Max Littman, LCSW
May 2, 2026
There is a way I can take people at their word that leaves me feeling vulnerable afterward.
Someone explains how the body works, offers a confident take on a therapy approach, shares an opinion about a political or cultural issue, or tells a story about a person, organization, or situation. The view may be clear, detailed, fluent, and persuasive enough to feel grounded in truth. Something in me takes in the information and treats face value as the place to begin. There is an unconscious assumption that what is being said is not only worth taking seriously, but that taking it seriously reinforces trust and connection.
There is a young part of me that seems to believe earnestness and default trust is how connection happens. Relational safety is a given for this young one. It is an underlying expectation.
From that place, being earnest is not a strategy so much as a social reality. The assumption is that sincerity will be met with sincerity, openness will be met with benevolence, and trust will reinforce the safety and connection that is already assumed to be between us.
That stance has not always been met kindly. I have been shamed for it.
Critical thinking, which so much of society treats as a marker of adulthood, maturity, education, and sophistication, does not always lead. It is not that I lack the capacity to evaluate, compare, question, or place a claim inside a larger field of context. Other parts of me can do that. They can be discerning, skeptical, precise, and careful.
But that is not always the earliest move, the default perspective.
The earliest moves are often listening and believing.
When I sense into the parts of me that operate this way, that often lead, they feel young. Earnest. Open. Permeable. Easily influenced. They seem to carry a basically secure expectation that others will meet them with integrity, dignity, attunement, and benevolence.
That expectation, some might call it a form of secure attachment, has a history to it.
I grew up in an environment where my world was, in many ways, designed for my benefit. I fit into a well-resourced, predominantly white, heterosexual community where there was a general sense of stability, even if much of it went unnamed. Many of the systems around me worked in ways that reinforced trust. Adults often appeared coherent enough. Institutions felt, from where I was rooted, basically dependable. The people I encountered seemed to move through the world with some continuity between what they said and what they did.
Even though I am gay, much of what became templated in my psyche and nervous system formed before puberty, before same-sex attraction came more consciously into view. That does not erase the ways heterosexuality organized the field around me. It does help me understand how some early parts came to expect coherence, stability, and good intent from the world.
My openness did not run into the same kinds of consequences it might have elsewhere or for someone else. It had room to develop without being fundamentally challenged.
My early environment did not ask much of those young parts in terms of discernment across difference. It did not require me to track power very closely, or question whose perspective was being centered, or notice what was missing from the version of reality being presented. The reality I inhabited made a certain kind of openness feel welcomed and safe. It was not until later that the limits of that openness became clearer, and that I began to understand there were other realities besides my own.
There is privilege in that. There is also something tender in it. There is vulnerability in that, and there is capacity too.
The children within me have also been shamed for it.
Externally and internally, judgments have gathered around them. Naive. Foolish. Stupid. Impressionable. Patsy. Gullible. Too trusting. Too easily persuaded. Gullibility, in particular, can be a particularly shaming word because it does not only name what happened. It can make the openness itself feel like evidence of defect.
When openness is remembered or interpreted mainly through moments of being misled, corrected, or humiliated, it becomes harder to recognize what that openness makes possible: a shared reality that connects two or more nervous systems safely.
Early adulthood added more complexity. During undergrad and the years that followed, I came into closer contact with people whose experiences of the world, whose realities were shaped by forces I had not needed to contend with directly. Realities shaped by race, power, marginalization, and structural inequity came more fully into view. I could feel the gap between what I had taken for granted and what others were navigating daily. Other realities became apparent.
In those contexts, my earnestness did not always land the way it had in the more homogenous, white, heterocentric contexts where it first took shape.
There were people who had learned, for good reason, to be more guarded and more attuned to inconsistency, harm, performance, power, and the ways systems and individuals can mislead or exploit. Over time, it became clearer how my younger, more innocent reality might read to them. It could come across as unaware, insufficiently attuned, too quick to trust, too ready to accept the surface of things.
Sometimes that was named directly by others. Other times it showed up in tone, distance, or a kind of firming up around me.
I do not think those responses were simply mean or unfair, although younger, more vulnerable parts of me, and younger angry, defensive parts, often felt them that way. Those responses carried information I needed. They helped me make better sense of the world and have more accurate, connective experiences with people whose lives had been shaped by realities very different from my own. They reflected things I had not yet learned to perceive. They interrupted a kind of innocence that was not innocent to others.
But there was also an impact in being on the receiving end of that.
Younger parts of me did not only learn that the world was more complicated than they had known. They also learned that their way of perceiving the world could be shamed. Their openness could be embarrassing. Their trust could be a sign of deficiency. Their belief that earnestness would be met with safety and connection was not only unreliable, but something others might judge.
The responses of people whose internal templates had been shaped by prejudice, structural inequity, and physical danger became internalized too. A part of me formed that could have similar responses and project a similar energy. I can feel it now at times, especially right after I notice I have taken something in quickly. There is a subtle tightening. A self-surveillance that turns on. A part begins reviewing the interaction, searching for what I missed.
There is also a harsh judgment that the earnest part needs to grow up, get smarter, stop being so gullible.
Still, the default of believing and trusting has not gone anywhere. It shows up all the time. A quick internal “that makes sense” before anything else organizes. Someone else’s explanation shapes how I see something, at least temporarily. A part still feels connection through that receptivity, that openness.
Sometimes I only notice it later, after I have stepped back and am no longer inside the moment itself.
As I track all of this internal movement, there is no agreement about what should happen about it. Some of me wants more distance from the start: skepticism earlier, firmer boundaries, slower intake. Other parts seem less concerned with guarding against being wrong and more interested in staying in contact with what is being offered, even if my perception of it changes later.
There are moments when all of it is present at once: the openness, the assessing that wonders whether the information and the person can be trusted, and the harsh inner judgment about having believed too quickly.
I keep thinking about the younger parts’ belief that earnestness is how connection happens, and how that belief does not feel cognitive so much as instinctual. It is easy for my judgmental side to treat that belief and instinctual move as outdated, embarrassing, or too vulnerable. They can point to all the evidence. They can show the moments of being mocked, misled, corrected, underestimated, or shamed. They can make a convincing case that earnestness and readiness to believe need to be squashed.
But I do not want the young parts in me to have to conclude that their way of loving people and viewing the world was stupid.
There may be something wise and powerful in meeting others at face value. Of being earnest and trusting. I have not often asked other people what it is like to be believed so readily, but I imagine it can feel validating. Someone tells a story and feels paid attention to. Someone explains their reality and feels received. Someone offers a version of events and does not immediately meet interrogation, correction, or suspicion. In moments of genuine connection, that kind of receptivity may help another person feel seen. It may give them the experience of having their reality held, even if only temporarily, even if it is incomplete, even if I later need more discernment around it.
And there may be other moments too. Moments when someone is stretching the truth, selling something, performing certainty, hiding from themselves, or pulling me into a reality that serves them more than it serves connection between us. Even then, I wonder if my willingness to stay with them gives something to a part of them. Maybe it offers relief. Maybe it offers power. Maybe it offers a fleeting sense of being joined. I cannot know. I only know that something young in me enters another person’s reality before I have a good grasp of my own.
For feedback and comments, I can be reached at max@maxlittman.com.
I provide consultation and therapy for therapists.
Purchase my new book IFS Therapy for Gay and Queer Men here.
