friend. He gave me some perspective about how it seemed I could only be all-good or all-bad, nothing in-between, with little space left for my humanity, or ability to make mistakes, much less be forgiven or understood. That's a hard place to have a friendship from. He also helped me recognize the imbalance I was unconsciously fostering, by holding more of the weight of the relationship. It's one thing to put out an invitation and have it answered and work together towards healing. And it's another to carry the work on my own, get no traction, and then keep striving to fix things, while letting the lack of change eat me up inside.

This imbalance doesn't work in friendships. It can be okay in the activation energy – one person putting in a little something more initially – but if the other person doesn't catch up somehow, the relationship feels off, and a fundamental imbalance gets into the DNA of it. Which doesn't bode well for the future, because the conflict grows exponentially in the imbalance. Even if we think we're slowing down and working it out, the foundation of our house is off center, and so the furniture keeps sliding out the front door.

With a little more perspective, I asked for support from another mutual friend to hold us in a healing circle over Zoom. Here, there were a few practices in play. One, I/we practiced not freezing each other, or reducing each other to one moment of missed understanding. That was absolutely crucial to widen our perspectives and put things in bigger context. Two, I/we held our experiences and truths, with a small ‘t’. This meant honoring each of our truths and seeing how they bumped into each other and caused hurt. And, equally importantly, it also meant naming the stories that each of us built and how they prevented us from actually seeing the other person — their messiness, their fullness, their humanity. Three, we slowed down to feel and to express our vulnerability. Our mutual friend and circle-holder held us both so lovingly, asking us questions to bring out more of our truths and catching our inner critics when they reared their heads. I knew it was working because we were letting go of ego and logic and shedding many tender and brave tears instead. Sharing this depth of feeling both relies on trust and re-makes trust at the same time.

The combination of these practices softened the soil and gave ‘mistakes’ a place to exist. We remembered they are very normal, very human and very okay. Allowing for mistakes makes it easier to repair them. Through the healing-circle, my friend-collaborator and I recognized the imbalance that had come into our relationship. We had the opportunity to repair and re-lay the foundation for ourselves. We apologized, and we forgave. And then we set about practicing the friendship we did want to create and recommitted to collaboration together. The aftercare was vital: re-making trust by how each of us contributed to offering ourselves and receiving each other, one action at a time. We felt the new foundation when we hugged in person a few days before celebrating at the wedding, and it has been present in the two years since.

When I am in the healing-circle-holding role for others in Stage 3, these practices are what make the difference. Slowing things down to first hear the hurt, anger, grief, without judgement. Making space slowly to receive support and expand perspectives. Opening a healing circle that invites us to not freeze, to hold our truths with a little ‘t’, and to express our own vulnerability and receive that of the other. From the softer soil, there is space for repair: asking for it, participating in it, receiving it, giving it. That's what restoration and re-storying is: (re)fresh(ed) actions, (re)fresh(ed) stories, (re)fresh(ed) relationship. That’s how the trust gets re-made.

It’s a departure from acting in the realm of healing fantasies (which I wrote about here and which I first heard about in the book Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents by Lindsay Gibson). I believe healing fantasies don't just exist with our parents. I think they get created and projected into almost every conflict, and especially in our friendship and leadership situations since we are vulnerable and trusting there. Usually, this fantasy involves expecting the other person/people to know what 'should' happen and/or to ‘get’ what did happen, while not communicating my own needs and feelings, much less asking them for change or being in dialogue about a different way forward. Of course, 99% of the time the people involved have no idea what I want or need. Often, on top of that, the relationship flow was already imbalanced, so it doesn’t take much to knock it down further.

When our hearts are expressed in some way — in a justice project, or intentional community, or innovative social enterprise — our trust is on the line. So, maybe that’s where we need to be extra vigilant about healing fantasies, and to recognize that our mutual passion for work together is not enough. We also need mindsets, skillsets and structures to work through often inevitable Stage 3 trust breakdowns. That’s why I try to support others to slow down and practice those practices. I especially see how important it is to articulate what they feel healing and transformation could look like, and to notice their own role in it, as well as to take ownership of their healing fantasy if one has been projected onto others.

A friend once asked what are good resources out there for learning about conflict transformation in this holistic, co-creative way? I recognize that my approach doesn't come out of study – it's only later on that I learned of models and tools. Mostly, I feel like I'm a sponge, picking up bits and pieces along the way from life, from YES! Jams, from other work settings. What stands strong in me is my faith that if I and we slow down, and if I and we get some support that is invested in our well-being and in maintaining the container, then I and we can find a way forward together. Growing awareness and support is mindset, skillset, and structure all integrated together.

I also want to name how important it is to recognize our trauma and triggers and see how they might show up when we are with others. So many people, myself included, have been wounded by conflicts that did not go well – in our families, in our friendships, in our romantic relationships, in our work spaces... All the breakdowns, inside and outside, have left us understandably skittish and disillusioned, and it's hard to get up and try again with a new person, new context, new space. That trust can feel elusive and, worse, like a waste.

That’s why having our friend-mediator catch our inner critics and slow us down was really important; otherwise, our panic zones would run the show. I was once mediating a conflict between three people, where their past traumas kept bumping into each other. One would slow down and un-freeze the other, and things would start to flow, and then a different person would go into their trauma and freeze again. With a lot of slowing down and making space, we eventually found our way to an agreement. And even though it wasn’t all rainbows, it did account for the capacity and the limits each person had at the time. Maybe in another moment, with more support from other places in their lives, more transformation would be possible. Luckily, each of them (like me) had more life to live, and so I trust that more opportunities to re-make trust will emerge. As my friend Richard once shared with me, “The conditions at home are exactly right for your practice.”

That’s how I see Healing Community: healing so that we can be in community, healing our sense-making of community, and community as a healing modality. Shaking, breaking and re-making trust is simply a part of this sacred reciprocity. It asks each of us to personally and collectively, like Bob Marley, face the fear, go home, and try again. It asks each of us to keep singing our redemption songs.

What redemption song are you singing? How are you re-making trust when it shakes and breaks? I’d love to hear in the comments.