Working with Betrayal and Other Emotions that You Don't Want to Feel

Working with Betrayal and Other Emotions that we do not want to Feel

Betrayal is one of the most challenging experiences to metabolize. Betrayal is to be harmed by someone close to us–the closer and deeper the betrayal, the worse this is. Often, we are betrayed, and in turn we betray ourselves. The first betrayal we can’t stop, but the second we do to ourselves. Betrayal, when it happens with someone close us, as is often the case in infidelity, or sexual abuse, evokes a primal sense of shame in us. We are shocked by the experience, which is biologically unexpected. We don’t expect a threat to come from within our perimeter. There is a part of us that refuses to metabolize it–Did that really happen? And we may try to dismiss it, or explain it away, particularly if our stress response patterns involve appease, or flight. We may simply shut down. This kind of experience is overwhelming to almost everyone. It also elicits deep shame. This shame may have multiple facets. Were we harmed, taken advantage of, abused, or forced to engage in a behavior against our will, there is the shame around the event. The betrayal, if it is in a relationship, may deeply compromise our trust, or make us feel judged. There is further often a shame directed at ourselves, or an anger, in having trusted this person. It is easy to generalize this mistrust into thinking that we can’t trust anyone. If the people closest to me did this, then everyone will… All of this together creates a toxic stew of physiology and emotion evoked. And this is all within our immediate personal responses. It can be radically compounded if we turn to someone else in our family, or community for help, and our experience is not affirmed. To cope we may turn away from the events, and numb ourselves with substance, or reckless behavior, or risk-taking. At the root of many addictions are feelings that we were unable to process, and could not be present with. We choose substance as an escape route–a way to numb, to get away. The problem here is that what we are escaping is ourselves.

An alternate path, difficult indeed, is to turn towards the betrayal. Someone doesn’t have to intend to betray us for us to feel betrayed. A parent not seeing us clearly may be a betrayal. Perhaps they didn’t have the capacity to see who we really are, or were, and what we needed. Perhaps they were pre-occupied with their own suffering. A partner doesn’t have to intend to betray us to do so, with words or actions. And it is the feeling (we say that trauma is in the nervous system, not the event) that must be addressed. Sometimes we turn to a perpetrator to hold them accountable, and they own up to it. But if this is the only place we seek satisfaction, we are likely to be disappointed. The first step in working with betrayal, it seems to me, is to own that that is what it is. To own the sick feeling it evokes in the belly. It is a horrible energy to be present with. For me, personally, it feels like there is something alive in my belly, something other, that is not me, flopping around inside me. It is a terrifying feeling that I don’t know what to do with. But it is critical that we recognize the feeling. The next step is to ask myself–Why do I feel that way? What, exactly, happened? I have to be able to name it. Here, with this naming, this has nothing to do with anyone else, and I am never going to have to explain this story, because this is the story of what it meant to me. It matters not that someone might say–That’s no big deal. You are over-reacting. It was only a kiss, etc. None of that matters. The label is to identify the creature squirming around in my guts. (It is notable to me that it is a gut feeling. Betrayal, for me, is beneath the heart, down in the guts. It is a punch to the guts. A gut feeling, what in Yiddish is known as kishkes.) Gut feelings are deeply primal, and it is no accident that the neural innervation of the gut is the dorsal vagal system, the oldest deepest immobilization response to trauma. I need to know the story of this betrayal as a visceral sensation in my body. I need to recognize it.

And then, I need to find a trusted person to catch my story. We talk, in the Restorative Practice model, about finding the right person to hold a story for us. The San people talk about storycatchers, and the skills required to do this well. In our model, skilled storycatchers often use a practice developed by our mentor, master anti-racism and mindful facilitation teacher Lee Mun Wah. The model is called the Mindful Inquiry model. Although he didn’t identify all of its components, it is the way that he has assembled them that makes the model so astonishingly effective. It is a relational trauma resolution model. See the Mindful Inquiry model.

For someone to catch my story, they need to accompany me through a process with it. They need to be able to reflect back what I’m saying, noticing what’s most important to me in my telling. They need to be able to observe the places where I might hold back, the incongruences between my body and my speech, as well as the places where they unite. From outside, they are working to help me know myself completely and integrate the experience. Once they’ve reflected the experience to me, listening authentically and completely, they’ll inquire into the emotions I’m experiencing. The rage, the terror, the devastation…This emotional layer is critical to process because it holds so much of the energy of the experience, and as they are walking me through this, if they are really masterful, they will help me to metabolize it, shaping the pace of the telling, slowing me down when I pull away from myself, yet not letting me get lost. Because part of the experience of any overwhelming emotion is that we get lost in it. That’s what makes it overwhelming. It isn’t the size of the experience. It is a question of whether or not we can navigate it with clarity. The challenge of betrayal is the complexity of what it evokes. And so we need someone who can help us differentiate the emotional strands of this experience.

I feel rage at him (the perpetrator). How could he do this to me? If I get ahold of him I’ll strangle that motherfucker!

LONG PAUSE…facilitator: I’m noticing that you got quiet all of a sudden, and your voice constricted. I’m wondering if you are feeling something else now?

I’m so sad….

LONG PAUSE…

How could he do this to me?

PAUSE. (the energy of anger returns)

How could I trust him? (only now it is directed inward). What’s wrong with me that I would trust a guy who would do that? I’m such a fucking idiot!

If we are not careful with ourselves, we can confuse the genuinely intense and differentiated strands of this for confusion. People are in the habit of saying, when they feel contradictory things, that they are confused, or crazy. How can I be feeling so many different things? What’s wrong me?

But betrayal, like other complex relational experiences, evokes multiple layers of physiology and emotion, directed both outwards and inwards. You aren’t crazy. You are experiencing multiple layers. This is why the belly squirms. It is very helpful to have someone parse this out with you. Lee Mun Wah points out that most of the time when something hurts us, it is because we have been hurt before. This isn’t the first time. So the next layer of processing is around what is familiar to us. This is an important inquiry, because here we can begin to have insight into the larger patterns of our lives. What does this remind me of? What is familiar about this? These are both good questions to ask. While you may be tempted to try to walk yourself through this process, don’t. Find a trusted listener, someone who can really hold your story. The reason for this is that we can’t see what we can’t see. It is biologically impossible to behold the movement of our attention accurately from the subjective location of our own interiority. At the heart of this model is the awareness that we know ourselves through relationship. Someone watching you will notice when you look away, when your voice constricts. And in these noticings open doorways into healing and integration.

The final step of this process, in Mun Wah’s model, is about what we need or want. What kind of support do we need. I may need to take concrete actions once I’ve come to clarity about what happened. That might involve confronting someone, and I might need someone to do it with me. It might involve changing or ending a relationship.

A final step that we would add that can be very useful is, What am I learning from this experience? What lesson does it teach me that I need to remember?