any new messages are going directly to my trash folder

Are these from emails that are in your address book?

You could set up a filter (Three lines/Tools/Message Filters) so that every email address in your address book goes to a specific folder, not trash. That would be a work around but it doesn't solve the problem.

problem solved, when I used the message filter option I some how selected send all messages to trash instead of the individual message that I had chosen to filter. Thank you for your attempted assistance