I’m not certain there is anything more detrimental than doubt. Once it is part of the fabric of your thinking it seeps into everything and sullies all in the process. Doubt can be invasive and undermine your way of reacting and interacting. If you doubt, you rarely can look at the person/idea in the same way again – at least until the doubt is substantiated or eliminated. Doubt will occupy your thinking until you do resolve it.
Doubt is crippling and it can easily destroy – trust, belief – which in turn destroys other values. And it will touch everything even tangentially related to the main issue.When/if doubt is accompanied by betrayal then this double edged sword is devastating. While emotions are definitely affected by doubt so are thoughts. It is impossible to avoid doubt, the vagaries of life seem to cause doubt to arise, often unbidden and typically not desired.
The issue is what to do with doubt, how to handle it once it is in the forefront of your thoughts. I would suggest that the worst thing you can do with doubt is to try and ignore it. One: it will not go away, two: it will emerge in your words and actions, and three: you can’t deal with something you don’t acknowledge.
One of the first things you need to do is to determine the origin of your doubt. That is crucial for the resolution, because doubt can arise from inaccurate as well as substantiated information. The answer to how you ‘know’ for certain that the information is accurate and can be trusted is the beginning of understanding. Never lightly dismiss doubts because this can be your ‘inner voice’ warning of impending danger or it can be the voice of someone else which may or may not be trustworthy. Regardless, when doubt emerges – deal with it immediately.
