The Courage to Trust: A High Control Group Survivor on Healing from Betrayal

“Trust is critical to progress on a spiritual path,” wrote Sue Ferguson, “but it doesn’t come easily for some of us.” I wonder how many readers can relate to Ferguson’s hesitance to trust.
 
We humans are relational beings, who cannot survive and thrive without caring, cooperative relationships with others. Yet to extend trust, we must expose our soft, vulnerable underbelly. No wonder that when trust is betrayed, the relational wound can go deep.

(Photo: erwinbosman / Pixabay)

Instincts
 
For much of my life, I have been someone who instinctively trusted others. I grew up with loving, reliable caregivers, so my foundation of trust was strong as I entered adulthood. Later, though, there was one significant period when trust did not come so easily to me. I was in my 30s by this time, and life had eroded my trusting nature. It showed in my romantic life.
 
I started dating someone I met online – the way so many romances start anymore. Going slow makes sense when a relationship starts from zero, as strangers, and I did go slowly. My nervous system knew pretty quickly, though, that this guy was trustworthy. On our second date, I drove up to his city, and when he greeted me, he gave me an unhurried hug that just felt so safe and grounding. (If you know me, you know I’m a hugger.) I think on some level this is when I knew this was someone I could get serious about. He gave hugs like my trustworthy father.
 
But as our relationship unfolded over weeks, and then months, approaching a year, I continued to take my time. My boyfriend was ready to pick up the pace. He was ready to make long-term plans, to really commit. Neither of us was young – I was 34, he was 43. If parenting was going to be part of our lives there wasn’t much time to waste. He wanted to know where I stood in this relationship. And I was a bit frozen in uncertainty. I continued to move slowly in our couplehood. At one point my partner became impatient with my dawdling. And I thought, is he going to walk away?
 
Maybe you’ve been the person who could trust, and who felt impatient with or hurt by another’s apparent lack of commitment. Or maybe you’ve been the person who found it hard to trust in someone else, or in your own powers of discernment.
 
It takes courage to trust. Because trust means vulnerability. It means risking being let down by those you trust. For someone who has been hurt or betrayed before, it is not only the specific relationship involved which was harmed; that person’s underlying capacity to trust may also be affected.
 
As for me and my younger self’s dating relationship? It’s only in the last couple of years that I have come to understand more deeply what it was that had diminished my capacity to trust.
 
Backstory
 
Here’s the backstory. (There’s always a backstory.)  In my late 20s, I got involved in a community that gave me many reasons to feel safe there – warm people that seemed to genuinely care about me. Spiritual practices that added comfort, grounding, meaning and personal insight to my daily life. Fun times together, talking and laughing over meals or during recreation together.
 
I moved gradually closer to that meditation community over a period of years, in my participation and my identity. It influenced major choices I made in my personal life, including work and relationships. Eventually I moved into the heart of that spiritual community, transplanting myself from the Midwest to the West Coast to work for the meditation center.

(Image: Artem Beliaikin / Unsplash)

But when I got close, my sense of stability within that group quickly began to erode. In fact, I began to feel distinctly unsafe. Things were not as sunny as they had seemed from a distance. Once I was in the thick of things, my experience was that direct communication seemed to be taboo or threatening. And it took so long, mysteriously, to get something done within the structure of the organization. And members of that spiritual community did not in real life consistently exhibit the qualities that they ostensibly taught to others, like an unhurried mind or self-acceptance.
 
I didn’t understand why the community behaved the way it did. But I could feel the toll it was taking on my body, emotions and spirit. People who I thought I was close to displayed a deficit of trust, not only in others around them, but specifically in me. There was a disconnect between what was actually happening around them and how they responded.
 
Eventually the secretive, distrusting, stultifying climate of that meditation community got to me. To the point I realized that for my own well-being, I needed to get out of there.
 
All the signals that community had given me that it was a place of safety, connection, and growth – a place in which I might flourish and make positive contributions – it turned out those signals had been deeply misleading. And so, when I left that California community and returned to the Midwest, one of the lasting effects I brought with me was confusion about whether I could believe what my experience told me about others.
 
Sure, I felt instinctively safe with my new boyfriend – but was this really going to work out? I had been wrong about people before… how could I be sure I was right about this guy?
 
In Community
 
Perhaps you’ve been close to a person or community whose behavior turned out to be inconsistent, confusing, even downright harmful. Rupturing of trust happens in families. It happens in friendships. It happens in communities. It’s happened, sadly, in the body politic of the United States.
 
Betrayal of trust can be devastating in any context. Because trust is the foundation of all human relationships. Without it, those relationships are hampered in their ability to create and sustain authentic connection.
 
Such a betrayal goes especially deep in a place that was supposed to be safe – as when a parent or guardian harms a child in their care, or when a spiritual or religious community fails to protect anyone in it from abuses of power.
 
Relational traumas like these impact not only the person directly affected – the child abused or neglected, the partner assaulted or cheated on, the group member deceived or manipulated. Betrayals of trust can also affect whole communities.
 
What I have come to understand about my old meditation community, twenty years later, is that its capacity for trust, for true reciprocity and straightforward communication, had been damaged long before I arrived on the scene. Just as the trust barrier between me and my boyfriend wasn’t really about him, the meditation community’s slowness to trust me and all the young people of my generation that they drew out there was never about us; it was about the fabric of trust in that community that had been ripped apart decades before, which had never healed.
 
Broken
 
You see, I’ve learned just in the past couple of years that the founder of my old meditation group misused his power. He betrayed the trust that vulnerable people placed in him, using them to gratify himself and bolster his ego. And he was never held accountable for the harm he did. Instead, it was pretended away​ by people who could not face what it meant about their beloved teacher. This was what poisoned the well of trust in that community – betrayals that had been buried.

(Image: JerzyGórecki / Pixabay)

As can happen in any community disrupted by such relational trauma, not everyone stayed. Before my time, some people who came to terms with the truth left the group, because most people were either unable or unwilling to grapple with what had happened.
 
By the time I got involved with the community, the teacher had died, and there were newer people involved who had never been there for the original breaches of trust. Like me, they had no idea what had happened. New people learned by osmosis – through the social conditioning of others – how to fit in and survive there, in a community built on a shaky foundation of trust.
 
It takes courage to mend old relationships – or to build new ones – when trust has been damaged. It takes courage to face the hurt in the first place.
 
Grief
 
About two months ago, while I was in California, I made the decision to visit the ashram where I had had those confusing experiences that shook my capacity to trust. I felt that it could be healing for me to see the community through the eyes of my new understanding of what had happened long before my time there.
 
I gathered my courage before I reached out about visiting the meditation center. I knew that I could not control how others related to me. I wasn’t trying to mend my relationship with them; experience had suggested that they are unable or unwilling to deal with unsavory truths about their beloved teacher, much less acknowledge how later generations might be harmed by coercive dynamics there.
 
No, my goal was to honor the grief and pain of my younger self. Like so many who had gone there over half a century, I had been used and disillusioned by that community. Anyone whose trust has been betrayed – in whatever kind of relationship – deserves to have that pain recognized and cared for.
 
As I drove onto the ashram grounds for the first time in almost twenty years, I felt grounded in my own values and truth. The strength of other friends who had come and gone from the ashram, like me, was with me. And I needed it. Because returning to the site of ruptured relationships can make a person feel vulnerable all over again.
 
For me, going back was cathartic of my pain and grief. And it was affirming of how much I have healed over the past couple of decades, since I left there. Because after visiting the grounds, and visiting with a leader there, I left feeling in my whole self my own soundness of being.
 
I drove away, knowing in my bones that their distrust of me – and their failure to be worthy of the trust I offered them – those were never really about me. Rather, their failure to trust and failure to be trustworthy reflects that community’s unhealed relational trauma.
 
I am trustworthy, and there are many others who are worthy of my trust as well. Whatever you have been through, I suspect that you are trustworthy too. And I am certain that there are people out there who will live up to your trust.
 
I invite you to take a deep breath if that feels right to you.

(my photo, Waubonsie State Park, southwest Iowa)

Anywhere
 
I’m still a curious person, spiritually. I don’t know, though, if I’ll ever again be moved to check out another meditation group, or go on personal development retreats, or explore anything in the unregulated marketplace of spirituality that exists in our country. I have all I need within the tradition I serve.
 
Not that it has been entirely immune to the sort of dynamics I’ve been talking about. It hasn’t. No tradition is, as these are pitfalls of being human that can show up anywhere. But I do feel good about my chosen faith in this regard. Unitarian Universalists have been doing intentional work at a national level to nurture health in our communities, to delineate clear standards for behavior, to prevent breaches of trust, and when trust is betrayed, to hold people accountable and repair the harm. Healing takes a long time in communities. My sense is that my chosen people are on a constructive course.
 
My own experience of trust betrayed was in an alternative spiritual group. I recognize, though, that many people have been hurt in mainstream religious communities, like congregations. I have tremendous empathy for anyone who has experienced betrayal in a place that was especially supposed to be safe for them – or by a person who was especially supposed to be trustworthy, like a religious leader. And I witness how much courage it takes for such a person, after being hurt, individually or as part of a community, to set foot in a church again. Or to step into leadership in a community with this type of history.
 
So. We humans are relational beings. Trust is the foundation of our relationships. Sometimes our trust is betrayed, in individual relationships or in community. And when that happens, it can re-pattern our relationships away from trust, with far-reaching ripple effects in our lives, be it in how we respond to a helpful stranger on a train station, or to a new significant other, or to a new spiritual community or new religious leader.
 
Healing
 
The big question then is, how do we heal from damaged trust?  How do we re-weave this webbing that makes all relationships possible?
 
We can develop the conditions for recovery by finding or creating pockets of safety and care. That’s one step.
 
When I left the meditation community in 2006 and returned to the Midwest, I mostly returned to existing relationships that felt safe for me. Being with my UU church community, and with my old friends, in my familiar city – that provided the conditions for healing for me. And when I was stable again, I summoned the courage to try to find someone who could be my life partner.
 
Working with a professional can be very helpful in restoring our capacity to trust. The relationship between a patient and therapist can become the crucible in which the ability to trust is rebuilt. Perhaps this is why the quality of the relationship between a patient and therapist – the trust – is more important for the patient’s progress than the specific therapy philosophies and practices used by the therapist.
 
The hard slow work of rebuilding trust happens in daily life, too. Just as each strand of a braid is woven one cross-over at a time, to form something strong, in our day to day relationships, including those with new people, there is no substitute for repeatedly proving reliable and honest and operating in good faith.

And when a community has suffered tears to the warp and weft of trust that upholds it? What creates healing on a communal level? In the tradition I belong to, one of the central ways of nurturing relational health is by creating covenants of right relations. A covenant conveys what behaviors are appropriate, and what are not.
 
Living into those covenants together is an ongoing practice. We will inevitably make mistakes sometimes. Being in right relationship means continuing to come back into covenant, in good faith, when that happens. Putting those blocks back on when one has fallen. Otherwise, like a little tower of Jenga blocks, the whole thing can become shaky.
 
For a community that was harmed specifically by a leader, broken trust can also be repaired by carefully building a trusting relationship with a new leader. If the new leader proves to be reliable, to have healthy boundaries, to be collaborative and not misuse their power, a community may begin to mend the fabric of trust.
 
As happened in my relationship with my boyfriend, trust grew gradually, through the accumulation of shared experiences. It takes however long it takes. Some communities that are healing, like individuals, find support from people who are trained and skilled in healing relational trauma to be helpful.
 
Some communities are never going to heal because they will not face what happened. Sadly, my old meditation group is one of those. I wonder if, in the history of high control groups, a full-on cult has ever gone from traumatizing to healthy. Seems unlikely to me.
 
Weaving
 
On a personal level, what happened for me, after I left the meditation center, returned to my old friends and community, and started dating?  Well that boyfriend, he of the comforting hugs, was patient. He was sure about me. And, lucky for me, he let me take the time I needed to realize that I could, in fact, trust my instincts about him.
 
He let me take the time I needed to regain confidence in my own powers of judgment. William and I got married in 2009. We did start a family, too – our daughter is almost sixteen and our great joy.
 
I try to remember this personal experience, when I find myself in any kind of relationship with a person or community that finds it hard to trust. There’s always a reason for it. It may not really be about me. But it doesn’t come out of nowhere. And the only way to heal that disconnect, and rebuild confidence for healthy, mutually supportive relationships, is with patience and care.

(Image: RebeccasPictures / Pixabay)

​Dear reader, I wish you relationships of care and reciprocity that prove worthy of your trust. Day in and day out, may each of us be mindful to weave the strands of trust in our families and friendships, in our communities, and in the wider world. May we act in good faith one to another. And may we be rewarded with relationships that support us, that help us to grow and flourish. So may it be.
 
Contemplation
 
I invite you to recall a time in your life when you have been party to a loss of trust. Perhaps trust was broken in a big, life-changing way. Perhaps it was some small neglect or thoughtless choice that frayed the fabric of trust. You might have been in error, or perhaps someone else hurt you. Trust might have been diminished in a family relationship, a friendship, a workplace, or a community of care like a congregation. Take few moments to pause and reflect on your own experience of trust betrayed – and perhaps any courageous steps that were taken to restore trust.

You might choose to pause for silent reflection, journaling, or conversation with a trusted friend.

 
Rebuilding depleted trust takes patience, care and intentionality. Like a braid that has come undone, unraveled trust is re-woven one action at a time, one strand-over-strand weaving at time.

Ritual
 
If you'd like to do a bit of ritual on these themes, gather together three pipe cleaners, three strands of yarn or something similar. For yarn, my suggestion is to gather three strands together, at one end, and tie the ends to each other, or to a paperclip. For pipe cleaners you can simply crimp them together on one end. Then you can braid from there, crossing the left yarn or pipe over the middle one, then the right one over the new middle one, then left again, and continuing like that to complete a braid.
 
When you are finished, you can wear the braid as a bracelet on your wrist. Or loop your braid through the hole in a zipper pull on any bag. The braid can serve as a reminder of the slow process of healing trust – and the progress you are already making.

Me, wearing as a bracelet the braid I made from autumn-colored pipe cleaners. It’s very soft.

Video Message
 
This piece is adapted from a sermon I delivered to the congregation I serve as ordained clergy. If you are interested in hearing this piece rather than simply reading, you can watch/listen below, or on YouTube here. The contemplation begins about 23:30 minutes in, the reading at 30:30, and the sermon around 33:25.

As background, I serve in the Unitarian Universalist tradition, a liberal religious denomination which is theologically diverse, small-d democratic, and centered in Love. It is about as far from high demand religion as you can get. Still, trigger warning for those who have experienced harm in churchy settings — the sanctuary does *look* very churchy, in an austere New England sort of way (minus the crosses).
 
I am not trying to convert you, to my tradition or to any form of organized religion. Unitarian Universalism is the right place for me — and I am delighted when others find themselves at home there too — but I do not believe there is one right way or one correct community for everyone. For people who have had high demand experiences, it is especially important to discern for yourself what meets you where you are, and what helps you grow. You do you!

Etcetera

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Seeking Safely … The Accidental Buddhist ... The Structure of a High Control Group 

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