Perhaps the hair on the back of your neck stands straight up, perhaps a chill runs down your spine, or a knot forms in the pit of your stomach when someone says to you: “Trust me!”
There is a subtle, yet powerful difference between the phrases, “Trust me” and “You can trust me”. Can you perceive the difference? The key is the intuitive feeling invoked when this statement is spoken to you. When someone says to you, “trust me”, they are actually implicating, or calling into question, your character as they place the onus directly on you. YOU MUST trust and if you don’t then YOU are lacking, or there is something wrong with YOU. It is akin to them ‘guilting’ you into trusting them, and if you choose not to trust them, the implication is that it reflects poorly on you rather than on them. Having the onus placed squarely upon you, however, can make you feel uncomfortable rather than trusting.
On the other hand, if a person says, “You can trust me”, the onus shifts from you to them. The person is saying to you, not that YOU must show good character and trust THEM, but that they, themselves, are trustworthy.
See the difference? It is subtle yet very real. “You can trust me”, speaks to THEIR character rather than to yours. It implies that they are trustworthy and you are reassured rather than made to feel uncomfortable, perhaps even defensive. You are not put on the spot. It doesn’t make you squirm. “You can trust me” is all about the person making the statement rather than about the person receiving the statement. It calms and reassures in advertisements and it does the same in our day to day interactions with other people.
Now, having written all that, if a person has a bad track record in the trust department, it may very well be that, no matter what he or she says to you, your gut reaction may be quite the opposite of a trusting one.
D.
