No, Reddit Doesn’t Have the Answers about How to Heal from Betrayal Trauma. Here are 5 reasons why.
A lot of women are looking for answers about how to heal betrayal trauma on Reddit. In searching for answers, women often find themselves on a Reddit Forum, in a mix of women and men. Here’s what those forums get wrong:
1. Betrayal Trauma isn’t “JUST” About the Cheating – It’s About ALL the Abuse
Betrayal trauma victims on reddit often share their stories about how their husband cheating on them and they can’t get the thoughts out of their heads. BUT they’re posts make it clear that they’re still unaware of all the other abuse they experienced.
For true healing, betrayal trauma victims progress more quickly when they’re aware of the truth. Understanding the emotional, psychological, sexual, financial, and spiritual abuse will help things make more sense. When it comes to betrayal trauma, knowing the truth is the first step to true healing.
2. Therapy Sometimes Makes Betrayal Trauma Worse
The way therapists approach betrayal trauma is to figure out what you did to get yourself in the situation or what you can learn from it. If you’re a victim of emotional and psychological abuse, the answer is nothing. It’s not your fault. You didn’t do anything to deserve it, and it didn’t happen because you needed to learn something.
Women who are victimized by the betrayal of an intimate partner don’t need therapy because there’s nothing wrong with them.
3. Many So-Called “Relationship Recovery” Resources Don’t Help Women Heal
The Reddit forums contain many links to resources for couples to recovery from infidelity. However, they fail to mention two facts:
1) Infidelity is an abuse issue, not a relationship issue.
2) Couple therapy is never indicated when abuse is present. For this reason, any couple therapist who does relationship recovery for infidelity (abuse) is unethical.
These unethical therapists often pose as victims and link back to their practices to promote their business. Women in our community have often been to multiple therapists spending thousands of dollars on therapy, and the therapist doesn’t help them identify the abuse.
4. You Can’t Heal from Betrayal Trauma if You’re Still Being Betrayed
No doctor would expect you to heal from any injury until whatever caused the injury has stopped. Yet, forum members on Reddit often describe continued emotional and psychological abuse they’re experiencing, and wonder why they’re not healing from betrayal trauma.
5. How to Actually Heal from Betrayal Trauma
Healing from betrayal trauma is a multi-layered journey that starts with a victim considering what it means to be emotionally and psychologically safe. Anne Blythe, M.Ed. wrote meditations for betrayal trauma victims to heal from the trauma from the inside out, without therapy or victim blaming.
Robin had been scouring the internet for answers. “I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t eat. I searched Reddit, reading every forum. It just made me depressed and hopeless. Once I found the betrayal trauma meditations, I started feeling peace again. I’m so grateful!”
Try Meditation to Heal From Betrayal Trauma
“Whatever it is, whatever direction my mind is going, the meditations brought my mind into the present. It brought peace in that moment and allowed me to rest. I really needed that,” she said.
Betrayal can create a wide schism between a victim and her ability to feel and experience her own body. Meditation helps victims become aware of their bodies and bridges the gap between body and mind. Meditations can help victims process trauma, grieve, and express blocked emotions.
Heal the Trauma In Your Body & The Heart Will Follow
A big part of trauma is the chaos the betrayer causes victims inside their own heads. Sometimes women don’t know which way is up or even where to turn. Attending Betrayal Trauma Support Group is a good start. And for women who are sick of talking or don’t have a lot to say, meditation can be an effective healing tool.
“I found that when women find out about their husband’s porn use or they start to realize, wait, this is emotional abuse, right? They’re hoping that things will get better quickly. For example, maybe they could get their husband into some kind of quick program, like a weekend retreat or something, or that maybe they’ll just file for divorce, right? Some kind of thing that’s going to solve the problem quickly. But healing from betrayal doesn’t work like that. It’s not some trick you’re going to find on Reddit,” Anne said.
The tools taught in the Betrayal Trauma Recovery Online Support Group are universal to every betrayal victim. Even though every individual is different and timing is different. How much effort to put into a specific type of healing or practice is different, depending on the individual.
So for anybody to presume they know exactly what another person should do, when they should do it and how they should do it in order for them to get to a place of peace, joy, and healing, is presumptuous and frankly arrogant. No one knows.
None of us are really in another person’s situation. But guided meditations can help victims heal at their own pace and do what’s right for them.
Many victims of betrayal can’t label it exactly what is holding them back. They don’t realize it’s the abuse in their heads.
Can Meditation Help Betrayal Trauma Victims?
Anne continued, “I’m so happy that women love the meditations. Sometimes we can’t get our minds and bodies to do what we know we need to do, especially when it comes to healing from betrayal trauma. So if we work on our bodies first, our mind will follow.”
Click here to learn more about The Betrayal Trauma Meditations.
Are there women with success stories of a changed husband? Regardless if it took 1 year or 7 years?
I want to know how realistic that hope is. But also, I’m not opposed to divorce if necessary. My husband has a traumatic childhood that contributes to his behavior and ik it can take years to change, so I’m open to waiting while be separated. But honestly if statistics matter, if 98% of emotional abusive husbands don’t change, I don’t want to hold on to hope. I’m wanting to prepare for the worst and hope for the best in terms of his recovery.
I would focus on safety. Get to safety and don’t wait for him to change. It doesn’t matter what the “cause” of his abuse his. I’ve known many, many people with traumatic childhood’s who are delightful wonderful people. A traumatic childhood does not make an abuser. Abuse is a choice.
I was addicted to online stuff for over 26 years. This is my story so far.
At the age of 13 I started when I found magazines. Those and some things I saw that were not meant for my eyes, got me interested in online infidelity. Around the age of 22 I had a computer and a dial up internet connection and that’s when I started to get really hooked on this stuff. As a single guy nothing was wrong or so i thought. I could get lost for hours behind the screen. Then I met a girl, that blew me away and I fell head over heels in love with her. The addiction already had its claws in me and I just continued with my internet infidelity addiction. After 3 years, we got married and everything was perfect except for the fact that I kept cheating on her online. My wife found out a couple of times, but never really made an issue of it.
At the age of 31 I was diagnosed with ADD and got Ritalin, which is fantastic to keep your focus, also your focus on exploiting women online. I could watch that stuff for 8 hours straight. That was bedrock for me although I didn’t even know that at the time. We had kids, I got some counseling for the addiction, but as it is not recognized as such I wasn’t really helped. And so i continued. And it slowly destroyed my wife, my marriage and my own life. I was depressed, lethargic and always irritated. I had no empathy or emotional intelligence and was in one word an a-hole. I couldn’t speak properly and couldn’t tell my wife she looked nice or beautiful. And when she found out again some 9 months ago, she was devastated, it literally nearly killed her. She definately had betrayal trauma. So that’s when i got a wake up call and quit. I found out so much more. Everything in our life was touched by my addiction. And the addiction was lots bigger, everything I did online was an addiction. Facebook, News, Quora, Google Feed, gaming and whatever else was part of the dopamine feeding addiction. Furthermore I was staring at women in public it was embarrassing. It hurt my wife even more.
To everyone here, one thing that is very clear to me is that the way my wife looked was never the reason to look at that stuff, she could have been like the women I see online and I would still have looked at it. It would make no difference. The addiction just doesn’t care and by looking at tons of it you just go numb and don’t appreciate things in real life anymore.