For a long time, I thought trust was something you either had or you lost.
If it was broken, it meant you had misjudged. If it was misplaced, it meant you had been naive. That was the story I absorbed without questioning it, shaped by a culture that treats trust as a liability rather than a human capacity.
What I have learned since is that trust does not exist in isolation.
It exists inside context.
There was a period in my life where I was carrying far more than I realised. I was functioning. I was competent. I was exceeding expectations. And beneath all of that, I was depleted in a way that had become normal to me.
When you live like that for long enough, exhaustion stops feeling urgent. It feels familiar.
In that state, what you respond to changes. You do not reach for excitement or fantasy. You reach for steadiness. For consistency. For the experience of being listened to without having to manage anyone else’s reaction.
That is what trust looked like to me then.
When the truth emerged, the pain that followed was not embarrassment. It was grief. Grief for how tired I had been. Grief for how long I had been strong without being supported. Grief for the way exhaustion had quietly lowered my capacity to assess risk without my awareness.
What surprised me most was how quickly shame tried to take over the narrative.
Shame tells you that you should have known better. That your intelligence failed you. That strength means immunity.
But shame collapses context.
It ignores fatigue. It ignores cumulative stress. It ignores how discernment depends on resourcing.
Trust given in the wrong moment does not mean discernment was absent. It means discernment was overworked.
That realisation changed everything for me.
Instead of questioning my character, I began to look at the conditions I had been living under. Instead of hardening myself, I focused on restoring what had been depleted. Rest. Support. Space to hear myself again without constant demand.
Slowly, something softened.
I noticed my instincts returning, not with force, but with clarity. I felt my internal signals become easier to hear. Not because I had become more guarded, but because I was no longer asking myself to carry everything alone.
Discernment is not sharp when we are exhausted.
It is quiet.
And when it is given the conditions it needs, it does not accuse. It informs.
If you have ever looked back on a moment and wondered how you missed what now feels obvious, I want you to ask yourself something gently.
Not what you failed to see.
But how tired you were when you were seeing it.
Trust does not make you foolish. Openness does not make you weak. And restoring discernment does not require suspicion.
It requires context, compassion, and time.
And when those are present, trust becomes something wiser rather than something smaller.
Copyright © 2026 Lynette Diehm.
All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced without written permission of the author.
