Terror To Triumph
Childhood trauma is a taboo subject in that it's deeply emotional for people to learn, talk, and comprehend it. However, healing, true healing, can't come from silence. This podcast digs in to the emotions and reveals the symptoms of what can lead to childhood trauma, AND the tell tell signs that can alert us that something is wrong with the youths in our homes, schools, churches, or wherever. Whether it's physical, mental, verbal, or sexual abuse, this podcast takes a brave head on approach to tackle the difficult subject matters while providing the audience a platform to vent, and reach out for help.
Terror To Triumph
Terror To Triumph Season 1 Episode 6: Steps to Rebuilding Trust - Practical Practices
What if rebuilding trust wasn’t a leap of faith, but a series of steady, practical steps you can see and measure? We take a clear-eyed look at when repair is worth the effort, when it’s safer to walk away, and how survivors of childhood abuse can protect their peace while giving change a real chance. No fluff, no vague platitudes—just grounded guidance, examples, and language you can use.
We break down the difference between remorse and deflection, why “I’m sorry you feel that way” harms repair, and the responsibilities on both sides of a rupture. You’ll learn a five-step framework for trust repair: naming the harm and its impact, listening without interruption, taking ownership with genuine remorse, setting non-negotiable boundaries with clear consequences, and tracking consistent follow-through over time. Along the way, we explore how trauma patterns can mistake chaos for safety, and how to replace survival habits with stable, healthy connection.
Support matters, so we talk about the power of therapy as a neutral mirror that calls out excuses and helps you see the real drivers beneath repeated conflict. We also share self-trust tools for survivors—body checks to gauge safety, journaling to spot red flags, and practical scripts for boundary-setting in relationships, friendships, and family systems that dismiss your feelings. Real scenarios bring the framework to life, from confidentiality breaches to verbal escalation and familial minimization.
If you’re deciding whether to repair or release, this conversation gives you both the map and the mile markers. Subscribe, share this with someone who needs steady support, and leave a review with one insight you’re taking into your next hard conversation. Your story could be the signpost someone else is waiting for.
www.youtube.com/@TERRORTOTRIUMPHLIVE
Welcome, welcome, welcome. Hello, everybody. This is Terror to Triumph. My name is Alfonso Pelt, and I'm here with Storm again. We welcome you to episode six Steps to Rebuilding Trust Practical Practices. This is our uh our third segment in a four-segment mini-series on trust. Storm, I'm thankful and grateful for you being here tonight. How are you doing tonight?
SPEAKER_00:I'm doing fine and I'm grateful to be back. Yes.
SPEAKER_02:I appreciate you. I appreciate you. For those of you new who are joining us, Terror the Triumph is a podcast about community. Community of survivors. Survivors of what you may ask? I'm glad you did. Survivors of childhood abuse. Those of us who have suffered childhood abuse and are trying to recover from it, don't know how to recover, don't know where to begin to recover. We are building that community to give a way for people to see what it takes and learn the ways we have built ourselves up after the trauma we have suffered. Learning that we have created these survival tactics that are really not conducive to our adult lives. So we are trying to learn how to cope with adult living, relationships, how to deal with coworkers and broken trust and a whole myriad of other things. This is a safe place for anyone to come and to get knowledge and to open up, hear stories about other survivors and how they overcame and the struggles that we go through, to know that you are not alone in this battle. There are others here who are with you, who are struggling with you, who want to win, and you deserve a life without fear, without feeling guilt for what happened. It's not your fault. And we are here to bring to you information, information on surviving, not just surviving, but thriving. How to claim your life back to be the person God always deemed you to be. So tonight, again, we are going to talk about trust in the third segment of the series of trust. In episode four, we talked about rebuilding trust with yourself. In episode five, we looked at how trust falters and how to recognize the cracks. Things like inconsistency, broken promises, gaslighting, dismissal of your feelings, and boundary violations. Tonight we're taking the next step. How do you actually rebuild trust once it's been broken? We're going to talk about when it's worth rebuilding, what that process looks like in real life, and practical steps you could take, whether you're the one who was hurt or the one who did the hurting. Before we talk about how to rebuild trust, we need to talk about when it even makes sense to try. Not every relationship deserves a rebuild, but sometimes the healthiest and bravest thing you could do is walk away. Trust may be worth rebuilding when the harm was real, but not ongoing abuse. Like a person may have hurt you one time and they genuinely feel remorse and regret, and they do things to avoid having that happen again. When a person says, Oh man, I messed up. I'm so sorry. But they don't say, But why did you do this? That caused me to do, or this was your fault in the beginning, or it's not that serious. Okay, those are things of deflection and excuses. If a person does those things, might have some problems. But if they show genuine remorse and take responsibility for the hurt they caused, it might be worth rebuilding. If they're willing to do the consistent work over time and not just say sorry once, trust is usually not worth rebuilding when there is ongoing abuse, emotional, physical, sexual, financial, whatever the case it may be, when boundaries are repeatedly violated after being clearly stated, or when they blame you for their behavior, or they gaslight you. You feel less and less safe over time. I said this before, and I think it might have been episode three or four, the beginning of four, where I said, in my marriage, my wife would tell me you keep doing these things. I didn't know I was doing these things like intentionally. I wasn't, but I always seem to come back full circle, and we end up in another argument. I've done the same thing, may not be the exact same thing, but the same thing and the same pretenses in a different way. My wife was trying to explain to me how it was affecting her, how she felt. She made it clear. But in my head, I was deflecting. I was the one causing the hurt and not knowing because I felt uncomfortable, like this situation is too good to be true. And I reverted to some kind of trauma in my head from my own psychological and sexual abuse as a child, having these things happen to me, thinking like I have to cause some kind of rift in our relationship and our marriage because the feeling of security comes from the trauma that I used to live in. I feel like if there's no trauma, there's no sense of security. There's no one who really doesn't love me. And that is askewed. And of course, that's a result of our minds as children trying to go into survival mode into adulthood. We create these things in our minds to normalize what we've been going through, our our trauma. So rebuilding trust is not an obligation. You don't owe it to somebody to start rebuilding the trust that they've broken. It's a choice, and your safety and emotional and physical being should always come first. In any trust rupture, there are usually two roles. You have the person who was hurt and the person who did the hurting. Sometimes we've been in both roles in different relationships. For the person who was hurt, the victim, as you will, you are allowed to feel angry, to feel sad, to be confused. You are allowed to ask questions, to set boundaries. You're allowed to take time. As the victim, you are not responsible for fixing the other person, moving faster than when you are ready, and pretending it didn't hurt. You're not responsible to do any of those. You heard the colloquialism said that you can't teach an old dog new tricks. Where the the error in that statement, excuse me, the error in the in that statement storm comes from the fact that we're taking it upon ourselves to try to change somebody. But that's not our position in the first place. We shouldn't be trying to change anybody in a relationship or not. It's not our job, it's not our responsibility, and that's not the stance that we should take. For the person who did the hurting, the perpetrator, as you will, it is your job to acknowledge the harm clearly. Like I did this and it hurt you. You know, take responsibility without blaming, without minimizing, or without flipping it. You're trying to reverse it and put it on the person you've harmed. You have to own it. And then be patient with the other person's timeline. You can't rush somebody's forgiveness. You can't say, I said I'm sorry, dang, what you gonna do? And I've heard people say that to people before. You cannot, it it every person is different, and the way they cope with her hurt is different. You have to be patient and allow them time to process the hurt, and process whether they choose to forgive you or not. You're the one that caused the harm. You're not the victim, they are. You cause that. So learn to be gracious enough and accept the fact that you cause the harm, and that that person deserves the time to say whether they want to continue in this relationship or not, whether they want to set a boundary because of this situation or not. It's not your call anymore. You have to give that person the right to choose what they're going to do at this point. Trust isn't rebuilt by just saying, trust me. I'm a change, trust me. I'm sorry, trust me, it's gonna be different. Trust me. It's rebuilt by living in a way that's trustworthy. That means taking the time, doing things consistently, and building up that trust. You always hear trust is earned, not given. That's true. It's earned. And it's earned by consistency. Storm, what do you think? What what what's important from the side of the person that's been hurt?
SPEAKER_00:It's for that person to, you know, when you're hurt, I feel like that person's supposed to be apologetic, you know, not like you say, not make excuses, you know, just be apologetic, say why, and we can move on. But when you keep making excuses, I did it because you did this, or I did it because you did that, then we can't get nowhere. So I feel that the person has to be, in order for the trust to be there, then that person needs to apologize for no excuses, but show you consistency that they can be trusted. Yes.
SPEAKER_02:True, true. Hey, have you ever experienced or seen someone actually show change over time after they've done something wrong?
SPEAKER_00:Yes, it's an associate. You know, I have seen them with, you know, it was a lot that went on in their relationship, but drew time and trust with each other and them going to seek. They went to counseling, and after going to counseling, they actually got through it and they're actually still together. They're making it through, and they're happy because they seek the help that they need it. They did they got the counseling and they got someone else involved to help them through it.
SPEAKER_02:You see, that that's the thing too. If if you're in a relationship and I'm gonna use I'm gonna use my example I put out there earlier. If you're in a in a relationship or a marriage, and you notice that you keep doing things the same things, maybe not exactly the same way, but you keep doing things and your partner keeps telling you something's wrong. They can't be lying all the time. I mean, at some point, just like I did, you have to say, uh something's wrong with me, and I don't know what it is. I I got to figure it out. I don't want to keep hurting you, you know, but I don't know why I do these things. So I have to seek professional help. And sometimes professional help may be the only thing that you really need. Sometimes you need somebody outside the box, outside of the relationship, to tell you, hey, you know, you suffered this, and now you're reacting to it, but these are the reasons why you're acting this way. If you don't know, you're never gonna figure it out on your own. You're just gonna ask questions and try to understand something you you really can't figure out. It's like you're gonna be spinning your wheels, a car stuck in the mud, spinning its wheels, is useless. You know, it's nothing but frustrating to those around it. So that's exactly going to be you. You have to find some professional counselor, therapist, professional. You have to seek professional help. Again, I tell people all the time this podcast is not meant to be a replacement for these things. This is just a doorway. I want people to have a doorway to start the conversation because I didn't have that when I was going through. When I wish to God there had been things like podcasts or groups like that, but they didn't have these things back in in my day, you know, when I was coming up. You know, there was no child abuse group or hotline or, you know, they had AA, you know, NA. I think they had just started years later after AA, but there was nothing like that for us back then. Now we have these things. And I built this platform specifically to help those of us who are still in that veil of fear, who don't want to speak out, or who may have tried to speak out once or twice, but they spoke to the wrong people. And because of that fear, they stuffed it all back down and went back into that veil of guilt and remorse, and they don't want to come out. This this podcast is meant for that reason. For you to actually have an opportunity to say, I want, I want to be free of this. I I want to I want a life, I want to live, and you can't live in fear all of your life. I mean, you could try to stuff it down and say it doesn't and say it doesn't exist, but it's it's there and it's gonna creep up on you, and it's gonna come out in in various ways, and those ways can hurt you, hurt others. So please, everybody, if you are in a need of assistance right now, look at the bottom of your screen. There will be numbers down there you can call for various reasons to seek the help that you need right now. Don't wait for a friend or or somebody else to say, Well, you know, do you need help? Because that might that might never come. People don't see the signs that we see, that we presume to have, that we do exude. They don't see these things, you know. So if you know you need help right now, please check the bottom of the screen on uh ticker tape and just wait for the numbers to come around, jot them down, and call them. There are people ready to help you right now, 24-7. These are national numbers, by the way, not local. So it can apply to anybody that needs help at the moment. Okay, continuing on. We're gonna go by a step-by-step rebuild process. Step one is naming exactly who broke the trust or what broke the trust, rather. Not you're a bad person. I mean, okay, take me and Storm, for example. Say me and Storm was in a relationship. I did something wrong. Instead of naming what broke the trust, she says I'm a bad person. That's not the right way to rebuild the trust. Step one is naming what I did that broke the trust. You have to be specific. You have to be clear, and you have to be clear of the impact that it caused. When you did XYZ, it broke my trust because of ABC. This gives both people, the person who hurt and the person who was hurt, a shared understanding of what actually happened. The person who hurt has to listen without interrupting. I know that may be a hard one for some of us because no one wants to be the bad person. No one wants to admit that they are the wrong party and something that has gone wrong. But in order to heal, we have to own up, we have to take accountability. So we have to stop and listen to our significant other without interrupting them, without trying to plead or or justify our side. We have to listen. Actively listen. That doesn't sit mean sit there and let them drone on without paying attention to what they're actually saying. That means actively listening, hearing what they say without interrupting them and taking accountability for what we've done. Okay? Because they reflect back what they heard. They say, I hear that when I did ABC, you felt XYZ. And it made you feel unsafe. No butts, no defending, no saying you're too sensitive. Validation doesn't mean you agree with every detail, it means you honor the other person's experience as it being real. You don't act like it doesn't exist, you don't act like they're faking it, you don't act like you minimize it, you take it as something as real as a person standing in front of you. Because that's what's happening. You're hurting the person who's standing in front of you. Now the person who did the hurting has to own their behavior. And inside, in their hurt, they have to express genuine remorse to not fake that. Because if you don't really care about the person you hurt, you might as well get out that relationship right now. Because you're not going to do anything but continue to hurt that person. If you don't care about how they're feeling and they're expressing the fact that you've hurt them in a grievous way, it could be emotionally, it could be physically, it could be sexually, it could be mentally. Whichever way you've hurt them. If you don't acknowledge that and accept it and truly feel sorry for that, you need to walk away. The person who hurt the other person, I'm talking you. You need to walk away. You have to avoid saying, I'm sorry you feel that way. I've heard a lot of people say that. When they get into an argument, I'm sorry if you feel that I've hurt you. You sorry that I I I feel hurt because you hurt me. How how does that make sense? You're sorry because I feel hurt that you hurt me. Make it make sense. No, you're not sorry. You're only sorry because I'm expressing myself to you that you hurt me. And to try to belittle the situation, you don't even acknowledge the hurt that you've caused. You're only acknowledging the fact that I'm expressing myself and you don't want to acknowledge it at all. Deflecting or transferring. Well, if you hadn't done this, then I wouldn't have. You can't deflect or transfer. You have to own it, take ownership, and deflecting only means you're not really trying to own it at all. You're putting blame on somebody else, and that is not theirs to take. The healthy thing to say is I chose to do ABC, and that hurt you in XYZ way. I'm sorry. And I take full responsibility for that.
SPEAKER_03:To the situation.
SPEAKER_02:You can't keep not owning the pain that you caused somebody. You can't keep deflecting because you don't want to be the bad guy when you are. You have to accept the fact you people mess up all the time. Doesn't make it right, but owning up to it is the right thing to do. Yes, that's how you heal. That's how you if especially in relationships, if you don't own up to it, there's never any healing. Hello, America. I hope you're listening to this. If you don't end up owning up to the wrongs that you've done, admitting them, and seeing how they hurt other people, and taking responsibility and continuing forward, doing actions that actually build the trust between you and the other person. I hope y'all are reading between the lines of what I'm saying.
SPEAKER_00:Yes.
SPEAKER_02:Because without that, there is no healing. Okay. I'm getting off my political soapbox. We're getting back to it. Uh excuse me. So together, the hurt person and the person who did who did the hurting, we define what needs to change. What boundaries are now in place, what's non-negotiable going forward. For an example, Storm could tell me, if you raise your voice, I will end this conversation. That means I got a choice. I could continue raising my voice, and Storm could walk out the door. That'd be not just the end of the conversation, but that might be the end of the relationship because I broke the boundary. Same way works the other way. What if I told Storm something personal? And I have this, and she shared my personal stuff. And I say, if you share my private information again, I will step back from this relationship. These are creating boundaries, healthy boundaries. And we have to have these sometimes, especially after hurt has become present in the relationship. We have to let each other know, hey, this cannot go on. I will not allow you to continue to hurt me. If you want this to work, this is a line right here. You can't cross it. So we have to let our significant significant other, we have to sit down and have this conversation, and we have to talk to them and let them know what this boundary is. And then because time, I mean, I'm sorry, not time, but trust is rebuilt over time, it's not done in one conversation. So once you establish these boundaries, you have to look for, I'm talking to the people who are the hurt who have been hurt, you have to look for consistent behavior, the respect for your boundaries, and the follow-through on commitments. So let's say I establish a boundary. I have to watch Storm and see if she's going to be consistent in not breaking those boundaries. Not only not breaking those boundaries, but she won't tiptoe around or close to them. She's not going to play with that. So she's respecting the boundaries as well as avoiding any conflict concerning the boundary. And the follow-through on the commitment, see, I'm not going to do that. That shows me from the consistent behavior that she's following through on the commitment. She's respecting the boundaries and she's honoring that. Okay. You can adjust your level of closeness as you observe. As the significant other starts to do the consistent behavior, respects the boundaries, and follow through on the commitments, you can become closer to them. It's okay to adjust. Remember, rebuilding is a slow walk. It's not a sprint. You can't rebuild trust in the night. That's not the way it works. People can say, okay, you can trust me now. Mm-mm. No, mama didn't raise no food. I'm not boo-boo the food. Sorry. Slow and steady wins the race when it comes to rebuilding trust. Hey, Storm, what step do you think people rush past the most?
SPEAKER_00:That it's the it's a step from the beginning. Like you can trust me, you know, and you know, they feel like if they do one right thing, that everything should be over. So they don't feel like that it should be consistently, and I everything needs to be consistently for it to be right.
SPEAKER_02:Hmm. True that, true that. How many times have we either heard somebody say, Oh, I'm sorry, I'm not gonna do that again? And I'm gonna try to do better. And they might do better for a little bit, but then they go right back to doing it. You know, I ain't gonna lie. I'm I was guilty party to that on the not the victim side, but the other side. The I was the accoster of the hurt. So I've been on that side, and I'd say, you know, I'm sorry, I'm not gonna do this again. And it might go on good for a minute, but then something happens, and I end up doing the same stuff again. That goes back to what we talked about earlier self-sabotage, but I didn't know I was doing that back then. But I what I did realize is that it was a repeating pattern. I didn't know how to stop it though. So have you ever tried to rebuild trust too fast, Nor?
SPEAKER_00:I never rebuild trust because I never gave no one a chance. I just, you know, I didn't want to rebuild. I just wanted to walk away, you know. And that was my that was my guilt, you know. I just wanted to close the door and walk off, you know, because it was one pattern that was like, I promise I won't do this again. I promise I won't call you out your name. I I promise if you just give me one more chance. And then it was like, no, I don't want to give you another chance. But the person showed me that I shouldn't have given him another chance because it was like bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, you know. So you get it. And I had to hang up the phone, you know, after that because you say that you want to call me out my name, but you just kind of like call me five B's and hung up the phone.
SPEAKER_02:See, that that is the boundary. You you set the boundary, but immediately they did not respect the boundary. So you did the right thing, you walked away. You you you gave them a chance so you can observe to see where they were going, and they didn't respect your boundary or you, and because of that, they lost a good woman, a relationship, and they probably are kicking themselves in the butt right now. Talking about some I was a butthole back then. I wish I didn't mess over her like that. You know, I I've I find myself saying that dang, she was a good woman. I I I treated her so bad, you know. But these are the things we kick ourselves in the butt for. We wish we hadn't done these things and we regret them later on. But these are steps to learning how to fix these things. So even while you're trying to build, I'm sorry, even though you're trying to rebuild trust with someone else, you still have to keep rebuilding trust with yourself. So this is like you're on two different fronts trying to rebuild trust, one with yourself and one with your significant other. The key points are to keep checking in with your body. If you watch episode five, we talked about some of these things. Episode four, we talked about some of these things. Keep checking in with your body. Do you feel safer over time or do you feel more anxious? You have to keep journaling, writing down what did I notice this week? How I felt around this person or that person. You know, don't override your own red flags just because you want it to work. Maybe I should repeat that one one more time. Don't override your own red flags simply because you want the relationship to work. You are allowed to change your mind because you can start rebuilding and later decide, eh? I don't think this is right for me. But when you have or see red flags, and you are even looking back in your journals, and you see the red flags that you've written, that those things mean something. And those those are not points to ignore. So you can't just blow by this stuff. That that's a moment to take a pause and really think about what's going on why your body is feeling this way around this person, or when they did what they did, or if you're feeling more safe or more anxious, you know, that could be telling you you need to get out, you need to leave that situation alone. It's toxic for you. So here's a good question. How do you stay honest with yourself in the middle of trying to give someone another chance? You got any idea for that, Storm? Yeah, I know that's right.
SPEAKER_00:Prayer, you know, no, on a serious note, prayer and you know, a good derby, you know, you have to see derpy. You just you you have to reach out and see derpy because that's the only way you're gonna stay honest in the middle of chaos. Because if you don't see derpy and you don't reach out to if you don't see derpy and you don't reach out to, you know, prayer or whatever, you're gonna wind up doing the same thing that that person's doing, and y'all gonna both be dishonest to each other.
SPEAKER_02:You know what? That's one thing about a therapist, they keep they keep it real. They call you on your BS, and they they they know you. Well, once they learn you, they know your your ins and outs. They know when you're trying to BS them or not, or when you're trying to be real or not. So when when you when you try to fake honesty with yourself in the middle of trying to give a person another chance, they're gonna let you know. They're gonna let you know. They're gonna be like, uh-uh. You you wouldn't have gone for this for for anybody else, but now you're going for this for this person. What's going on? They're gonna call you on it. Why why are you giving this person another chance? And you're not you're not even trying to stay honest about it. So, yeah, true. True. Another way I would think trying to stay honest with yourself is is, you know, well, honesty is like accountability for yourself. Now, how do you stay accountable to yourself? That's that journaling. When you journal, you have to look back, and your journal is really telling you how to be honest with yourself because your journal is about the actual things that's happening, your journal is about how your body feels, and if you're feeling anxious or if you're feeling safer in certain environments with certain people, and you have to look back at that at that journal and be like, well, you know, I I have to check myself because I said this, and if I'm gonna build trust with myself, I have to be real with my journal and reflect on what that means with this significant other, giving them another chance. So you you have to like balance both books, so to speak, to use an accounting term. You balance in one book with yourself and you balance in another book with another person, but they that person broke the trust in in the first place, and you're trying to rebuild the trust with yourself, so you're coming at it from different angles, so that can be confusing, and it it helps to have a therapist put you on a level playing field with your emotions so you can focus on what's important at the moment, focus on going forward with the right mindset instead of letting yourself get sidetracked by negative things in a relationship. Okay, excuse me, I'm I'm gonna give you some more scenarios. Okay, say a friend shares something with you in confidence. How would you walk through steps one through five? That that that is something we have to really think about. Okay, because step one, let's go back over them. Step one, you name what broke the trust. I told you something in confidence, and when you shared what I told to the work group, it broke my trust with you, and it made me feel that I can't trust you with anything else ever again. So when you are clear and specific, remember, you have to tell them exactly what happened, and you have to tell them exactly how it impacted you. That's step one. Remember, step two the person who you're talking to, the person who hurt you, has to listen without interrupting. They're supposed to reflect back. Like I hear you said that when I betrayed your trust because I told something that was confidential and I shouldn't have done that. And that's it made you feel like you couldn't trust me with anything anymore. And it made you feel unsafe, you know. You know, they when they acknowledge it, you know you can move forward. No butts, no defending, remember, no deflecting. So the step three to that would be the person who did the hurt, they have to own that behavior, they acknowledge the impact, and then they express genuine remorse. Not saying, remember, I'm sorry, I'm sorry you feel that I hurt you. Or I'm sorry you feel that way. Or if you hadn't done this, then I wouldn't have. You know, but if they do say, you know, I chose to tell your stuff because I thought I'd get a good laugh out of my co-workers. And I see that it hurts you in such a serious way. I'm sorry, and I take full responsibility for that, and that's the healthy thing to say. But even though saying the words doesn't mean much unless you see consistency behind the words. That when you draw the boundary, which is the next step, you you say, Hey, you cannot share any more of anything personal that I share with you to anybody else. Now you got a boundary. Okay, we'll we got the boundary. And so now the boundary is in place. What's non-negotiable going forward? Okay, if you share anything I tell you to anybody else, we're we're done. That's it. There's no more coming back from this. I cannot trust you after you betrayed me twice. You know, you give me once, shame on you. You give me twice, shame on me. Because I allowed you to do it. So if I'm gonna give you another chance, you cannot do this ever again. Okay, then it's step five. You have to be observant, watch. Are they exuding consistent behavior? Are they respecting that boundary that you set? Are they going out? Are they talking about your stuff still? Or are they really trying to follow through? Are they going around telling people, you know, I told you this because I thought it would make a laugh, but I hurt my significant other when I said that. I'm not gonna share any of her stuff no more. I'm not gonna share any of his stuff anymore. I'm sorry, I shouldn't ever have brought that to y'all in the first place. I was wrong. I mean, even going around to tell people, hey, I'm closing this door. You know, I respect my significant other to acknowledge I've hurt her, and I'm even going outside the box to make sure it's not gonna happen again. Don't ask me, you know, don't don't even go there, you know. We gonna keep this between us from now on.
SPEAKER_03:Okay, so after you you've done the five steps, even while you're rebuilding trust with yourself, and you've you've gone through a few examples trying to get this into your head.
SPEAKER_02:You can say okay, a parent or sibling dismisses your feelings. How would you set boundaries and decide how close you want to be? That's a personal one for me. That is a personal one for me. I've tried to tell family members about my situation. One family member in particular, I'm not gonna say their name, but one family member in particular witnessed the act of my sexual abuse and denies it to this day. And I couldn't even come to a point to set a boundary because even in our adulthood when I brought it up to them they did not remember. Now it could have been a suppressed memory they chose not to remember, or they just didn't want to acknowledge the situation. You know, whatever the case may be, it would have helped if if that sibling had said, Yes, I saw that, and I feared too, you know, that's why I didn't say anything. I I would have understood that, but because there was no acknowledgement of what happened, and even in our adult lives, there still is no acknowledgement. It pushes me away from them, and it pushes me away from them because if you saw it and you can't acknowledge what happened, how can I trust you? I mean, that's a bitter pill to swallow. I mean, I love them to death, but that's the that's the truth. How how can I trust you?
SPEAKER_03:I want to trust you, I love you, but you won't acknowledge my pain.
SPEAKER_02:You force me to acknowledge your pain, but you won't acknowledge mine. How is that fair? And then the boundary of trying to be close to somebody who doesn't acknowledge or want to acknowledge something that important to you, it it erodes. Everything is at a ten foot pole reach, you know, it's it's like barely a relationship, even though it's faintly there, it's tentative at best, because when people don't really acknowledge another person's feelings, her hurt, emotions, pain, what should have been a boundary. When they don't acknowledge these things, it's like a slap in the face. It's like uh what matters to me matters, what matters to you, eh, not as much. So when that happens, things become toxic real quick. So yeah, not being around and all that stuff causes whole other issues, but the boundary was already crossed by not acknowledging. So when happened, there's a distance, and that distance is comfortable for me. I hate that there's distance, but as long as there's no acknowledgement, I can't personally invest to be close, that close, and that that's healthy to my psyche. Hope that they will understand that, just like I hope that they will understand that I respect them and their boundaries and their hurt and their pain. Because I do, but there has to be a two-way street on that. Okay, we're gonna move on. I don't want to get too much involved in personal in personal effects, even though that is one of the reasons why this show is created, to open up a window into my life to share with you. You know, I I'm I'm the one saying that I'm going to be 100% transparent with you. Soon I hope we can get to a point where we can do a QA where people can watch the show and ask questions, and I'll be 100% forthcoming and whatever questions that you ask. But until we get to that point, we will keep disseminating information to you as we get it. So tonight we talked about real practical steps to rebuilding trust. Okay? When it's worth rebuilding, the roles of the hurt person and the person who hurt, a five-step process to walk through and how to keep trusting yourself in the middle of it. I'm gonna give you guys some homework. I want you guys to identify one relationship where trust has been strained. Ask yourself honestly is this relationship safe enough to even attempt rebuilding? If yes, write down this what broke the trust. Write down what you would need to feel safer. If no, write down what boundary do I need to put in place to protect myself. If you feel safe, we implore you to share your reflections with us. Your story might help someone else. You can reach us on Terror to Triumph on Buzzsprout.com or wherever you listen to this podcast on. Next week, we're going to be moving into the final part of the mini-series, which is episode seven, sustaining trust, long-term healing. Everybody take a deep breath. Yep, yep. That's that's what we're talking about. Healing. Where you can feel like I could take a break. Now, finally, it's there. You know, we want to get to that point, and that's the long-term healing I'm talking about. We're gonna talk about how to maintain trust once it's rebuilt, how to protect yourself without shutting down. What healthy long-term trust actually looks like for us survivors. Storm, you got any closing thoughts before we wrap up?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I'm gonna completion homework for next week, but I'm I'm on TikTok. I'm on TikTok live, and I'm on TikTok live, and I'll be on TikTok live, you know, every day. And I said my name is De Amanda on TikTok. So y'all come check me out. And I just discuss just soap and dangers, come into my live and just like, share, repost, tap the screen, and I talk about history, you know, just different items, you know, poetry, soft jazz, soft RB. So come check me out in TikTok. Yes, thank you.
SPEAKER_02:Thank you, Storm. We appreciate you. I just want you to remember you are not obligated to rebuild trust with everyone, but you are worthy of relationships where trust is real, consistent, and safe. I'm Afonso Pelt. This has been Storm. This is Terror to Triumph, and we'll see you next time. Have a good evening.
