Post-Betrayal Syndrome

Can the wake of a betrayal show up in our lives years, even decades, later?

I’m still sore (and buzzing) from the workshop that I did on Wednesday with Taryn Toomey for The Class: It’s a 90-minute work-out where I talked people through the Sins/Powers in sets of two, and Taryn placed them in the body. It’s now available in the On-Demand library: You can use code EliseLoehnen for a free, two-week trial if you want to check it out.

Meanwhile, I’m still signing copies of On Our Best Behavior through Diesel—and if you haven’t already, please consider leaving an Amazon or Goodreads review, even if you bought your copy elsewhere. It’s very helpful. Thank you!

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Ed Ruscha, “Turbo Tears” (2020), $18,750, The Broad

If you live until you’re 40, there’s a good chance that you’ll experience betrayal—small, easy-to-shrug off moments with friends or co-workers or potentially the heartbreaking variety, the type that can linger for years. Therapist Debi Silber argues that the effects of betrayal can actually stick around for decades, creating self-fulfilling and deeply unwanted patterns in our relationships and wreaking havoc in our lives. She’s so convinced, in fact, that she’s focused her practice on the concept, and has an entire institute devoted to helping people understand the impact and heal—rather than harden. Naturally, she gave the TEDTalk on betrayal as well. Below, she takes us throught he implications along with the stages she’s outlined for recovery.

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Healing from Betrayal

ELISE: How do you define betrayal?

DEBI:

I define betrayal as the breaking of a spoken or unspoken rule. Every relationship has rules.

ELISE: How did you come to define betrayal—and this idea of post-betrayal syndrome—as a critical healing hurdle?

DEBI:

I had a painful betrayal from my family and thought I did all I needed to in order to heal. Then it happened again a few years later—this time, it was by my husband. That was the deal-breaker. I got him out of the house and looked at the two experiences, trying to figure out how I could change this repeat betrayal cycle. I couldn’t find anything that could help—there I was with four kids, six dogs, and a thriving business—and so I enrolled in a PhD program in Transpersonal Psychology. When it was time to do a study, I studied betrayal—what holds us back, what helps us heal, and what happens to us physically, mentally, and emotionally when the people closest to us lie, cheat, and deceive. I was really only hoping to find tools to heal myself. I had no idea that the study would lead to three discoveries.

1. Post Betrayal Transformation

Betrayal is a different type of crisis that needs a different protocol to heal. Originally, I was studying betrayal and post-traumatic growth—the opportunity to rebuild your life and see things differently after trauma. But I’d been through disease, death of a loved one, etc., and betrayal felt different. My study participants felt that way too. Because betrayal feels so intentional, we take it very personally—the self is shattered, with feelings of rejection, abandonment, belonging, confidence, worthiness, trust. So, the invitation is to create a new life and a new self. With that, I coined a new term: Post Betrayal Transformation, where you’re rebuilding a new life and self from the ground up after betrayal.

2. Post Betrayal Syndrome

There’s a collection of symptoms (physical/mental/emotional) so common to betrayal it’s known as Post Betrayal Syndrome. The stats are staggering, even though people assume that “time heals all wounds.” I have the proof that time doesn’t heal all wounds, even a new relationship won’t heal Post Betrayal Syndrome. The only thing that heals it is through deliberate and intentional action. People have issues (ex: 45% of everyone betrayed has a digestive issue, 47% a weight issue, 68% struggle with sleep, 62% are unable to concentrate, I could go on and on). They assume it’s from their daily experiences but these stats can be from a betrayal that happened decades ago.

3. There are Five Stages

There are five stages we go through if we fully heal from betrayal. This was the most exciting of the three discoveries because we also learned what happens physically, mentally, and emotionally in order to move from one stage to the next. Healing is entirely predictable. (Most people stop in Stage 3—transformation doesn’t even begin until Stage 4). There are so many reasons why we get stuck in Stage 3—most people assume that since time has passed, they’re healing. They’re not, they’ve just solidified more time in the most common stage to get stuck in.

ELISE: What are the five stages?

DEBI:

Here’s an excerpt (adapted) of the five stages from my book From Hardened to Healed:

STAGE ONE

This is the “set-up” stage. I saw this with every study participant, including myself. Imagine four legs of a table: physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual. We’re leaning heavily on the physical and mental legs, often neglecting the emotional and spiritual legs. It looks like we’re really good at “thinking and doing” (using our mind) and not really good at prioritizing the “feeling and being” (tuning into our heart). With only two legs strengthened, it’s easy to see how that table would topple over. And that’s what happens to us.

STAGE TWO

The breakdown of the body, mind, and worldview. This is the scariest of all of the stages. It’s the day you receive information which changes life as you’ve known it. There’s a psychological earthquake; your life is now compartmentalized into two camps: before and after it happened. It’s “D-Day” (Discovery Day). It’s a complete shock to the body, mind, and heart. Here’s what happens:

Physically, the shock ignites the stress response and you’re now headed for every single stress-related symptom, illness, condition, even disease. Mentally, you can’t wrap your mind around what you’ve just learned. The mind is in a complete state of chaos and overwhelm: None of this makes sense. Finally, your worldview is shattered. Your worldview is your mental model. It’s the rules you’d been living by: “Don’t trust this person,” “These are the rules,” “Do things this way.” In one earth shattering moment, everything you’ve known to be real and true is no longer. The bottom has bottomed out on you and a new bottom hasn’t been formed yet. It’s terrifying. In this stage, we’re scared, frantic, lost, confused, and desperate to feel better. We’ll grab onto anything or anyone who we feel can help us do that.

STAGE THREE

Survival instincts emerge, making this stage the hardest to leave. It’s the most practical stage where we ask questions like: “How will I survive this?” “Where do I go?” “Who can I trust?” Then, once we figure out how to survive, here’s what happens:

Because survival feels so much better than the shock and trauma that we just came from, we think: “Whew! We’re okay.” The problem is, we don’t know Stage Four and Stage Five are available to us or that they even exist, so we resign ourselves to thinking: “This is as good as it’s going to get, so I’d better get used to it.” (Transformation doesn’t even begin until Stage 4.) When that’s the belief, four things happen:

1. We start getting all kinds of “small-self benefits” from being in that space. We get to be right. We get someone to blame, we get our story, we get sympathy from others, we don’t have to do the hard work of learning to trust again, etc.

2. Because you’re here longer than you should be, the mind starts creating thoughts and beliefs that don’t serve you. You may start to question: “Maybe I’m not all that great, maybe it’s me, maybe…”

3. Because these are the thoughts we’re thinking, this is the energy we put out. Like energy attracts like energy so now we start calling situations, circumstances and even relationships toward us to confirm these limiting beliefs. If we’re feeling less than, unworthy, undeserving, unlovable, our energy attracts exactly what we feel. Our mind always wants to prove us right, so if that’s our belief, our mind will find confirming evidence to support our belief. This is when we typically join that lame support group where everyone just complains, where we surround ourselves with others that are stuck, etc. We also start having lots of physical symptoms and we start spending our time on “symptom relief” not realizing the unhealed betrayal is creating the symptoms. We feel awful or at best, we’re “fine.” We’ve grown used to our story. It feels easier to either keep the big wall up or settle for the familiar known…which is a setup for repeat betrayals.

4. If you weren’t stuck enough in Stage Three, this is the glue that keeps you there. Because you need to work, raise your kids, keep going on with your life, you’re miserable and don’t know how to manage things so right here we start using food, drugs, alcohol, TV, keeping busy, etc. We’re doing this to numb/avoid/distract ourselves from this painful place. You’re not happy in this stage, but we don’t know that there’s a Stage Four and Stage Five. We don’t know how to make those uncomfortable feelings go away. We dive into these “methods of mass distraction,” and while they may keep the feelings at bay, nothing is happening to move us through our discomfort. We’re simply trying to outrun it. So we do it for a day, month, year, ten years, even 20 years. I can see someone 20 years after their betrayal and ask: “That drinking/emotional eating/mindless scrolling…do you think that has anything to do with your betrayal?” They’d look at me like I’m crazy and say: “That happened 20 years ago!” All they did was put themselves in Stage 3 and stay there.

STAGE FOUR

Here’s where you recognize, accept, and acknowledge that your old normal no longer exists. We realize we can’t undo our betrayal, but we can control what you do with it. Just with that single decision, we turn down the stress response. We’re not healing those symptoms yet but at least we’ve stopped the massive damage that had been created in Stages 2 and Stage 3. Stage 4 feels like if you were to move to a new house/office/condo/apartment. It’s very forward moving but while Stage 3 was action oriented around your betrayal, Stage 4 is action oriented around what you’re now ready to try and become. What’s so interesting about Stage 4 is also this: If you were to move, you don’t take everything with you. You don’t take the things that don’t represent who you want to be into your new space. Here’s an interesting observation: When people move from Stage 3 to Stage 4, if their friends weren’t there for them, or if they’re ready for different types of relationships that are more aligned with who they’re now ready to become, this is the place where we outgrow those friendships (especially the ones still stuck in Stage 3). We think: “Is it me? I’ve had these friends for years?!” Yes it is, you’re undergoing a transformation and if they don’t rise, they don’t come along.

STAGE FIVE

This stage represents healing, rebirth, and a new worldview. Here, the body starts to heal. We’re prioritizing ourselves and our self-care. Our mind begins to heal as well. We’re making new rules and boundaries based on what we see so clearly now. By this stage, we’ve also formed a new worldview as we look back on all we’ve been through. We look at the road we’ve traveled and see how far we’ve come. We’re choosing to heal, and it feels great! Remember in Stage 1 where we were more focused on the mental and physical versus the emotional and spiritual? By this stage, we’re solidly grounded because we’re focused on all four of the table legs.

Stage 5 is where we see new levels of health, new businesses, new relationships (with someone new or with the person who hurt you). It’s an entirely new relationship because you’ve deliberately and intentionally created it. You didn’t “patch things up.” Instead, everything crashed and burned and you’ve built something entirely new. If more people truly understood what’s waiting for them in Stage 5, they’d never waste their time in Stage 3, but it’s the lack of information, along with the fear of change and the unknown that keeps most people stuck.

ELISE: Are all betrayals of similar heft, or are some more devastating? Or does it primarily depend on the emotional permeability of the person who feels betrayed?