Some of the most sacred times I’ve had as a mother have been at the hospital bedside of my son. During the long nights after surgeries and procedures he would experience so much fear and pain, but he could get through all of it as long as I was on a cot next to him, holding his hand, singing songs, and speaking love. That kind of intimate trust was built, day after day, appointment after appointment, through every meal I prepared, every act of attunement and validation, and every caregiving task.
We love the people we can trust to care for us. My son trusts me to care for him through every hardship life throws at him. And in return he rewards me with a love that has exploded my whole world open and put me back together better.
Acts of care, consistently, over time, build trust. And where trust exists, love can bloom. Through acts of care for yourself, you can build a deep and abiding self love. One that isn’t a slapped on coat of paint or instagram filter hiding the ugly feelings you’re suppressing, but a self love that is anchored in security in your body and trust in yourself.
Care Builds Trust is a principle of Body Loyalty explaining that self love is not accomplished by declaring it. You love people you can trust to care for you. Including yourself. Care leads to trust which leads to love.
Business leadership experts Frances X. Frei and Anne Morriss write about building trust in leadership: “In our experience, trust has three core drivers: authenticity, logic, and empathy. People tend to trust you when they believe they are interacting with the real you (authenticity), when they have faith in your judgment and competence (logic), and when they feel that you care about them (empathy).”
When you are being honest with yourself about your needs, make choices that will meet those needs, and have self compassion about those needs, you will develop a sense of trust in yourself.
I have often heard wellness predators talk about “keeping your word to yourself,” as they encourage their clients to ignore pain or to guilt them into buying more classes. But ignoring the feedback your body is giving you in order to complete some arbitrary goal you picked is never going to build trust. Listening to your body’s needs and meeting them often enough to feel safe – that’s what builds the trust.
Learning to trust yourself is necessary to build feelings of safety in your body, create a community of care, and nurture loving relationships. You build that trust through accepting and providing care.
If you were lucky enough to have a time in your life when you felt safe, it was because you had someone you could trust to take care of you. A parent or family member most likely. Children who grow up with stable attachments feel a sense of safety in the world and in themselves because they have the history of being taken care of.
It’s those same childhood sensory experiences people tend to reach for as adults when they need soothing. The food each person considers “comfort food” varies based on their culture and experiences, but it’s always food someone they loved prepared for them specially. It’s the same family rituals that demonstrated care. It’s chicken soup and grandma’s quilt. In growing up we have to learn how to be the person who creates those feelings of safety for our loved ones and for ourselves.
If you were unlucky and didn’t have someone who created safety for you, it’s never too late. You can be the person now that you needed then. Whether you are addressing your attachment needs or working on reconditioning your nervous system, it all takes being aware of your care needs. When your brain and body get used to their needs being met – because you are meeting them – that’s reconditioning.
As your body learns that it doesn’t need to work so hard to get its needs met, it starts giving you signals of safety where it used to send alarm bells. By meeting your care needs you are showing your body that it is safe, and it will reward you with a feeling of security.
We can’t care for ourselves alone. We need each other. At some point you will experience an incapacitation that requires you to lean on someone. Age, pregnancy, disease, accident, our bodies are not built to survive without a network of care.
In disability justice, we take care of each other. Disability ancestor Stacey Milburn, along with a wider network of activists in the Bay Area, created the concept of “Care Pods.” These are self-organized groups committed to providing each other the care support they need. Sometimes that means the person who can walk independently picks up the medications while the people with motor limitations make phone calls to insurance. Or it could mean one person helps with hygiene needs while the person being helped provides emotional support and a listening ear. There are so many ways to contribute to each other, and all those contributions are valuable.
Finding the people you can trust can be a challenge, but it is a skill you can develop. You can learn to screen for people who exhibit those trustworthy characteristics of authenticity, logic, and empathy. You can build reciprocal relationships of care. Offer care to the people around you, pay attention to the people who respond in kind, and move forward matching that energy.
When you are a trustworthy person, it’s a lot easier to connect with trustworthy people. Being a person who can be counted on brings you people you can count on.
Care also builds trust because the more you do it, the more you know how to do it. Caregiving is a skill, and these caregiving tasks have to be learned. Through building a community of care you aren’t just building yourself a safety net, you are practicing providing care. Caring for yourself gets easier as you care for others.
Just as the care provided in childhood can make someone feel safe and loved, the care we provide in our adult relationships make someone feel safe and loved.
In her book Frientimacy, author Shasta Nelson writes about how to build rewarding friendships. She says that the key ingredients are positivity, consistency, and vulnerability. William Rawlins, the Stocker Professor of Interpersonal Communication at Ohio University, similarly summarizes that friendship consists of “Somebody to talk to, someone to depend on, and someone to enjoy.”
Whether you are building a relationship with another person, or addressing the relationship you have with yourself, those qualities matter. Providing care support is how you can demonstrate it.
As I’ve been developing Body Loyalty, this formula has emerged. Loyalty + Time = Trust
Trust + Care = Love
To build a loving relationship, you start with loyalty and care. Then over time, it will create trust and love.
It is just silly to think that we can change things by just saying so. Talk is cheap. We can’t get to self love by saying we love ourselves, and we can’t build the supportive relationships we need by saying we’re going to.
To make actual, lasting, sustainable change in our lives, our behavior has to change. We have to show that we care about ourselves by caring for ourselves. We show that we care about the people in our lives, by showing them care. That care builds trust. Which is the fertile ground where love can bloom.