I think the biggest problem is the way we’ve been brainwashed into not trusting ourselves. That takes a lot of time and “emotional work” to overcome.

You need to be able to trust your own instincts in order to be able tell who you can trust and who you can’t.

Me, I trust no one. Never have, never will.

Or to be more precise and less dramatic I should say I trust no one unreservedly. That dream of a child’s heart has been smashed by the circumstances of my life. That’s larger than the issue of the “helping professions” which violate instead, which was the original focus of the thread. In my case, childhood abuse, not institutional abuse, is what underlies this consciousness.

It took me a long time to be able to put full trust in my intuition. It took a long time to be able to accept that I was the person I could count on to stand up for me. It is that trust that gives me the strength to take risks here, to write of personal issues when I sense they strike a needed chord.

I’m grateful for this thread; building an environment of trust here is critical. I hope this kind of environment develops; we’ve tried to do this in the past, but it’s always been thwarted.

Dennis