On Earning Trust & Holding Space

I’ve had a long journey with ideas of earning trust and holding space. Which I think are strategies we employ to respond to conflict/unmet needs within ourselves and between each other.

Most of my life has been fixated on the nuts and bolts of “how to earn trust”, with the understanding that having the trust of others would help me get my needs met, through power or influence. Over time, I’ve realized that needing others to meet my needs 1) doesn’t actually reliably meet my needs, 2) perpetuates unhealthy relationship dynamics, and 3) other people clearly don’t like it. I’m starting to understand and embody radical self responsibility, in which both the fulfillment of my needs and the tension of sitting with them unmet ultimately falls on my own shoulders.

So while I’m working on fulfilling my own needs, I’ve discovered and “unlocked” holding space, as a way to earn trust, where trust is a raw ingredient of service and healing. To hold space requires embodying openheartedness and untangling the internal knots that both prevent me from meeting my own needs, as well as feeling genuine curiosity, appreciation, compassion, etc. towards others.

To the people that have been in my life, from the perspective of my gradually expanding awareness, I want to be clear and honest about acknowledging the ways in which I’ve weaponized our relationship, to apologize, and to renew my commitment to the endeavor of being a more authentic and loving friend.

My History with Earning Trust

Growing up at home, trust wasn’t even a salient concept — I talked about certain things with my family and didn’t talk about other ones.

In my teenage years at school, trust was about knowledge (to feed both curiosity and social power) through closeness and exerting peer pressure — e.g. repeatedly interrogating people about their crushes.

Over time I started to better understand some mechanics of building trust — building rapport, shared experience, finding commonalities and resonance, mutual disclosure, mutual drunken idiocy, mutually assured destruction, showing up in times of difficulty/need, etc. I also learned that people are more likely to respond vulnerably if I show it first.

At some point, I started to associate late night, meandering, open ended conversations as key settings for people dropping their guard and sharing less refined, more developed thoughts.

Therapy with my mom and doing case clinics in crews substantially transformed/advanced my understanding:

• Feelings are an important level at which we can really connect with one another, and connection breeds trust. Unfortunately, my background meant I never learned to connect to and share my feelings (relationship with my mom and dad, STEM/rationality orientation, high academic and professional achievement, East Asian culture, masculinity, individualization/atomization/modernity), so I have a lot of ground to make up.
• People feel more trust when they feel more understood. People feel more understood when you actually listen to them (rather than constantly formulate rebuttals, lmao @ my life). People feel like you’re listening and understanding when you mirror to them and show them that you understand
• Many people want/need a red carpet to be laid out to share their problems (credit to Jarred for phrasing)
• I feel more capacity to do all of these things when I better understand my counterparts, where they come from, why they are the way they are (similar to love and compassion, but instrumentalized)
• Commitment and repetition build trust
• People may feel less trust when they perceive that you’re trying to tell them what to do. Though, they might not if they, too, are only connected to logic/rationality land

Between coliving experiments (Camp, Mexico) and Authentic Relating, I learned ways to speed up the process of developing trust (weaving social fabric, as Rich puts it, though it seems like he’s iterating). Making plans, going on adventures, and trying new things together contribute substantially, as do obvious things like learning about each other (super well facilitated via the AR curiosity game). I’ll note activities oriented around presencing (noticing game, circling) in particular as being ones that can build a lot of trust via shared experimentation, understanding, and sitting with tension. In particular from houses, I learned that resolving conflicts substantially increases trust (no doubt related to my own and my perception of collective trauma around conflicts); letting them fester substantially deteriorates trust.

From traveling with my parents for a month and further phone conversations, I realized that having only emotionally intense conversations, without substantial levity, fun, enjoyment in balance decreases trust.

These are all lessons that I’ve surely intuited in various relationships, romantic or otherwise, but never took the time to pick apart, unpack, analyze, and understand. They just happened, trust formed (or broke), and we went on our merry way.

Throughout this time, I weaponized new understandings to more effectively change and influence people towards what I wanted, particularly the people I care about most. “Earning trust” feels euphemistic — the vibe was more about “extracting trust”. I overshared vulnerable things (“vulnerable things” — not so vulnerable if I’ve already shared it comfortably with dozens of people) to guilt/compel them to share reciprocally. When people lost their jobs or went through a breakup, I saw it as an opportunity to nudge them in my preferred direction. In presencing activities, I “chose” the active thought that was most interesting/most likely to take the interaction the way I wanted it to go. I had the intuitive fundamental assumption? insight? I would be most likely to be able to change people when I had their trust.

Obviously, people haven’t appreciated me doing all of this, at least when they noticed. In some situations maybe it was hard to notice; in some contexts this behavior was simply the norm, the water we swim in (e.g. most competitive contexts); in others, if it was identified, it was met by denial and gaslighting from me.

Holding Space

It’s only been at this residency that I’ve really sat with and been constantly exposed to the concept of holding space. I’ve realized it’s sort of what I’ve been attempting to do in all of my crews, in all of the vulnerable conversations I’ve had my whole life, etc.

To me, holding space is simply about offering genuine, agendaless love, compassion, and openness as an invitation, steeped in choice, consent, noncoercion, abundance, and partnership. In Internal Family Systems (IFS) terms (which we’ve used extensively here), it’s Self energy. Most notably for me, it’s not infused with ulterior motives for wanting to get information, for making myself feel better, for trying to push someone in a direction, a desperate or predatory energy as it has been most of my life. Here’s a more thorough exploration of what it means to hold space.

I’ve been kind of blown away by how impactful it is to share something shameful and be met with genuine acceptance and lack of judgment. Among other things, it really builds trust.

At this residency, people seem to trust based on one’s capacity to simply hold space from that place of pure open heartedness. I’m not so great at it, and peoples’ “bullshit-o-meters” seem quite sensitive and accurate, hence why few people have come to me to open up.

On more than one occasion, someone has noticed and directly asked about my ulterior motives and judgments and we had an entire (for me, embarrassing) discussion around it. They didn’t want my support if it came from my feelings of obligation, or in order to fulfill my own needs via them, or with conditions of owing a favor. They want to be supported by someone who genuinely and simply wants to support them. I have a lot of respect and appreciation for those conversations. Among other things, it’s shown me that openheartedness is the key ingredient in holding space.

The message from them is “I trust myself. I trust you insofar as you help me understand and trust myself”. The message an effective space holder conveys is the mirror image: “Trust yourself. Trust me insofar as I help you understand and trust yourself”. I’d like more and more to convey this message to all of the people around me, and particularly the ones I care about most, few of whom have ever received this message from me.

I’ll note that holding the space can be hard:

Embodying Openheartedness

As I’m writing this, it’s crystallizing that in order to embody pure openheartedness and hold space, I need to understand and come into relationship with all of the parts underlying my ulterior motives.

Status

One example is my inability to escape a relentless drive to pursue status, which I’ve so far investigated for 8 pages in a work in progress draft. Historically, I think the majority of the conversations I’ve ever had have been dominated by the “who’s cooler/smarter/whatever than who in this conversation” competitive dynamic. In this dynamic, the churning of my brain thinking of the next clever thing to say makes it impossible to hear the other person talking, let alone to access openheartedness.

I’ve explored a lot of factors and parts involved in this pursuit of status. But a major theme is that I’ve realized I have a deep seated, profound fear that if I don’t have status, if people don’t notice me and think highly of me, that my needs won’t get met or cared for.

Since becoming aware of it, I’ve tried to represent myself and my interior world more and more authentically, including naming thoughts that I’d typically feel too ashamed to voice, like “part of me wants to say/do X to look good”. Specifically, admitting the impulse to manipulate is pretty low status, yet people here still care about me and look after my needs, which starts to challenge/undo the original fear. It makes me feel “oh maybe I don’t need to manipulate people for them to still care about me”. I think receiving compassion and acceptance in response to those shares at this residency has been deeply healing in a way I wasn’t aware of until just now.

Commodification

Another example is that people have directly and indirectly called out my tendency to commodify people, which historically I’ve vehemently denied. After the fallout of leaving Maria off the guest list for a party at Elliott’s in 9th grade, I swore to not social climb and to prioritize my friends, which I think was a wonderful lesson to learn. However, this commitment also cast any actions to the contrary, including any with ulterior motives (e.g. desperate need for companionship) to the shadows. And I needed to deny any such accusations at all costs — “no, you specifically matter to me, despite any clues you observe to the contrary”. I’m convinced the denial has left an energetic elephant in the room for decades in all of my relationships, and prevented me from regarding others with true openheartedness.

One breakthrough here was a conversation with my friend Luke, in which I realized the ways in which I was trying to prioritize friends actually led to commodifying them.

Now, I can finally admit to my actions: I’ve commodified people simply because I needed them. I have regret and sadness for the disconnection I’ve caused, and shame for the lack of integrity I’ve embodied because of this. Yet I also finally have compassion for this part of myself. I was desperately afraid of being alone, for many reasons. I needed people and belonging, not “you” or “you” (except insofar as you contributed to my sense of belonging). But I’m healing my relationship to loneliness, by taking solo hitchhiking trips to Chile and writing and doing inner work and more. Hopefully over time I’ll shed this tendency, and in doing so, shed another block to loving and connecting with my friends and loved ones truly and deeply.

Others

There’s many more parts that can get in the way of feeling pure openheartedness (love, curiosity, compassion, appreciation) for others, too many to name here. But some notable ones of mine include:

• A part that deeply believes I will only receive if I give
• A part that believes that if I let rejection get to me I’ll be ruined
• A part that has a performative relationship to care
• A part that believes in objective good/bad/right/wrong, that protects a part that’s confused about “what am I doing here (in life)”
• A part that believes I’m too much for others
• A part that stone walls/dissociates when about to cry or have bigger emotions
• A strong inner critic
• My lack of touch with feelings
• My entire phenomenon around attaching to images of others

Overall, I think this is the intent/purpose of IFS/parts work: identifying our blocks to openheartedness. While I still harbor some skepticisms of IFS, I have found it genuinely and generally very useful with some key insights.

Reflecting on My Past

From my current vantage point, I don’t believe that I am or have been “evil”, though in the heat of my emotions, my inner critic certainly may tell me that. I hope others, particularly my loved ones, don’t think I am either. Throughout my life I believe I’ve genuinely cared for the people around me, or at least as genuine as was possible for me.

But I think it’s important to acknowledge the forces that have been at play in the shadows and how they’ve impacted my relationships, particularly ones where my counterparts have picked on the vibe “energetically” (e.g. the way you might be able to tell if someone is dripping with desperation). With the hope that I can learn and grow from the experiences.

This Jeff Foster poem came as a clear rebuke of my historical orientation: “It looks like your love but it feels like your violence.”

To anyone reading this, I hope I can empower you and create the trust/safety in our relationship for you to feel comfortable calling me out (compassionately) when you perceive me acting from non openheartedness, particularly/specifically when I’m trying to present myself as coming from there.

Conclusion

The value of earning trust has shifted over time for me, as I’ve worked on myself, from fulfilling my own needs to fulfilling the ones of the person I’m connecting with. At any given time, the less I desperately need something from you for my needs to be fulfilled, the more I can be of service, by holding space for whatever is there for you.

In practice, my relationship to building trust has evolved from tactical and strategic to embodiment. Most of my life, I thought it was about “what do I do to get people to trust me?” It’s only recently shifted towards “how do I be so that people feel the love and compassion they need to reveal/accept/heal themselves around me?” And turns out the answer seems to be “do a ton of inner work to bring all my internal knots around loving myself into awareness, compassion, and embodied resolution via repatterning, in that order”. Where the last one involves directing genuine compassion and love towards my hurt parts, and slowly experimenting with changing my behavior patterns around people I trust.

Radical self responsibility says that ultimate responsibility over my feelings are mine alone, and ultimate responsibility for yours are yours alone. So I have no moral imperative to hold space for others — if I did, that would itself be a need that I desperately need others to fulfill for me (meaning/purpose/integrity/etc.). But in practice, when I’m in an openhearted place, I simply want to, so why not? It’s a wonderful gift to help each other out, i.e. give each other the gift of receiving space. “We’re all just walking each other home”.

I notice myself still feeling the compulsion to change others, i.e. “help” (change) my existing friends to a place where they can hold space more effectively or fix their problems. And feeling guilty about that. I also notice myself feeling more drawn towards people who I perceive have the capacity to hold space for me.

If we’re capable of holding space in pairs, back and forth, fluidly, over time, we can call it relationship — deep, healing friendship, partnership, love.

If we’re capable of doing this amongst a group/network, back and forth, fluidly, over time, we can call it a community — providing deep healing and belonging, and building capacity to help more people heal.

We do this amongst the world and who knows? (maybe Visa does).