Basic Trust and Inherent Value

Innate qualities, most evident in infancy, that reflect our direct contact with the support, love, and intelligence of the universe.

When a human being is born, it generally spends a good portion of its time in Beingness, a relaxed state characterized by an implicit basic trust in the unfolding of life. When the baby is hungry or uncomfortable, he will begin to communicate his inner state to his caregivers via various non-verbal signals — wiggling the body, making facial expressions, and eventually crying out. These innate mechanisms of communication with the caregiver, which are part of the attachment system, motivate the parents to take care of the infant’s needs, thereby restoring the infant’s relaxation and implicit trust in reality.

The infant also has what might be called a “fear-based” system. Over the first year of life, infants are increasingly capable of experiencing fear and mobilizing patterns of response to protect them from harm. Perhaps more importantly, they also develop various psychological defense mechanisms to protect themselves from experiencing their bodily discomfort of fear and other unpleasant emotions. This is part of our ongoing capacity for self-regulation, but can end up creating some very undesirable consequences.

One can see these two basic states, trust and fear, as polar opposites. The state of basic trust, which employs the neural circuits related to the perception of safety, is one of relaxed openness, a state of high regulation, and has a wide variety of capacities available (depending on the age of the child) for an appropriate response to the situation at hand. The state of fear tends to have tension and contraction associated with it. The system is relatively unregulated during these times, with less access to capacities for re-regulation, and it requires the caregiver to restore physiologic and emotional balance to the infant’s system.

The infant who grows up in an environment where their needs are nearly always responded to tends to retain a greater degree of basic trust in their experiential field and tends to look upon the world as a place that is generally safe and where difficulties can be tolerated and worked out. Their being expresses an openness and an enjoyment of contact. As these infants develop a “felt sense” of who they are, they also tend to experience an implicit sense of value. At the unconscious level, it might go something like this: “When I really need something my mommy or daddy usually respond to help me. They also seem to enjoy me and being with me as I am. The universe cares for me. I must be inherently valuable.”

From a spiritual perspective, we all start out with implicit basic trust and inherent value. We understand, however unconscious, that True Nature wants us to be here, wants us to flourish, and is supporting us every step of the way. On the inside it is supporting us through various drives to get our needs met. On the outside, we have been placed in a certain environment and with particular caregivers who can help us retain contact with our Essence. This is the scenario if all goes well.

But as we know, it doesn’t always go well.

Many times the environment is not appropriately responsive, which tends to intensify the activity of our fear-based system. Grounded in emotional reactions stemming from our limbic system, in particular the amygdala, this system is designed to help us perceive threats quickly and promote reactions designed to get our needs met and re-regulate. Though this system may occasionally save lives, more often then not it tends to become a pattern of reaction to life that interferes with our otherwise innate emotional intelligence. Consistent and responsive caregivers can reduce the activity of the fear-based systems in their children, which reduce the hard wiring of fear and reaction that tends to build up over time with frequent mis-attunements.

As adults, we can find our way back to our innate basic trust and inherent value. Remember: It is our state of consciousness that matters most — for our parenting and our experience of life. The effect of re-contacting our basic trust and sense of inherent value has quite a profound impact on our nervous system and our mind, and leads to increases in our capacity for attunement, spaciousness, and Love.

Try: Take up a practice this week. Share your intention with a friend and commit to checking in with them at the end of the week for reflections on how it went and what it was like for you. Especially notice how it changes your relationships with your children and your partner.