Understanding Relationships
RD 3 Relationships Of Repeated And Sustained Trust
RELATIONSHIP DYNAMIC 3 RD3.
Source: Nurturing Hope, Understanding Relationships, May 22 Final The Understanding Conflict Trust - Nurturing Hope - 3 Understanding Relationships.pdf, pages 21-23
RELATIONSHIP DYNAMIC 3 RD3. RELATIONSHIPS OF REPEATED AND SUSTAINED TRUST If we have been fortunate enough to have experienced even one relationship where another person looked out for us and modelled trust and freedom with us, this is to be valued. Openness to others grows with such an experience. Without being romantic about such relationships dominating every minute of every day, we re-state that, without some such moments, we do not grow and develop. Relationships of trust are essential to our human growth and development and to our well-being! In an open and trusting family or friendship structure such individual experiences are repeated and repeated. So, often without being conscious of it, such repeated experiences give those who experience them a bedrock of ease and freedom when they are with others. As each positive experience accumulates within us, we grow in ease and confidence. In such an atmosphere other more rivalrous or destructive relationships are set aside a little more, losing some of their ability to bring us back into any upsetting history associated with them. Relationships of repeated and sustained trust make new ways of living with different others more possible. In such experiences new understandings and capacities are formed. New ways to be open to a more diverse world, and be more creative in living together, are experienced together. Such ways are strong experiences that contrast with the ways of escalating and sustained rivalry. In such repeated and sustained relationships of trust different people are inter-connected. Such ways build new and lasting models of people from different experiences and backgrounds being together and working together. In such ways people nurture hope beyond distrust and enmity. The diagram above illustrates how repeating this experience builds resilience and possibilities for us and others.
INVITATION
If you feel able to, please make some notes or write a longer diary type entry about how you have benefitted from ‘relationships of repeated and sustained trust’, if at all.
REFLECT ON YOUR OWN
In the learning unit RD2, you were invited to identify and reflect on a relationship of mutual trust, safety, and respect; a relationship where you experienced freedom. You were also asked to reflect on how that relationship has continued to influence you. • Looking back, can you recall other open and trusting relationships where this experience was repeated? • In these sustaining and freeing relationships, what directions have become possible for you now? • Given the impact that repeated sustaining and freeing relationships have made in your life, what reasons would you give others to embed these types of relationships in their lives?
Find Your Voice
• How did such a sustained and freeing relationship make a difference to your life? • How did the initial freedom you experienced influence and multiply in your daily experience over time? • What other people, structures or groups made this possible? • How did it become part of your being, if at all?
Explore Your Reason
• Can you point to events and times where sustaining this freedom to trust others was important for you and others? • In what ways has that experience made a difference to your life? • Can you identify any difficult relationships that you were able to negotiate better because of these experiences of sustained trust?
Examine Your Choice
• Because of this sustained relationship, are you now able to make choices that would have been unthinkable earlier? • Because of your experience, would you encourage other people to be more open to the possibilities of positive changes in life? • What choices have you made now that, in some manner, are linked to these earlier relationships being sustained over time?
COLLABORATIVE ACTIVITY
Working with your group or with another person: • Please share your experiences about the significance of sustained trusting relationships with others in your life, if you can identify some. • What difference has this relationship made to your quality of life? • If you are unable to identify these in the past, can you identify current relationships where such a pattern might be developed and sustained?
Summary
When experiences of being able to be open and trusting with another person are sustained, we become more resilient people, more at ease than before. When we belong to groups of people who share such trust and openness, many more people can be impacted. In a world where many of us are wary of taking a risk to build new relationships, such a group culture can support us in doing so, knowing we are supported and not alone!