A betrayal is deeply painful and traumatizing because someone you least expected hurt you. The emotions that you experience after a betrayal is the “trauma”. The trauma usually causes us to become distrustful, paranoid, fearful, and overly cautious to prevent pain.
What are betrayal trauma triggers?
Betrayal trauma triggers happen when you’re reminded of the betrayal due to a similar situation, feeling, memory, a person’s behavior, conversations, a scene from a television show, and/or a dream. At the sight of the trigger, your body enters into a flight, fight, or freeze zone.
And without proper healing, the trauma will push you to deal with those emotions in an unhealthy, fearful, and harmful manner. To continue on your healing journey, it’s important to heal the underlying pain, so you can overcome the triggers.
Trauma and the resulting triggers can cause you to feel like you’re powerless and your voice doesn’t matter. Do you feel that bad things will happen to me despite you trying to prevent it? This usually caused by victim mentality.
After healing your fear of being powerless, it will cause your triggers to subside or stop. You’ll be stronger and able to use your voice to remove unhealthy people from your life life and avoid similar betrayal traumas.
How to Heal After Betrayal Trauma
Recovering after betrayal is HARD work. Here are steps to heal during the 5 Stages of Betrayal Trauma!
1. Release false responsibility and forgive yourself.
You did the best you could and there is no need to continue torturing yourself with alternative situations and repetitive thoughts/questions.
2. Forgive the person that hurt you.
Remember, you’re not forgiving them because they deserve it. You’re forgiving because it’ll help you release the emotional baggage that they’ve inflicted on you. You deserve to be free of them emotionally.
3. Allow yourself time and space to grieve.
The process of healing is like an onion. An onion can have 8-16 layers. Similarly, your emotions are multi-layered and deeper than you can see. You may forgive the betrayer one day and then want revenge the next day. That’s okay. Your body can only heal one layer at a time because it’s too painful. You have to allow God to guide your body into unraveling the pain, one layer at time. Triggering and healing new layers does not mean you’re going backwards. It means you’ve graduated to another layer.
Explore affirmations and contemplative journaling as an avenue for healing as it will help you to release your feelings, rewire your brain, and become more aware of what’s going on within you.
Journal Prompts for Healing:
- Trauma-Informed Journaling Prompts
- Journal Prompts for Correcting The Story
- Journal Prompts for Getting Closure
- Emotional Healing Prompts for Toxic Relationships
- Prompts to Find Inner Power And Peace
- Journal Prompts to Find Your Authentic Self
4. Don’t develop walls.
Healing in the healthy way will help you avoid closing off your heart and becoming suspicious of everyone around you. Remain open and hopeful that trusting after a betrayal trauma is possible.
5. Get support.
It’s not kind to do this by yourself. Don’t be afraid to get a licensed counselor or seek empowerment coaching with me, so I can walk with you through healing!
5 Stages of Betrayal Trauma
- Shock: When you first discover the betrayal its horrifying and shocking.
- Denial: Many people find every logical pathway to make the situation less real and painful.
- Anger: You may at this point you maybe fighting off bitterness, vengeance, un-forgiveness, and a victim’s mentality.
- Grief: To truly grieve you must explore the situation, forgive all parties necessary, and relinquish yourself of self-hate.
- Healing: The betrayal ripped you apart, but you can now build yourself back into a more powerful version of yourself.
Read more: 5 Stages of Betrayal Trauma
How to get over betrayal in a relationship?
Dealing with feelings of betrayal is a hard process and you shouldn’t do it alone. To truly overcome the pain of the betrayal it is vital that you explore different people that can help you move through the stages of betrayal easily.
After experiencing betrayal trauma many people become defeated, depressed, lack a true passionate for life, and grow to be distrustful of ever having a beautiful relationships. Don’t let the painful situation convince you that there isn’t an amazing person waiting to meet you!
How do I cope with betrayal of a friend?
When a friend betrays you, it is painful because you thought highly of them. You allowed them access into the personal areas of your life. To cope with the betrayal of a friend it’s important to lean on a support system, seek therapy, and empowerment coaching to ensure that the pain doesn’t destroy you. Coaching and therapy is important to learn healthy strategies to ensure you avoid friends that are manipulative, deceitful, and inconsiderate of your feelings.
How to deal with betrayal in your family?
Dealing with the aftermath of betrayal by a family member can be one of the most painful experiences. It leaves so many of us wandering the depth and cause of the deceit. Either way, you are allowed to distance yourself from family members that are unhealthy.
Whatever the source of your pain, to heal it’s important to lean on a support system, seek therapy, and empowerment coaching to ensure that the pain doesn’t destroy you. Coaching and therapy is important to learn healthy strategies to ensure you avoid family members that are manipulative, deceitful, and inconsiderate of your feelings.
