Feeling betrayed, bitter, resentful – like you cannot trust anybody in life.

This is something that a lot of people that i have worked with face.

While having conversations with a friend i realized and remembered something, when we live life afraid of being betrayed it’s often because something happened.

While you’re growing up, your father/mother/someone you trusted suddenly acted in a way that you couldn’t trust.

Whether that meant violence from a caregiver or abuse, being misled, feeling taken advantange of.

When we lose trust, we tell ourselves that the only way to be safe is by not giving ourselves 100% to anyone or anything – because if you don’t invest yourself fully into something then nobody can betray you.

If you’re not really comitted to your relationship – if the person does something that hurts you, it’s not gonna feel as painful as that original betrayal.

When you invest yourself in a half-assed mediocre way in a job, if you get fired or you lose you’re job, you’re not gonna feel so bad because you were not fully immersed, devoted, comitted to it.

Here’s what happens – people develop this way of coping with life because when they’re growing up, it works.

They need to be cautious of how much of their energy, time, attention and emotion they invest in: their parents, their friends.

Because they’re constantly being betrayed, misled.

What this does to an adult is that the adult, out of his fear of betrayal, cannot commit to anything 100%, he cannot trust anything or anybody 100%.

This means that he ends up betraying himself, it means that they are living lifes in a half-assed way, a way in which there’s always one foot in and one foot out (of fear and some worries).

The way out of this is realizing that in our fear of being betrayed, we betray ourselves.

Because a career cannot grow without full comittment, our relationships cannot grow without full devotion and no personal process can happen if there’s no trust.

If you feel afraid of being betrayed, i invite you to explore.

Were you betrayed as a child? Are you betraying yourself right now in the way you show up?