Though you may not have had “trust” come to mind as the most important ingredient for a healthy and progressing relationship, it is absolutely critical. In this episode, Dr. Tim Thayne shares how trust can either smooth out rough edges or a lack of it will make everything hard.
Though you may not have had “trust” come to mind as the most important ingredient for a healthy and progressing relationship, it is absolutely critical. In this episode, Dr. Tim Thayne shares how trust can either smooth out rough edges or a lack of it will make everything hard.
The grease in a will is like trust in a relationship with it. Everything goes well and smooth and fast without it, it comes to a screeching halt.
Speaker 2:[inaudible]
Talmage:welcome to the not by chance podcast. I'm Talmage Tim, thanks son and podcast manager. Today, dr Tim Thane is going to be talking about trust. The title of this episode is restoring trust.
Dr. Tim Thayne:This morning my son came over to the house and he wanted to borrow the truck and the trailer. He's going to take some garbage to the dump today and I've got this chronic problem with one of the back wheels. It has a slow leak in it and so we decided to take it off and change and put the other tire on. And in the process of that I realized that the hub of this will had been smashed and it was pushing into sort of the gear section of where the, the hub of the wheel is. Well, I don't know if you know what is in there, if you've ever torn one of these apart, but there's an enclosed chamber right there that is really built to house the wheel bearings. And the grease that goes around that will so that it can smoothly glide for, you know, hundreds or thousands or hundreds of thousands of miles without any problem. Now, I wanted liken something's really important to relationships, to grease actually. Yeah. Grease you might say, how does that really apply? But every single manufacturing plant on the planet, if they didn't have grease, they would be in trouble. Uh, any kind of mechanical situation where you've got metal on metal with the potential for a lot of friction to happen, you've got to have a substance that brings that lubricant and holds that lubricant in place and doesn't just drip off like oil would. Well, that's what's going on inside the wheels. That's what's going on this side. Mechanical things. But the thing that I would liken to grease in a relationship is trust with trust, which is a wonderful thing in relationships. Amazing things can happen. Everything's easier. Communications easier give and take is easier. Um, new things facing transitions and challenges are easier without trust. It is just like a wheel without grease in the bearings. It may go for a little ways. It won't last long and actually will end up destroying the relationship. I mean, that's how fundamentally important trust is. And so I want to talk a little bit today about how critical trust is, but then get into some some things, some true, some principles on actually being able to build trust back again. You know, the good news is if we've lost trust with the loved one or someone's important to us, it can be regained. Now both people need to care enough about the relationship to give it, to have the patience to and the effort willing to put into rebuild that trust and restore it again. But the good news, it can be rebuilt. And I'm getting really excited about the idea of, of giving parents really practical tools and ideas and, and processes that will help them rebuild the trust with their team. Now let's think about this. What, what is really trust made up of? And, and by the way, Greece is made up of things like oil lubricant kind of substance, but it's also made up of, of thickeners. You know, a substance that gets it to stay in a certain spot. Not drip off. And so what, what were the elements of trust? You know, I would say there's really kinda two main areas that you've got to build in order to have trust. And one is competence. It's possible to like a person even trust their intentions and things like that, but not really have a lot of trust in their competence. You may feel that you're not in good hands because a, what if? What if they don't know what they're doing? Right? And, and so to have trust, you have to believe in someone's confident at the competence, their ability to deliver what they need to deliver. The other side is character. It really comes down to, you know, do they have the right intentions? Are they going to be honest? Are they going to make a promise and keep a promise? You know, all of those things really go into this lubricant that creates the perfect scenario for relationships to exist in. You know, in parent teen relationships. There's, if we graph that over time, the likelihood of us, you know, hitting both some highs and lows in the trust categories, very high. It'd be kind of like the stock market. There's some times where it really takes a dive and it can recover again. And so let's talk about a few of the steps that are necessary. You know, it might need to be that apparent starts the process. Lot of times teens are not going to be in a position where they're, maybe they've got enough confidence or the desire or understanding of how to build trust, uh, to, to actually be the one to initiate a restoring of trust. But they sure know what it feels like when it's there and when it's not. And I think they would even acknowledge how wonderful it is when there's high trust. So let's talk about the scenario where a parent is the one to initiate this. I think the first thing that might need to happen is the parent needs to start with themselves and say, you know, what have I done? Even though it seems like it's really the behavior of my team that's ruining the trust here. What is it that I've maybe been a part of that I can take full ownership and responsibility for? Now if your team sees you take that step, that's certainly an invitation to them to follow suit and be able to do that. At the very least, you can begin to maybe change your side of that equation at the, at the most it might invite the team to say, well, you know what, it's not all you. I have made some mistakes and my behavior hasn't been that great. So start with yourself and identify ways that maybe your behavior or your choices or your knowledge or your competence might not be quite where it needs to be for your son or daughter to really trust you. The second thing I would say is make a list with your co-parent about the things that are destroying trust in the relationship between the two of you and your teenager. You know, put it all out there on a piece of paper. Write down carefully what it is in clear language and transparent, straightforward talk that's not kind of beating around the Bush or anything else, but it's clear, but it's not personal. It's just matter of fact. Okay. And then from there you might go to your teen and say, you know, I really want to improve the trust between us and, and there's benefits to, to that happening for both of us. Let help them understand that the trust being either weakened or missing at the moment is kind of brought the relationship to a bit of a screeching halt, just like a wheel without grease in it would eventually, by the way, do you know what happens if you don't have that grease in the wheel? It will literally destroy all the components of that whole wheel housing and it will not turn, will not work. And that certainly is what happens sometimes as we get stuck in, in these situations with our teens. So explained to them the benefits of getting this rolling again. That if we can rebuild the trust, then some of the things I've been hesitant to give you either by way of privileges or opportunities or responsibilities, uh, that can be removed. Uh, the, maybe the, the unwillingness to, to provide resources or whatever it is, is because there's not the trust there. Find a good time to have this conversation and help them know that you want to restore it. You're going to do your part and you're going to help them understand what is that standing in the way of them being able to have your trust. It's really important, by the way, that you and the co-parent are on the same page right here. And so I would suggest that that earlier discussion where you're listing and outlining those things that are hurting trust is really a joint document, something the two of you have done together. So then we have the conversation, the teen are our teenager and we'll see how that goes, right? You might even say, Hey, don't respond or anything right now. Just take some time. Let us see. Sink in. Don't feel like you have to defend yourself. Uh, don't, you know, I'm, I'm just going to give you time to think it over and then let's get back together. And I'd like to hear your, your side of the story. You know, certainly I'd like you to take responsibility where you can, but if I'm wrong in some ways, let me know. So start there. Then when, when your teenager comes back in, hopefully you have set the stage for good listening. Really listen, really ask good questions, don't get defensive, you know, it's likely that they're probably not as far along the maturity continuum as you are hopefully and, and you're able to demonstrate how that looks to them. Maybe they can turn around then after being heard, um, to really maybe take some responsibility, help them understand what it looks like to see them take responsibility. What does, what does it look like when they're taking responsibility so that they can begin to do that. Now some of the things about trust-building is once you've come to an agreement, these expectations and, and maybe your team gets to a point where they make a commitment to you, help them understand that making a promise is certainly a great step to building trust. But it's the first step and it's not all it takes after that. It's about following through with that commitment. And if they need more understanding of how to follow through or maybe they need smaller steps, break it down and say, Hey, instead of promising this huge thing, why don't we start with little steps? And if you'll do these small things consistently over time, you'll find yourself being able to do the big thing you mentioned here. But let's start small. That's where my trust is going to begin. Just to see you consistently making those steps. The next piece is make sure you're tracking it because if you're not just, if you're winging, it's likely that the things that will show up are those moments in time where they lapse or they don't follow through or they don't keep their commitment to you. And those will just be blaring and easy to see. The things that are sometimes hard for us parents to see and to remember is uh, the time that they followed through and, and tracking those times. It's important also late teen, understand that this is a peer. This is a, I guess, uh, it's important to let your teen understand that this is not a onetime thing and then trust is restored. Trust really does require a track record, you know, a track record of follow through over a period of time. And depending on how significant the issue is, it's, it's harder to get the trust back and one thing could potentially derail the trust and start you back down at ground zero. So maybe help them understand what things carry a lot of weight, what things are not maybe as impactful and so they understand the most important things they can do to build your trust back. You know, this is something I honestly could go on and on about. This is such an exciting, uh, wonderful, powerful concept that if we could get and learn how to do in relationships, sky's the limit about those relationships. You know, when we think of one syllable words in relationships that are powerful, of course we all think of love, right? Love is amazing. It's, it's important. It's incredible. But I, I would put trust right on par with the importance of love because the lack of trust can destroy love. You know, you might say, no, I can love someone and not trust them. I agree that's possible. But I also think that if there's a big enough betrayal of trust, then love will cease to exist in that relationship. So it's a key area. Such so important. I guess I just make the invitation out there to all of us to think about the important relationships in our life and say, what can we do on our side and what can we do to invite that movement on the other side that we rebuild this trust and see what that relationship can do to powerful thing. Let's go ahead and harness it.
Talmage:We've really appreciated everybody that has been listening to this and pushing it out to their friends so that they can benefit as well. We really want to know exactly what you guys want to hear most about and so if there's anything that you've been curious about that you've been wanting to ask a professional in this field, feel free to go on any of the social media that we're on, on, not by chance or dr Tim thing and comment what you want to hear more about with this podcast. Once again, we're so grateful for you guys and remember to stay safe.
Speaker 2:[inaudible].