Pistanthrophobia

I can't trust people. It's just not possible, I'm not very old, only in my teens, and I can't trust anyone. I have 2 best friends, they don't even have my FULL trust. I told a guy something that he PROMISED to never break, then he broke if and stomped on it and threw it in the fire, then chucked the ashes into a volcano and blew the volcano up. I haven't trusted anyone since. My one friend, Jallee, asked out my crush for me. I told her I liked him, and she asked him out. Yes, I technically gave consent, but she didn't warn me. He said no. I have so many people pushing me... They want me to trust them but I can't. They think I don't like them, but I do, I just can't trust anyone. I'm afraid of losing the few friends I have, can someone help me explain to them that I care about them, just can't trust!

You say, "I can't trust people." I once saw a TV show many years ago, and the promo for the next week's show was a banker who said about 3 times in the short, 15 second promo, "If you can't trust your banker, who can you trust?" I was about 15 when I saw that. I didn't fully understand it. Only in the last few years do I get it. The answer to the question of "If you can't trust your banker who can you trust?" is, "You can't trust anybody." You picked that up many years before I did. There was a man and his wife who lived next door to us when we were kids. He used to say, "We hate people," meaning he and his wife. He was a very nice guy, but he must have been treated rough as a kid, is my guess, cause he was kind of sensitive, and others might have treated him rough about that. So, you are not alone. I'm in the middle of that right now. I had a neighbor who had it out for me and started a rumor about me. The new neighbors he told, soon had it out for me. They recruited another neighbor, who had it out for me. My next door neighbor, without hearing that rumor, gave me a pathologically hard time over another issue. I told one of the other bad neighbors about what my next door neighbor would do to me if he really wanted to get me. Within a week, the neighbor I told was doing that to me, for 4 years he did that to me. Unbelieveable. I was like you, I can't trust anybody. Well, I could tell myself, don't tell anybody anything. Also there was yet another neighbor who, was spying on me to one of the other neighbors who had it in for me. That is, he would ask me, "How are you and John getting along" trying to get information that he was relaying to this other rough neighbor. And the person who was spying, was basically a good guy. What did I do the next time I saw this guy who I finally figured out was spying on me? I didn't know what I was going to do myself. I treated him like a good person, I just didn't tell him any more information. Pretty soon, the trouble with most of the other neighbors went away, and now he wants to be friends with me. Well, I'm friendly to him, because I'm a friendly guy. I know what he's capable of, I know he has low scruples, but I'm a good guy, so I treat him well. I also know that I won over him and his friend. He's not a big threat, because I won the game, and I didn't act poorly, like he and his friend did. They never got me to get down there on their level. There is a saying, "Hold you friends close, and your enemies closer." In other words, be friendly with your enemies, so they won't have reason to attack. You don't have to overdo it, you don't have to trust them, but you also don't have to tell them any secrets. I've heard females being told how to treat someone they dislike: "Haul out the cordial." In other words, you don't have to butter them up, but you don't have to be overly nice to them, either. Just be cordially in the middle.

"Birds of a feather flock together". There are as many nice, positive people in the world as there are nasty (issue-ridden), negative types - be that permanently or just because of whatever stage the person's going through at the time you know them.....ones that you simply clash horribly with or just can't ever feel truly safe with versus ones you THINK you get on so famously with and can trust so much that you and they are bound to remain in each other's lives forever, yet don't (because one of you goes through a developmental change or growth spurt as then leaves the two of you suddenly out of synch). Or that do. As you journey through life (which is like a circuit-board path, able to flip you from one track to another as events trigger/shunt you, but all which lead eventually to the same final destination), you'll meet types that are surprisingly uncannily similar to you despite you're not (as far as you know) related (your genes can be, though), through being on the same mental wavelength or trapped in the same set of life-long circumstances, and with whom you'll instantly click and thereby find surprisingly easy to trust (and vice versa) and see that trust never dented or betrayed. Some friends are meant to be lifelong, some are meant just as mutual stepping stones to other, greater people or things, or to shake things up so that you get shunted sideways or choose yourself to move or change direction. Hindsight usually always clarifies whichever they were. What is not helpful to yourself is to view ALL people as if they're all basically the same. Because they're not. YES, we're similar in that we're all like equaliser boards featuring settings dials (think volume, treble, bass, etc., knobs with setting ranges 0-10) for myriad morals, qualities and personality traits (both overt and hidden), but the amount of variability in dial setting combinations is too numerous for everyone to be the same in ways that matter, not least in terms of how they tick and treat and wish to be treated back. But it does take time, investigation and experimentation either concerted or provided by events to attract and 'collect' or be collected by a whole social circle or quasi family of your nigh-on exact same feather (but with enough differences to make for frisson as adds spice and interest so that you're never bored). Plus, first - or simultaneously whilst 'on-the-job', you have to - deliberately yourself or courtesy of events and developments - slowly but surely get to know YOURSELF, to gain a good idea of not only "things" but what you do like as a personality type or couple of types and what you don't and what is downright anathema to you...and that takes time in which to sort through the human lucky dip, discarding or keeping, as you go along your path(s). The more unusual and special you are, the harder and longer the search might prove to be. But the compensation for that comes via the better quality. Or it certainly does if you always look for those with MORAL DIALS SETTINGS same or similar to your own, because although circumstances may change as then put an end to things supposedly in-common, morals DO NOT. Ever. They only flex a little, with a limit on that flexibility, to suit any given situation or phase-related state. People who bond because they share the same moral settings are those that tend to forever have that foundation in common, no matter WHAT buildings get constructed atop it or then torn down again and rebuilt in a different style. In other words, your CORES have to be similar or compatible/complimentary. School is notorious for the kind of malarchy you describe. Teens are trying to find out what and who they are or wish to be, meanwhile pushing, testing, experimenting all around themselves, including not just the people they come into daily contact with, but even themselves (using another person or group of people as an experiment aid or springboard) in order to establish where all the invisible barbed-wire-topped walls, tall fences, little picket fences, gates, and "keep off the grass" signs are located and, of those, which are impenetrable as opposed to those that can be moved, shifted, made a sneaky little access hole in, or downright trampled/set alight. Yet emotions can run so high (run riot!) that impulsivity can override their other urge to notice and heed those limits. Plus it's a time when people are literally terrified of finding themselves ostracised from every group or clique going, for being too different and not fitting in or being unacceptable in whatever ways both meaningful and petty, and so you do get a lot of social approval-seeking/back-stabbing and competitiveness going on ("so-and-so said X about you, she's not your real friend...but I am") as can result in others getting pushed out or downright victimised in the process. But it happens to everyone. They just don't all react to it in the same way (or show it at all). If you feel you can only roughly HALF-trust these people then that simply translates to you and they being roughly 50% similar. And your ability to just sense this is what holds you back a bit from being completely open and transparent with them, despite there comes a time when you feel the tenure itself poses as a pressure to finally start confiding in them. Keep moving and investigating and testing out people until that percentage starts to rise. Start with LITTLE confidences - to see what the person does with them...Baby steps - rather than spilling your biggest, most personal secrets right off the bat. Wait...watch/listen...test-out... keep or promote or demote or completely discard. What YOU'VE maybe been doing is this: no confiding (testing)....no confiding....no confiding.... WHOOSH! - HAVE ALL OF IT/THE BIGGEST I'VE GOT IN ONE FELL SWOOP! You either forgot to put them through the tiny, run-up tests OR the person was capable of keeping minor confidences but couldn't resist trying to use the meatier/more sensational secret as newsworthy gossip material (with which to attract, or make themselves centre, of attention). At that point they're 9 times out of 10 not even THINKING about whether and how it'll affect you (the consequences); they're too keen to be accepted ...using someone else's juicy gossip as their club entry fee. It's all a bit like vying for seats (positions and roles in the pack) in a vast tournament hall featuring lots of individual matches of the game of Musical Chairs... something that never really stops after you leave the education system, but which does tend to dampen down considerably as you all mature and start to gain a healthier-sized 'collection' of like-mindeds (thus being more willing to let certain chairs go). So you mustn't think the rest of your life is going to continue in that same vein. It can't and won't. At some point you (and your peers) will get to learn not only the particular match(es) and match groupings you were always meant to be entered into, but the perfect seat with the perfect (or near-as-damnit) crowd. Your friend Jallee either [a] thought she was doing you a favour (because it's something SHE would find helpful if someone did it for her OR did once before and ended up BETTER LIKED FOR IT) or [b] felt you'd put her nose out of joint somehow and, instead of daring to tell you, wanted to seize that opportunity to equal the scoreboard a little in some befitting way. You'd have to ask HER what her reasons had been and why she thought it her right. Have you not done that yet? If your friends feel you never disclose anything personal about yourself, try telling them things you really don't mind getting spread around. That way, the risk of those things getting bandied about or the actual bandying about won't worry you because the TRULY self-revealing things are still safe with you... until such time, as I say, as you've got a better measure of how far they can be trusted.

People have to earn your respect and trust. This doesn't mean you have to be mean towards them or anything. Before you tell anybody anything.. think to yourself if somebody overhears you or that friend let's it slip to a friend they thought they could trust and that person sings it from the roof tops... with this information cause you a lot of stress if it got out?? If yes then keep your mouth shut and talk about the other person or the weather... If it would just be a minor upset use your judgment because if it does get out you know that person has loose lips

Trust is something that is hard - I struggle to trust people due to bad experience. I haven't figured out an answer to that yet. But trust is something that takes a very long time with people such as yourself and it needs to be the right kind of person for you to be able to trust them. When I was 17 I struggled to trust people, but its something that, in a friendship sense, has worked itself out over time. I don't have lots of friends, but I have enough of them that I truly trust to keep me busy, and I'm content with that. Just remember, you aren't obliged to trust anyone. Especially if they have done something in the past to damage it. Trust is to be earned and earned hard.