The Felt Sense of Trust: How Does Our Nervous System Experience Safety—and How Can We Cultivate It Within?

felt sense of trust

Life is, by and large, a process over which we have very little control or influence. We enter it with our first breath. Until our last, we move through it moment by moment, coming into contact with countless people, beings, and things—near and far. Our life becomes everything we touch, every experience we live, and the relationship we form with them.

There are a few core feelings that weave this web of relationships. The sense of trust is one of them—like a binding glue. In every relationship we build with whatever we touch, trust is at play. Through this feeling we relate, we feel safe, and we feel that we belong—to a group, a community, the world, to life itself.

Trust is almost like an organism: alive, organic, and changeable. Our life takes shape through our environment—people, animals, nature, governments, states, institutions—and the trust we build with them. We may be able to trust, we may lose it altogether, or we may never quite reach or experience it.

When we feel trust, we move closer to it; our capacity to bond is nourished and we form a sense of belonging. We open to learning, growth, and transformation.Our field of view and tolerance widen. In situations that might trigger doubt, we’re more inclined to weigh possibilities, listen to different perspectives, look from a wider frame, inquire with curiosity, and lean into compassion. We are patient.When our sense of trust is full, we’re willing to contribute to the relationship. We feel motivated to invest our effort, skills, energy, and time to enrich and grow it. Our creativity expands; we feel more spacious; our social connections flourish and our circles widen.

When trust is intact, our nervous system rests on a steady, regulated ground. We can slow down, take in our surroundings, and open our arms to life. Feeling safe makes us more able both to notice what supports our safety and to perceive potential threats. In the face of danger, we can prepare, protect, and support ourselves more easily. When something does happen, we can ask for help, receive support, and recover and rise more readily.

The Turkish Language Association defines trust as “the feeling of believing and attaching without fear, hesitation, or doubt; safety, reliance.”

Trust can be earned, offered, and developed. It can ebb and flow, change, and be lost entirely. Its energy moves in variable ways—sometimes flowing quickly or slowly as we gain it, often draining fast when we lose it, returning slowly when we try to regain it—or sometimes not returning at all.

When our sense of trust is wounded or lost, we know it unmistakably. We retract inward; we pull back our energy. We place distance in our relationships, close up like an oyster. Our understanding and tolerance diminish. We grow impatient and our perspective narrows. We’re more prone to eliminating possibilities and turning reasons into excuses. Curiosity gives way to skepticism and the doors of compassion swing shut. When we feel unsafe or have lost trust, we pull away, contract, tighten—and grow lonely.

Whether we show it or not, our motivation to keep the relationship going drops—or disappears entirely. Commitment, loyalty, belonging fade; we no longer see ourselves as part of that bond. We become stingy or reluctant with our abilities, effort, and time. In distrust we shrink, tighten, and experience fragmentation.

The passage from a secure bond to an insecure one is shaky, marked by back-and-forth swings. We feel hopeless, anxious, suspicious; the mind chatters incessantly, repeating the same obsessive, negative lines. We tend to hold someone or something responsible, seeing only the flaws and mistakes—and replaying them.We try to control everything, big and small, clinging to the sense of safety that control seems to offer.Our nervous system is either on constant alert—reactive, aggressive, attacking, or defensive—or it shuts down completely. We feel uneasy and exhausted; our energy reserves hit bottom.

Sometimes as our trust collapses, our life force sinks with it and we slip into the role of the relationship’s victim. We start to perceive life as either “for us” or “against us,” experiencing events only through a self-referential lens. We keep weighing our worth on a scale—tallying what’s been given to us versus what’s been taken away, our gains versus our losses.

The Dalai Lama says that “trust comes from within,” and that we can build it both inside and out only by caring for, valuing, and minding those beyond ourselves. In Buddhist psychology, trust forms the basis for the experience and deepening of spiritual growth.When we feel safe in life, what we take on can bloom—we find the opportunity to grow and to shine.

Even if we can’t live perfect, healthy trust in our relationships with the world outside, there are ways to cultivate it within.Trust can grow and deepen through repeated practices, effort, faith, experience, awareness, wisdom, and memory. Because of its dynamic energetic nature, it can open a path to feeling safe inside—even when the outer world and our relationships feel unsafe.

A few supports and pathways that help us sow and nurture the seeds of trust include:

• With awareness and observation, finding the beliefs and repetitive inner dialogues that feed our insecurity; staying with them and offering ourselves compassion.

• Creating new experiences that reinforce our sense of trust.

• Inviting into the present—and remembering—memories that strengthen our trust.

• Visiting places where we feel safe and at ease.

• Spending time with people you trust.

• Praying.

• Meditating.

• In hard times, when we notice ourselves closing or tightening, asking for help, receiving support—reaching for a friend’s hand or taking the hands extended to us. All of these feed and support our sense of trust and help restore our life force.

If trust means the capacity to surrender despite our vulnerability, then in the face of life’s unpredictability—the groundlessness of everything beyond our control—we can awaken our inner wisdom through the very effort we make to choose openness over closure.