13 Signs of Trust Issues & How to Get Over Them

What Are Trust Issues?

Trust is the foundation of healthy relationships, built on the belief in others’ integrity and reliability. When trust is strong, you feel secure in your connections, allowing for openness and vulnerability. However, when that trust is broken—through betrayal, dishonesty, or repeated disappointment—it can lead to deep-seated skepticism and fear of being hurt again. This persistent difficulty in trusting others, often called trust issues, can negatively impact your mental health and strain personal and professional relationships.¹

Types of Trust Issues

Trust issues can appear in various types of relationships, often manifesting in unique ways depending on the dynamic. Personal relationships with friends, family members, and work colleagues can all be affected.

Here are common examples of how trust issues can show up in different relationships:

Romantic Relationships

Trust issues can cause you to have relationship anxiety and can keep you from going deeper in a relationship. It can also be a major issue if you’re checking your partner’s phone without asking or if you’re constantly checking up on them. Building trust in a relationship is key to counting on each other and maintaining longevity.

Friendships

In friendships, trust issues can show up as feelings of suspicion about your friends and their true intentions. You may worry that your friends are taking advantage of you, talking badly behind your back, or trying to undermine you in some way. Trust issues in friendships can lead to conflicts, misunderstandings, and hurt feelings that undermine the strength and closeness of a relationship.

Family Relationships

Trust issues can show up in families, particularly with family members who you have unresolved conflicts or bad past experiences with. Sometimes, trust issues with family persists for years after a major conflict and cause communication problems or even family estrangement. Most of the time, trust issues in families can be traced back to specific negative interactions or experiences in the past.

Workplace Relationships

Suspicion and mistrust develop easily in workplaces with poor leadership, a negative culture, or a highly competitive or cutthroat environment, but people with trust issues can experience them even in friendly and supportive work environments. Trust issues can show up at work as paranoia about being fired or getting in trouble or about coworkers trying to sabotage you or your work. The constant pressure of these fears can also accelerate symptoms of stress, anxiety, and burnout.

13 Signs of Trust Issues

Trust issues can cause you to feel suspicious, to doubt others, and even to isolate yourself. You might have volatile, unstable relationships, pick fights, or accuse others of dishonesty or betrayal. You also might spend a lot of time worrying, wondering, or even obsessing about what others are up to.

Here are 13 potential signs of trust issues:

1. You Focus on the Negative

People in trusting and healthy relationships are more likely to see the positives in each other, whereas people with trust issues are more likely to focus on the negatives. If you often find yourself assuming the worst and noticing people’s weaknesses rather than strengths, that could be a sign of trust issues.³

2. You Feel Like You Have to Do Everything

You have a hard time relying on others to follow through, so you do it all yourself. This leads to perfectionism, stress, and overwork. In the workplace, it can make it difficult for you to work as part of a team, because you don’t feel comfortable delegating or counting on others to do their part.⁴

3. You Are Suspicious of Friends & Family

You are always preparing yourself for the next betrayal, letdown, or ulterior motive. You don’t believe what people tell you. Your knee-jerk reaction is to assume that they are being dishonest or have broken your trust in some way.

4. You Avoid Intimacy

Intimacy requires vulnerability, and people with trust issues try to avoid feeling vulnerable at all costs. If you have trust issues or a fear of intimacy, you would rather be on your own than risk being hurt.

5. You Hold Grudges

Once someone has broken your trust or let you down, you never forget it. You are not likely to ever forgive or trust that person again.

6. You Pick Fights

When you have trust issues, you are hyper-aware of any little thing that could go wrong in a relationship. You don’t trust your partner, so you bring up issues from their past or find things that bother you and start a fight.

7. You Keep to Yourself

Sharing your inner world with others requires trust. When you have trust issues, you would rather keep things to yourself than risk trusting someone else with the details of your inner life.

8. You Avoid Commitment

You have trouble committing, because committed relationships require trust and vulnerability from everyone involved. When you don’t trust others, you avoid getting into situations that cause you to feel vulnerable, and you develop commitment issues.

9. You Spy on People or Check Their Phones

When you have trust issues, you are always looking for evidence to prove whether someone is being honest with you or not. Since you don’t believe them, you seek out evidence to either set your mind at ease or prove you right.

10. You’re a Loner

You prefer your own company to anyone else’s, because at least when you are by yourself no one else can let you down.

11. You Find Yourself in Relationships With Untrustworthy People

Frustratingly, having your trust broken can be a self-fulfilling prophecy. When you expect a certain thing to happen, in the case of having trust issues, being betrayed, your subconscious mind will seek out those situations.⁵

12. You Smother People You Care About

When people are in your inner circle, you protect them fiercely because you fear that they will leave you or that something bad will happen to you. This can result in smothering, hovering, or codependent behavior in your relationships.

13. You Have a Fear of Abandonment

You live in constant fear of being abandoned or rejected in all of your relationships. When you get a “please stop by my office” email from your boss, you are sure you are being fired. When you see photos of friends having fun, your first thought is that they left you out on purpose. In romantic relationships, you have constant fear of abandonment lurking under the surface that they are getting ready to break things off.

What Causes Trust Issues?

Possible origins of trust issues include low self-esteem, past betrayals, mental health disorders, adverse childhood experiences or traumatic events. Any time your sense of safety or security is threatened, it can cause trust issues to arise.

Trust issues may be caused by:⁶

• History of betrayal or abandonment: Most people who struggle with trust issues also have strong reasons why. Past experiences of being betrayed, hurt, or abandoned by others can cause people to become more guarded and suspicious of others, especially if these wounds remain unhealed.
• History of childhood trauma or abuse: Without a consistent, loving caregiver who attended to your needs in childhood, you don’t develop a trusting view of people or the world. These attachment wounds and childhood trauma can be long-lasting, causing trust issues that interfere with your life and relationships in adulthood.
•  Difficulty relating & connecting to people: Because trust is socially learned and practiced, some trust issues can arise from difficulties forming and maintaining close relationships. Without these close bonds, people cannot develop the social experience needed to know how to build and maintain trust with people.
• History of being bullied: Being bullied in childhood or adolescence can also lead to trust issues that persist into adulthood, since bullying can cause social alienation, social anxiety, and a mistrustful view of others.
•  Some mental health disorders: People with mental health disorders like depression, anxiety or PTSD may be more likely to develop trust issues because of negative thinking patterns, difficult emotions, and mood and behavioral changes that correspond with their symptoms.

Why Are Trust Issues Harmful?

Trust issues can affect many areas of your life, including your mental and emotional health and your professional and personal relationships. Trust issues can lead to relationship problems, loneliness, isolation, stress, burnout, and perfectionism. When you don’t trust others, it causes you to obsess about other people’s actions or feel like you have to do everything yourself. It can also lead to developing control issues and perfectionism.

Trust issues can negatively affect the following:²

• Work relationships and productivity
• Romantic relationships
• Friendships
• Relationships with family members
• Relationships with your children
• Your own mental health

Can Having Trust Issues Be a Sign of Mental Illness?

Many people can have issues with trust, but for some, it could indicate a significant mental health concern.⁶

Some psychological disorders that may cause trust issues include:

• Attachment disorders: Reactive attachment disorder (RAD) and disinhibited social engagement disorder (DSED) are linked to childhood trauma and neglect. As an adult, the person may struggle establishing trust, since there was so little as a child.
• Psychoses: Schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders may create a level of paranoia. With this suspicion in place, trusting people or institutions will be challenging.
• Personality disorders: Borderline personality, narcissistic personality, and antisocial personality disorders may center on a lack of trust in others, which affects relationships, employment, and educational success.

If trust issues stem from a mental health condition, addressing the disorder directly should help the trust issues.

How to Get Over Trust Issues

The good news is, you can learn how to overcome trust issues! The best way to start to get over trust issues is by allowing people to earn your trust. Trusting someone too quickly who you just met can backfire, as can doubting someone who has done nothing to cause you to not trust them. The key is to start to take safe emotional risks with people who have not harmed or betrayed you.

Here are some tips for how to deal with trust issues:

Take Safe Emotional Risks

Let yourself practice trusting in small, safe ways. Take someone at their word. Give them the benefit of the doubt.

Allow Yourself Time If Your Trust Was Broken

If your trust has been broken, it’s going to take some time without further betrayal for the person to earn it back. If someone is genuine in wanting to build trust again, they will respect this process.

Avoid the Temptation to Snoop or Spy

Snooping or spying can easily become an obsessive behavior that will only make your trust issues worse.

Take Your Time Getting to Know New People

Don’t jump into trusting people before you know them. Many people with trust issues tend to trust too quickly, keeping you stuck in the pattern.

Communicate With Your Partner

Be careful not to accuse or blame. Instead, communicate clearly how you are feeling and what you need. For example, “When you came home late, I felt worried and insecure. I need you to give me a call next time.”

Reflect on the Potential Roots of Your Trust Issues

Spend some time thinking, journaling, or talking to a friend about this pattern in your life and what is within your power to change.

Acknowledge Your Trust Issues

Acknowledging your trust issues is a necessary component to getting over it. Rather than blaming others or deflecting the issue, take responsibility for your situation. Acknowledging the issue does not mean that you have to accept or like it. It only means that you understand the presence of an issue, and you are willing to fight it.

Know the Relationships Between Trust & Control

Sometimes, as trust decreases, the need to control increases. Unfortunately, intense control only lowers trust. Check in with yourself to identify the interaction between trust and control in your relationships. By lowering your need to control, you could find yourself feeling more trusting and trusted.

Become Trustworthy Yourself

Many times, trust issues involve pointing the finger at others and being critical of their actions. Are you being trustworthy, though? Without being a trustworthy person yourself, you could find it challenging to trust others.

Realize That You Control Your Trust

You may spend time thinking about what the other person should do to build or maintain your trust. In reality, you control your trust issues. If you let your paranoia, doubt, and questioning soar, trust issues will increase. If you can manage these issues, you will find your trust improves, regardless of what the other people do.

How Therapy Can Help With Trust issues

When trust issues interfere with your relationships, impact your ability to function in life, or persist for long periods of time, talking to a licensed professional can help. Consulting an online therapist directory is a great way to find the right therapist who meets your needs, or you can use one of the many online therapy platforms like Betterhelp.

Individual therapy can help you process past betrayals, abuse, and trauma, heal from rejection and abandonment and improve your self-esteem. If you are experiencing any symptoms of possible disorders like depression, anxiety, or PTSD, talking to a licensed therapist is the first step toward relief.

When your trust issues are causing arguments or problems in your relationship with a significant other, or you have difficulty communicating about it, couples therapy could be a helpful option. If meeting a therapist in person is difficult, you and your partner can try online couples therapy like Regain.