There are literally thousands of blog posts, Facebook and Twitter comments from individuals claiming they can no longer trust their partners, their children, their parents or even friends.

Trust is the foundation of any relationship. Whether it be a business or intimate relationship, without trust, the whole structure of a personal connection simply falls apart. Even if you communicate with great skills, but the trust has been broken, you won't get anywhere. The person you're speaking with will simply see your attempts as insincere, and not hear anything you say until the trust has been repaired. But as the saying goes, trust take years to build, seconds to break, and forever to repair.

Before we discuss on how to repair trust, it is useful to understand how it gets broken in the first place. Specifically understand how things happened. Is there any external factors that comes into the picture to consider? Now that the trust is broken, what do you want from the person? A break in the friendship?

Everyone deserves a second chance, thus give the other party a chance to at least explain themselves. Think back to a time when someone broke the trust between, and you both knew it was the other party's fault. What did you want from them?

Majority of the people, most of the time, didn't want to hear any excuses and rationalizations. As their excuses babbled out, you probably became even more upset. Instead of giving you excuses, you probably wanted him to acknowledge how hurt or angry you felt, and to take responsibility for being at fault. If a person is upset, it's a good idea to acknowledge their pain, even if you don't know why they're feeling bad.

Sometimes, one might be too upset or angry to even listen to whatever you have to say. The best solution for this is to let them cool down and settle down before you proceed to explain yourself. This might take a few days, or even weeks. Avoid defending yourself, trying to immediately fix the situation, or turning away. Simply allow this person to feel his or her feelings. Such actions can go a long way in healing the hurt.

To acknowledge someone's hurt or angry feelings, you can ask them why they feel bad, and then compassionately listen. Since they're upset, they're likely to vent their feelings in an angry manner. Instead of defending yourself, your job is to see if you can gain a better understanding of what's going on. If there is anything about their story you don't understand, ask them to explain their feelings or story more fully. The more you understand what's going on, the easier it will be to mend the broken trust.

If, after listening to someone you still don't understand why they got so upset, you need to further explore their reasonings and feelings. If you have not done something obviously wrong, and yet a person is quite upset, he must have interpreted some behavior or event differently than you. Only when we know what's really going on in a person's head can we mend the hurts that pile up from misunderstandings. The more information we have, and the more accurate it is, the easier it is to repair the damage.

Once you know why someone is hurt, if it's due to a misunderstanding or miscommunication, you can explain yourself, saying that what you meant wasn't what the other party was thinking. By clarifying your intentions, the hurt can often be repaired before it hemorrhages into broken trust. If a person's upset isn't due to a misunderstanding, but rather due to a broken agreement, you need to take responsibility for what you did and apologize. This is not an easy thing to do, but because it's so rare, a sincere apology can go a long way towards repairing broken trust.

Once the misunderstandings have been cleared up, or appropriate apologies have been given, the last step is to let the person you've hurt know how much you care. When people feel hurt, what hurts is the thought they are being rejected in some way. The obvious antidote to the hurt is telling someone why the relationship is so important to you. As soon as someone is convinced that you really care, trust will be restored.

For little misunderstandings, or small errors, it doesn't take long to repair broken trust. If problems have gone unrepaired for a long time, it can be quite a task to convince someone that you really care. That's why it's always best to heal broken trust as soon as it has been broken.

Trust is like love, can't be smelled, touched, or tasted, and yet it has massive power. Although it is invisible to our eyes, it is evident in our hearts. You can't have successful relationships without trust. It is important to make consistent efforts to keep the trust between you and others growing strong. The moment you notice trust has been damaged in a relationship, work to repair it as soon as possible. Like a recent wound, broken trust can get infected and spread if the right aid is not quickly applied. Just as bones can grow stronger as they heal from being broken, so can trust grow stronger from being properly repaired.

Having experienced violations of trusts as a child, or violations of trust as an adult -- it's normal to experience difficulties trusting others. It's normal to experience difficulties trusting one self. It's even normal to feel an underlying sense of shame and not want to speak about these experiences to anyone. Communication is the key here. If both parties are unwilling to settle down to talk things out, the problem here will never be solved.

Think about it, if someone lets you down or betrays you, how do you learn to forgive? Can you possibly learn to trust them again? Why or why not? Everyone makes mistakes, one day you might broke a trust or two too, it's a human cycle and no one will miss it. Think of how you want the other party to understand you when your day comes. The way you want the other party to react when your time comes, is how you should react to others too.

-Signing off @ 2:54 PM-