Daring to Trust
Opening Ourselves to Real Love and Intimacy
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- $18.99
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- $18.99
Publisher Description
The best-selling author of How to Be an Adult in Relationships explains how to build trust—the essential ingredient in successful relationships—in spite of fear or past betrayals
Most relationship problems are essentially trust issues, explains psychotherapist David Richo. Whether it’s fear of commitment, insecurity, jealousy, or a tendency to be controlling, the real obstacle is a fundamental lack of trust—both in ourselves and in our partner.
Daring to Trust explores the importance of trust throughout our emotional lives: how it develops in childhood and how it becomes an essential ingredient in healthy adult relationships. It offers key insights and practical exercises for exploring and addressing our trust issues in relationships. Topics include:
• How we learn early in life to trust others (or not to trust them)
• Why we fear trusting
• Developing greater trust in ourselves as the basis for trusting others
• How to know if someone is trustworthy
• Naïve trust vs. healthy, adult trust
• What to do when trust is broken
Ultimately, Richo explains, we must develop trust in four directions: toward ourselves, toward others, toward life as it is, and toward a higher power or spiritual path. These four types of trust are not only the basis of healthy relationships, they are also the foundation of emotional well-being and freedom from fear.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
"Trust is not a feeling. It begins as a belief about the other," explains Richo (When the Past Is Present), a longtime therapist and author who transforms his kindly advice into an easy-to-understand "bible" of trust. The author introduces the concept of the "Five A's" he deems pivotal to trust in any adult relationship: Attention, Acceptance, Appreciation, Affection, and Allowing. Especially helpful is a point-by-point checklist to aid readers in determining if someone can be trusted. While some guiding principals may seem self-evident ("Does not lie or have a secret life") others are more nuanced, such as "May operate on the basis of self-interest but never at my expense or at the expense of others." Filled with informative quizzes and fact-based assessments, the slim book offers a great deal of real-world advice governing adult relations, especially regarding modern romance in a shifting world. Richo's greatest ambition focuses on readers' ability to self-nurture, and he devotes the book's most enjoyable chapters to this subject. The take-away? The most important person to trust is yourself.
