Dear Quirine:

I too attended Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). Within the therapy, in addition to the CBT exercises my therapist taught me emotional regulation skills (typical of Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, DBT) as well as Mindfulness. It is necessary to develop such skills so to endure anxiety without automatically reacting to it; necessary so to behave effectively.

You wrote that you doubt you can “find a person that would instill trust and patience in me”- those things cannot be instilled. Once you are inclined to distrust, you can no longer automatically trust others. But you shouldn’t really, automatically trust others because not everyone is trustworthy.

The solution is to take a lot of time and patiently, slowly, learn who the person is in front of you: does she keep her word? When she says she’ll do something, does she follow through?

Post anytime, if you’d like. Best to you!

anita