Betrayal Trauma: Why It Hurts the Worst

Betrayal comes in many different forms and the damage from each is often long-lasting. Breaking trust creates ripples that affect whole generations of people in the areas of culture, relationship, and communication. Future relationships can be undermined before they even begin when the foundations of trust become fractured. Individual recovery is not done alone in the case of betrayal trauma and if safe people cannot be found, recovery may not even be accomplished.

What Betrayal Looks Like

Betrayal trauma happens when a person or institution causes great harm to an individual or group of people, betraying the sacred nature of the original relationship. An example of this happened in my generation when various televangelists got caught in financial and sexual scandals. As representatives of institutional religion, they betrayed the trust of their viewers. As a result, Gen X’ers are typically distrustful of institutions as a whole.

But even more damaging is when justice is not meted out properly in the courts. The betrayal of a legal system, whether by unfair courts or perhaps institutional racism can also cause betrayal trauma. Each of the priests guilty of pedophilia in the Episcopalian and Roman Catholic tradition caused severe betrayal trauma in the children they harmed. As representatives of a religious institution, these men betrayed the sacred trust of their victims.

Lastly, individual betrayal can inflict terrible injury. The ways in which humans can betray each other are endless. When parents abuse children, when one spouse cheats on the other (I include pornography in this category), or when a loved one commits suicide or simply leaves without explanation, the damage they leave behind doesn’t fade with time. Sometimes the worst betrayals are by our best friends. Recovery must be sought out for healing to happen.

The Effects of Betrayal

The 7.0 earthquake last November traumatized me, but not nearly to the extent that my first husband traumatized me. Car accidents and sudden illnesses or injury can also cause trauma, but the emotional impact is slightly different. I never really trusted the earth or the cars or even my body to have my back. I love nature but I fully recognized that nature is indifferent to me. Likewise, other drivers and the myriad of viruses don’t really care either. It isn’t personal.

But when someone or something that is supposed to love and protect you become the enemy, the impact is emotional, physical, and spiritual. Betrayal messes with your mind. The mind cannot easily reconcile that love turned into hate. The first thing lost is innocence. That people are capable of evil is something everyone faces eventually. But when someone either deliberately betrays you out of a desire to harm you, as was the case with my first husband, or they are supremely indifferent to your well-being, the betrayal goes to the core. Betrayal destroys our belief in love.

It is not merely that one has an enemy, but that someone whom one loved and believed in, can commit horrific acts devastates. Not merely does it become very difficult to trust others but trust in oneself is lost. Two lingering effects of betrayal are confusion and the loss of self-worth. The confusion is a result of trying to figure out why the spouse was unfaithful or why the parent beat you. We often believe that if we can figure out why a person did such and such a thing, we could fix it. But to all the beautiful wives out there whose husbands regularly turn their backs on them for two dimensional, air-brushed images of women, it isn’t about you. My husband’s abuse wasn’t about me. Understanding that he has Narcissistic Personality Disorder doesn’t help me heal.

The lack of self-worth then occurs because we internalize abuse. Emotionally healthy people believe that the only time it is ok to harm another is for self-defense or to fend off some evil. When someone we trust abuses us, we think we must be the ones that deserve such behavior. Every victim of intimate terrorism I have ever known has told me that they felt it was their fault. There must be something wrong with them.

Divine Betrayal

The good news is that our abusers, our trusted institutions, our educators, priests, judges, and friends who betray us don’t have to

have the last word. Most people think that Jesus’ betrayal by Judas was His greatest experience of betrayal, but it wasn’t. Jesus knew Judas was going to do it. He wasn’t surprised. The moment that God left Jesus because He had become our sin on the cross was the moment that Jesus knew what it meant to be alone.  Cosmically alone. But there is a deeper betrayal than even that one.

The human race betrayed God and continues to do so over and over. He created us, gave us everything and we threw it in His face. Our betrayal of Jesus culminates in the cross. God comes to us in the form of a man and we subject Him to the most abusive, humiliating trauma known to man. We have all betrayed God. And He remains constant to us, despite our rejection, our indifference, and our neglect.

The Road Back

So even if you are surrounded by liars and cheats, even if your family rejects you, there is always a safe haven available to you. For me, it took some practice and some time to learn to trust God. We always want to ask why God allowed this or that person to harm us, not recognizing that this is a betrayal, too. God is not responsible for any one’s actions. Not mine. Not yours. We alone are responsible for our actions. It’s important to note I have seen God rescue women over and over from evil men. He rescued me because I called on Him.

We all have to face that evil exists in this world, in us. Jesus is the way out of that evil. We learn to be safe in Him. We are able to forgive because He forgives us and takes on our broken hearts and broken lives. We relearn to trust because He is trustworthy. Our tragedies even get redeemed, if not here, in Heaven.  And God keeps score. We can leave justice to the One who judges the nations. There is no justice without love nor love without justice. God’s very nature embodies both.

My first healing moment came when I cried out to God saying, “You saw what he did to me.” His answer healed so many questions in my heart. He said, “I did see. And you are not responsible for any of his actions.” Till that moment I had not realized the guilt I carried, the shame, the confusion. But knowing that God saw and remembered, knowing that He knew everything changed my perspective. I can’t really explain the empathy I felt from Him at that moment. All I can say is that He feels that for you, too. And He sees what they did. 

https://www.choosingtherapy.com/betrayal-trauma/

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