Trust: The Opposite of Fear

I have a little dog named Patches whom I love sincerely, as most parents of fur babies understand. He has been with me through multiple losses in my life, including the death of my mother, who co-parented him with me. Through all of it, Patches has always been my little Zen dog.

He has always been calm and independent.

As he has aged, however, he has lost his sight. He did not make a big deal out of it. He simply adapted.

He is less independent now. He relies on me when he gets stuck in a corner or needs help navigating stairs. Our walks are shorter, and we generally follow familiar routes. But otherwise, he continues to live his life much as he always has.

He still loves to go outside. He still wants to explore. He still likes to be off leash when it is safe, smelling his way around the neighborhood and investigating the world through all the senses he still has.

And then, the other day, something happened that stopped me.

Patches started running down the street.

Not cautiously.

He ran with abandon.

He cannot see where he is going. He cannot scan the road ahead or identify every obstacle. But he ran anyway—frolicking through the grass, changing directions, following whatever smell or sensation interested him.

Every so often, he came close enough to sniff my leg.

It seemed to be his way of checking:

Are you still there?

I was.

And off he went again.

Patches has not regained his sight. The world has not suddenly become predictable. There are still curbs and obstacles and places where he could get hurt.

What has changed is his relationship with uncertainty.

He trusts that I am beside him.

He does not need to see everything himself because he believes that if he gets into trouble, I will help him.

And because of that, he can run.

When Did We Begin Confusing Safety With Certainty?

Human beings seem to spend an extraordinary amount of energy trying to know what is going to happen.

What if this goes wrong?
What if that person does something unexpected?
What if I make the wrong decision?
What haven’t I anticipated?
What could happen next?

We try to create safety through prediction.

But prediction can never provide enough certainty because there is always another what if.

Perhaps trust offers a different kind of safety.

Trust does not mean believing that nothing bad will happen.

It does not mean abandoning judgment, preparation, boundaries, or common sense.

Trust may simply mean believing:

I will have resources.

I can ask for help.

I can recover from mistakes.

I can survive disappointment.

I do not have to prevent every possible bad outcome before I allow myself to live.

That is a very different form of security.

Trust in Ourselves

For much of life, we may think trust means trusting other people.

But perhaps one of the most important forms of trust is trust in ourselves.

Can I make a decision without knowing everything?

Can I recognize a problem when it actually appears rather than spending my life preparing for problems that may never arrive?

Can I change direction if I discover that I was wrong?

Can I tolerate uncertainty without immediately trying to eliminate it?

Can I say:

That may be one of the foundations of psychological freedom.

Trust Does Not Mean Being Naive

Trust is not the same thing as indiscriminate trust.

I would not allow Patches to wander blindly across a six-lane highway simply because he trusts me.

His freedom exists within a relationship of care, judgment, and protection.

Our own trust can operate the same way.

We can have boundaries. We can recognize genuine danger. We can protect ourselves when circumstances require it.

But there is a difference between responding to danger that actually exists and organizing an entire life around danger that might exist someday.

Fear has an important job.

It warns us. It prepares us. It protects us.

The Secure Base

There is another part of Patches’ behavior that I find particularly meaningful.

He checks for me.

He sniffs my leg.

Then he goes back to exploring.

He doesn’t remain pressed against my ankle for the entire walk.

In psychology, we sometimes talk about a secure base. When we know that a source of safety is available to us, we become more willing to explore.

Security does not necessarily make us more dependent.

Often, it makes us more adventurous.

We venture farther because we know we have somewhere safe to return.

For Patches, I am his secure base.

For human beings, that secure base may come from many places.

It may be another person. It may be family or community. It may be faith. It may be trust in God, the universe, or something larger than ourselves.

And eventually, perhaps, it can become something we carry inside:

I will not abandon myself simply because something becomes difficult.

Trusting Life

There is also a broader kind of trust that becomes more important as we grow older.

It is the recognition that much of life was never under our control in the first place.

We can influence life. We can prepare. We can make thoughtful decisions. We can participate fully.

But we cannot command outcomes.

At some point, the endless effort to anticipate everything becomes its own burden.

Perhaps trust begins when we become willing to say:

For someone with a spiritual worldview, that may mean trusting God or providence.

For someone else, it may mean trusting the larger flow of life.

It does not require believing that everything happens for a reason.

It may simply mean accepting that we are part of something larger than the particular moment we can currently see.

Like Patches, we may not be able to see very far ahead.

But perhaps we do not need to.

Learning to Run Again

One of the difficult things about prolonged stress is that vigilance can become a habit.

We learn to scan. Anticipate. Prepare. Protect.

And those abilities can be extraordinarily useful when we are navigating genuinely difficult circumstances.

But eventually there may come a time when vigilance has completed its assignment.

Sometimes we continue worrying because some part of us believes worrying is what has kept us safe.

If I stop anticipating problems, perhaps I will miss one.

If I stop preparing, perhaps something terrible will happen.

If I relax, perhaps I will lose control.

Trust develops differently.

Not by convincing ourselves that nothing bad could happen, but by discovering that we can tolerate not knowing.

We can practice with small things.

• Leave something undecided for a while.
• Take a day without planning every hour.
• Allow someone else to handle something we normally monitor.
• Make a choice because we like it rather than because we have optimized every possible outcome.
• Spend an afternoon doing something that accomplishes absolutely nothing.

And when the mind presents another frightening possibility, perhaps we do not need to argue with it.

Instead of saying:

That won’t happen.

We can say:

That is not denial.

That is self-trust.

The Opposite of Fear

Perhaps the goal is not to become fearless.

Fear is part of being human.

The goal may be to stop allowing hypothetical fear to govern our lives when there is no danger in the present moment.

To move from:

I must know where the road goes before I can run.

to:

I know enough to take the next few steps.

And eventually, perhaps:

Patches is not waiting to regain his sight before enjoying the rest of his life.

He is not comparing today’s walk with the walks he could take when he was younger.

He is not spending today’s walk worrying about the curb he might encounter tomorrow.

He smells the grass.

He checks that I am nearby.

And then he runs.

There is something extraordinarily wise about that.

Perhaps the opposite of fear is not certainty.

Perhaps the opposite of fear is freedom born of trust.

Not the belief that nothing bad will happen.