”When we feel safe in our environment we also dare to feel trust towards other people. By being available, taking the time to explain things and answering questions, we hope to achieve this”
(The Church School in Sala, Sweden)
A look at K F Söderwalls “Dictionary for the Medieval Swedish Language” tells us that trust is the same as support, help and a person in whom “we confide”. In whom do you confide? One phenomenon that seems be slanted towards the male population and by which the author of this article also feels “infected” by is the big challenge in asking for help. If we have a hard time asking for, and further on receiving, support and help, can we then feel trust? Maybe a trust building day somewhere out in the woods or in a well-conditioned room should be about learning to ask for help and support.
Sometimes maybe we also are apted to believe in that voice that sits on our shoulders and tells us that ”there is nobody who is willing to take the time to help ME” or maybe just as much that ”there is nobody that would care much about receiving my help or my support”.
How about fear and trust? The father of the FIRO-theory that speaks of a groups development over time, Will Schutz, claimed, and still claims as far as I know, that fear is the one big emotion that slows down the maturing and development of a group. The most important task of a leader in this perspective becomes to create the possibilities for decreasing fears. To foster a belief that the good will return…
”Be silent. Have trust. Our being is creation. We are intimately connected with what wants to become and exist. Your deep despair is not empty anxiety, it has a tone of the agony in depths where there is only will..”
(From the collection of poems ”The Seven Deadly Sins” by Karin Boye)
Continued on Page 3 of Trust
