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By chance, the Social Media Manager for LEAPS (the support group I Chair) noticed a call for individuals to take over the Twitter account for Talk and Support (https://twitter.com/TalkandsupportJ) and kindly nominated me for the role! When I was given the login details, I felt a true honour in that moment from the realisation that I was being hugely trusted – not only with the account’s reputation, but also trusted to produce content which will be of interest to their followers. And it got me thinking about trust in general, why it’s so important to me, and what it means in mental health…
The first instance which I feel massively affected my thoughts around trust, was the abuse I experienced from November 2006 to April 2007. Since CPS determined there wasn’t enough evidence to prosecute my abuser, I’m now unable to disclose his identity; but what I can say is that he was in a position of power and therefore was trusted by a number of people (including professionals). He was trusted to do the exact opposite of what he was doing to me – he was supposed to be helping, supporting, and caring for myself and others.
Instead, he took that trust and used it as an opportunity to hurt me because it instilled in him the belief – maybe even ‘knowledge’ because he was arrogant like that – that he’d get away with it. I mean, he frequently reminded me during the abuse that even if I did tell someone what he’d been doing to me, they wouldn’t believe it of him. They would never be able to even imagine the person they knew and trusted doing something so awful (massive understatement!).