Understanding Betrayal Trauma: Causes, Effects, and How Therapy Can Help
What is betrayal trauma?
Betrayal trauma is an extremely painful emotional experience that occurs when someone we trust greatly, such as a close friend, family member, partner, or even system or institution, violates that trust. This type of trauma resonates deeply and impacts one’s emotional wellbeing, relational foundation, and ability to trust in the relationship moving forward. Therapy can aid the betrayed person in understanding the impact and processing the experience and emotional aftermath.
What can betrayal trauma look like?
Betrayal trauma can stem from a number of different events, including:
Infidelity: a person may experience disruption of trust, self-worth, and sense of safety within the relationship when infidelity occurs.
Childhood abuse or neglect: children depend on caregivers for emotional attunement and attachment needs. Abuse or neglect can create a rupture to that attachment, though the child often must continue to depend on that caregiver to meet certain needs.
Institutional betrayal: A larger organization, such as religious institution, school, workplace, etc. may create harm for an individual or fail to shield an individual from experiencing harm.
Betrayal trauma may impact one’s attachment and can create attachment wounding. This can create barriers to current and/or future relationships, such as the betrayed person noticing “people-pleasing” parts, exiled abandonment parts, or shame core wounding. One may also notice a self-blaming part that shows up and may be trying to help the person make sense of the betrayal or feel a greater sense of control.
How might therapy help?
While healing and addressing betrayal trauma can be very difficult, therapy can serve as a safe place for the impacted person to process the betrayal, understand the emotions and internal experience, and develop curiosity around what parts are responding to the betrayal trauma. One can also begin to unpack how self-blame may be manifesting and increase access to self-compassion through exploration and curiosity. By doing this work in therapy, healing is possible and accessible.
Trauma Therapy Denver, Colorado
Betrayal trauma is an extremely painful emotional experience that occurs when someone we trust greatly violates that trust. Therapy can aid the betrayed person, our skilled therapists at Authentic Connections Therapy and Wellness can help you in understanding the impact and processing the experience and emotional aftermath. Follow the steps below to get started.
1. We encourage you to get to know a little bit about our therapists, their specializations, and their credentials. Get to know our therapists here.
2. If you think Trauma Therapy is for you, reach out to us! You can use our convenient online consultation scheduling here.
3. Begin the exciting journey of healing and addressing betrayal trauma.
We hope to hear from you soon!
