I think handling confidence and trust come with time spent with a snake over an extended period of time as well, so that both you get to know the mannerisms of the snake and trust it as well as the snake gets comfortable with your mannerisms and movements and trusts you to not do them harm. We are after all about 500 times there mass. It would be the equivalent to a 90,000 pound alien picking me up, I would be a little unsure of the situation at first to say the least, I might even crap myself the way garters sometimes do, lol. This is just my oppinion and every snake and snake keeper is an individual, with a different set of variables and different learning curve and hense a different amount of time needed to get to the goal of the relative term "tame" or "handleable". Just keep working with and studying and learning about your snake. Some people say that you can't build a bond with a snake like you can a cat or dog, I believe they are wrong.