Ignoring your present distrust because you trusted before is as foolish as ignoring today’s thirst because you drank enough yesterday.
Some examples where this sort of thing comes up:
There’s a common confusion people make, which is to try to hang onto some previous trusted experience, in the face of new distrust.1 Or, to try to get someone else to do so.
This is failing to treat distrust as the sense organ that, in my view, it is. This is why I like the analogy with thirst. Now, trust is more like temperature perhaps than thirst, because you don’t need a steady input of new trust-water in order to maintain homeostasis. You just need the right conditions.
But the point is, whatever trust or distrust you have in the present is your system’s current best assessment of what’s going on, that you’re encountering and dealing with. You may have some memory of trusting this person or institution or group or whatever at some other time, but that memory affects you only exactly as much as it does. Theoretically what I’m talking about here could happen in the reverse direction, but it’s rarer.
I’d like to highlight a difference between two types of moves that someone can make, in relation to such a memory.
Move 1: attempted trust-laundering: A says to B, or B says to themself, “but remember that incident/moment/etc last week? see, I’m/it’s totally trustworthy!” This is an attempt to overwrite the present distrust with some trust from another time and situation. It sees the current distrust as an obstacle to something, and attempts to bludgeon it into submission with the old trust. If it seems to work, that’s likely to be because it results in an inner-coalitional coup, bringing to power some subsystem that trusts, which is suppressing the by ignoring the distrust.
One of the reasons I’ve seen this happen is that A really trusts themself in some way, and so the world makes a lot more sense to them when B also trusts them in that way. Thus, when they encounter B not trusting them, they think “B is in a state of confusion” and they try to fix that by bringing B back into the state of trust, openness, etc.
Move 2: non-naive trust integration-encouraging: A says to B, or B says to themself, “but remember that incident/moment/etc last week? how does this situation look in light of that? does that change things at all, to bring it into awareness? maybe not, but let’s consider.” This is an attempt to synthesize the present distrust with the trust from another time and situation. It recognizes that the present skin-in-the-game is where things ultimately ground out, and offers the old trust to that present skin-in-the-game, as a resource for it to use as its sees fit.
This requires adopting a kind of epistemically neutral/spacious stance, where you honor the person’s learning system and let it do its thing. It helps also to see the other person as containing multitudes, and to be allied with all of the subsystems and attempting to welcome all of them, rather than trying to elicit your preferred face.
Relatedly, I have on occasion invited someone to basically recompute their trust in me, after I said something. I don’t demand that the result come out different—well, I don’t even demand that they in fact do the recomputation. But it’s more a chance to just say “hey, does that affect things?” and to really find out what the answer is.
Non-naive trust is all about finding out, not about asserting.
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Malcolm » 20 Nov 2025 »
I asked an LLM (Claude Sonnet 4.5) for some examples, and it came up with some great vivid vignettes. I’m putting them in a comment rather than in the body of the post because at present I don’t quite like the idea of having a substantial fraction of my post be just pasted in from an LLM. I think it could use some smaller-scale or subtler examples, but I need to sleep.
Romantic relationships after a betrayal
Your partner cheated six months ago. Things have been “better” since – they’ve been attentive, apologetic, doing the work. But today they’re being evasive about where they were last night, and you feel that gut clench. The temptation (from them or from yourself) is to say “but look at how good these six months have been! Don’t throw that away by being paranoid now.” But that present distrust is *information* – maybe they’re just tired, maybe it’s a misunderstanding, or maybe something is actually off. The six months of good behavior is data too, but it shouldn’t be used to silence what you’re sensing right now.
Workplace situations with a previously reliable colleague
You’ve worked with someone for three years. They’ve always delivered, always been honest, been a solid teammate. Now they’re asking you to sign off on some numbers that look weird to you, and they’re being oddly dismissive when you ask questions. The move of “but we’ve worked together for three years! You know I’m trustworthy!” is trying to use historical trust to steamroll present distrust. The integrative move would be “I know we have a solid history – and I’m noticing you seem concerned about these numbers. What specifically looks off to you? Maybe there’s something I’m missing, or maybe there’s context I haven’t shared yet.”
Family members with addiction patterns
Your brother has been sober for 18 months. You’re genuinely proud of him. But today he’s asking to borrow money with a vague explanation, and something in his manner reminds you of the old patterns. He says “you’re treating me like I’m still using! Look at the last year and a half!” That’s trust-laundering – using the 18 months to override your current distrust. The non-naive approach would acknowledge both: “I know you’ve been doing really well, and I’m noticing something that’s making me hesitant right now. Can we talk about what’s going on?”
Organizational/institutional trust
You’ve banked with the same institution for 20 years, no problems. Suddenly there are unexplained fees, customer service is giving you the runaround, and something feels wrong. The bank representative says “we’ve served you faithfully for two decades!” That’s using historical trust to dismiss present distrust. But those 20 years don’t mean your current concern is invalid – it means you have 20 years of data *plus* this new concerning data point.
Therapeutic or coaching relationships
You’ve been working with a therapist who’s been incredibly helpful for two years. Then in one session they say something that feels really off – maybe dismissive of something important to you, or weirdly pushy about a direction you’re not ready for. If they respond to your discomfort with “but look at all the progress we’ve made together! Trust the process!” – that’s trust-laundering. A better response would be “I notice you’re hesitating. What’s coming up for you about what I just said?”
What these all have in common: someone (including possibly yourself) is trying to use past experience to argue against present felt-sense. The past experience is real and meaningful! But it’s being weaponized to suppress the learning system’s current assessment, rather than offered to it as additional context.
Have your say!