Have you wondered how to help other abuse victims? BTR is a powerful resource for traumatized women. When you share BTR podcast episodes and articles, you are helping other abuse victims.

Lisa, a member of the Betrayal Trauma Recovery community joins Anne on the free BTR podcast. Lisa is a member of the Betrayal Trauma Recovery community. She is committed to helping spread the word about BTR so that other women can find the help and safety they need. For more, listen to the free BTR podcast or read the full transcript below.

I’ve had women write me and say, ‘Had I found BTR sooner, it would’ve saved me years and years of pain or years of confusion.’

Anne Blythe, founder of Betrayal Trauma Recovery

Betrayal Trauma Recovery Supports Victims of Betrayal and Emotional Abuse

Many victims of betrayal and emotional abuse spend a significant period of time unsure of what is happening to them. Abusers condition victims to be unsure as they gaslight and manipulate victims, effectively making victims question their own realities.

Betrayal Trauma Recovery was created to help women identifying what is happening, and help them get to safety.

If you have benefitted from the Betrayal Trauma Recovery group, one-on-one sessions with BTR coaches, or the free BTR podcast, you may wonder how you can help other victims to find BTR.org.

How Can I Help Other Victims?

Amazingly, most victims maintain their values of compassion, empathy, and a desire to help others, even through years, sometimes decades, of betrayal and abuse.

One of the most important things that victims can do, is help make Betrayal Trauma Recovery more accessible to other women in trauma. By making BTR.org more visible and easily findable, more women will be able to receive the support and education that they need to break free from abuse.

Here are some ways that women can promote Betrayal Trauma Recovery:

• Rate the free Betrayal Trauma Recovery podcast on iTunes and other podcasting sites
• Comment on the Betrayal Trauma Recovery articles
• Consider being interviewed on the Betrayal Recovery Podcast
• Rate “Trauma Mama, Husband Drama” on Amazon
• Be willing to share your experiences with trustworthy women who may also be victims of abuse and betrayal

Helping Other Victims Requires Courage and Vulnerability

When you connect with another victim, take a deep breath, and say, “Wow, we’re in this together,” rather than thinking, “Oh no, now she knows.” I’ve found that I’ve made some of my best friends finding out, “Oh, we’re both in this same situation,” and we’ve had a lot to connect about. Which has been really rewarding.

Anne Blythe, founder of Betrayal Trauma Recovery

For many victims, it is difficult to confide in others or to feel worthy of taking up time and space in another person’s life. With practice, the ability to be vulnerable grows. As victims courageously share their experiences with other victims, they can find powerful connections that aid them in healing.

The Betrayal Trauma Recovery group is specially created to facilitate the connections that victims of abuse and betrayal both need and deserve. Join today and find community, validation, and support as you begin your journey to healing.

Full Transcript:

Welcome to Betrayal Trauma Recovery, this is Anne. I’m very excited to have my new friend, I’m going to call her Lisa, from Georgia, but that’s not her name, and that’s not where she’s from. We spent the weekend together at a retreat, and that’s what I accidentally introduced her as over and over to people, because I had trauma brain and did not remember her actual name or where she really was from. The handy part is now we can use the name, that I accidentally called her all weekend, on the podcast, to protect her anonymity.

Anne: Welcome, Lisa.

Lisa: Hello, Anne, thanks for having me.

Anne: We had a very long drive from Salt Lake City down to Zion to attend the retreat. There were about 80 other women with us and it was a really, really nice weekend where we could really connect with other women and experience the strength in numbers of knowing that we’re not alone.

How Connection Can Help In Healing Your Pain

One of the things that Lisa mentioned on our drive home was that a lot of women have the desire to spread the word about Betrayal Trauma Recovery because, before they found Betrayal Trauma Recovery, they didn’t realize that there were so many women experiencing similar things.

Maybe the details are a bit different, but similar emotions of not knowing what to do, of trying to figure out what to do next, of the pain and the confusion that come along with the abuse and the infidelity that we’ve all experienced. Lisa, why do you feel like women who find BTR really want to help spread the word about BTR?

Lisa: I wouldn’t have known anything about that if it hadn’t been for the BTR podcast because there’s not a lot of resources in my area. Even the counselor I’m seeing isn’t trained in this area. She doesn’t know about resources like books and things that you suggest on BTR. I just want to do my best to help other ladies find it quickly, more quickly than I did.

Why Trauma Is Painful and Confusing

Anne: I’ve had women write me and say, “Had I found BTR sooner, it would’ve saved me years and years of pain or years of confusion.” Is that how you feel?

Lisa: Initially, just friends and maybe counselors and books, I would read them and listen to it, and it just didn’t resonate with me. As I dug further, I started learning words like betrayal trauma. I didn’t even know that’s what I had. I didn’t know those are the words I needed to search for. I just started stumbling across things.

I had to weed through a lot of things that were not helpful before I could get to the things that were. Even with books and things like that, that are suggested, sometimes, you’re just not in a place where you can sit down and read and comprehend a book.

BTR, for me, was just something consistent, weekly, that I could turn on and listen to. It took time, but I learned to trust the advice you were giving, because what you were saying was resonating with me. I was able to take your advice. It was just good for me when I found BTR because it was a consistent voice of reason that I could turn to. Listening doesn’t take nearly as much brain power as sitting down and studying, or something like that.

Others Who Have Felt The Pain Can Help You Heal

Anne: As evidenced by my trauma brain over the weekend, right. Women who experience trauma have a difficult time processing written information.

Lisa: Yes, definitely.

Anne: We also have a very difficult time remembering things.

Lisa: Absolutely, yes. Writing things down is very important for me to make sense of things and to remember things. It’s great with the podcast, I can go back and re-listen. Before I got on with you, I was re-listening to a few things.

Anne: I am grateful for your patience as you listen to the podcast. It was nice to meet you in person. One of the things you mentioned in the car is that you really wanted other people to know about BTR. You said, “On the podcast you mention that giving the podcast a rating helps increase the views on search engines. Is there anything else that listeners can do to help spread BTR, so that other women can find it?”

Why Trauma Brings Confusion

Lisa: I’m not, probably, going to have my own podcast or website or blog or anything like that. It may be difficult to talk about these things with people in person. I want to do my best to promote BTR. I want to promote those in the best way that I can, to help other people.

You’ve mentioned giving the podcast a rating. I had done that. I just went back and listened to some other podcasts, and you mention posting on the BTR site. I’m not sure exactly what that means, and you also mentioned posting in our secret groups. If you could just explain that better to us?

Anne: I would love to. The first thing I want to do is talk about why it’s so important that women can find us online. Like you said, you were searching for things that you didn’t know to type betrayal trauma into Google, because you didn’t know what it was, right? That you didn’t know what you were searching for exactly.

Lisa: Right.

Betrayal Trauma Is More Than Just Hurt

Anne: Then, finally, when you found the word “betrayal trauma” you found us. You found Betrayal Trauma Recovery. As women are searching around, they search for words like, “infidelity,” “cheating,” “pornography addiction.” Lots of women are searching for narcissism stuff, lying, “how do I help my marriage.” It’s very rare that a woman who’s having marriage troubles goes immediately to Google and types in “betrayal trauma.”

My goal is to help women get this information as soon as possible. Making sure they can find us online is really important. The first thing I ask people to do is to have people rate the podcast on their podcasting service, either Google Play, or iTunes, or their Android app. That five-stars means that Google starts paying attention to it, or iTunes starts paying attention to it.

Podcasts with a lot of ratings, that rating just helps give it more visibility. That’s what we need if someone types in infidelity, for example, we might pop up because it’s one of our search term words, or another one of our key words is narcissism, and we might pop up. Then they might say, “Oh, I’ve never heard of this betrayal trauma thing,” and they might go from there.

Connecting With Others Can Ease Pain

The second thing you talked about is commenting on the site. The way that search engines work is the more interaction, the higher it ranks on Google. I want to stop for a minute and talk about our new website. Satan hates it.

My web developer is amazing. She’s done over 100 websites, she’s incredible. She’s telling me that she’s coding, and then crazy mal-code is just pouring in. She’s fending it off like an internet warrior. We have, I would say, other-worldly opposition to what we are doing. I’ve just run into road blocks over and over and over again with what we do, just in terms of the technology and stuff.

The more interaction a website gets, the higher it ranks on a search engine. If a lot of people comment on a post, for example. You would go to the article section of the new site, this might change, so everybody be flexible as the new site is being built and we’re optimizing it, but that’s where all the podcasts are in written form.

Why The Pain From Betrayal Trauma Is Unique

You can read the podcast if you are in a really good place, or you can just push play and you can hear it from that page. At the bottom, you can comment. You can just do little comments like, “Thanks so much for sharing,” or whatever. You can comment anonymously. Each comment dings Google, and Google says, “Oh, someone’s interacting with this site,” and it increases our search engine rankings. That’s another way to help Betrayal Trauma Recovery rank higher on search engines.

How Can I Share BTR With Other Women?

Lisa: I have another question for you. We’ve talked a lot about the technical ways we can spread this. Have you heard of anyone or seen any success with maybe people printing the checklist and leaving it in places where a lot of women would be visiting? Like I go to a doctor’s office that’s mostly catered to women. Do you think they would be open to having the checklist laying there for women to see?

Trauma Causes Pain and Fog That Feels Hopeless

Anne: I think they might. I’ve been to a doctor’s office that had little cards in the bathroom that talked about physical abuse. I remember looking at it and thinking, “This doesn’t apply to me,” which was really interesting because it totally did.
I wonder if this type of information, especially the checklist, which is not at all the same as the domestic violence checklists that say like, “Does he control your money?” or “Does he control your transportation?” Because when we’re considering, “Are we abused or not?” and we go to those types of checklists, we’re usually only two out of ten on the list.

This checklist is not so much what to look for, but how to establish safety. “How do I know if I’m safe? How can I create safety in my life?” For women who are still in the trauma fog, having this on a desk somewhere where they could read it while they’re in the waiting room, would really be helpful. So yes, yes, yes, yes. That’s a good idea.

I have other women who have taken it to their church leaders. Printed it out and said, “Hey. If you have a woman come in, give this to them.” That has been very successful, and the church leaders have also found it very helpful to realize, “Whoa, okay. Wait a minute, so I’m not supposed to counsel with this couple.” Some church leaders are open to it and others are not, but just sliding it under their door might be an option, or maybe not.

How Isolation Causes Fear and Pain

Anne: That’s the cool part about this podcast is it’s by trauma survivors for trauma survivors and we can make it whatever we want. Tell me about your experience being around so many women, having come from an isolated state of not talking to anyone who you felt really understood.

Lisa: Here, in my town, I hadn’t found any groups that I felt comfortable going to, just because they didn’t focus on my specific need. And then just having such a hard time finding a counselor. I felt like they were listening, but maybe didn’t really get it.

I have friends and family that know that I’m separated. They know that I’m hurting. But still, again, they don’t know the details or, maybe, how to listen with understanding. Being around all these women, even if their situations weren’t the same, or if they hadn’t experienced the same thing, it just felt like they knew how to react appropriately, and the right things to say.

What Can Help With The Overwhelming Pain?

It felt so good just to be able to talk and not worry about filtering what I was saying, or trying to remember what I had already told them. Or “Is this person safe or not?” Or “When am I going to run into them at the grocery store?” Or “Do they know my husband?” All these things that are constantly going through your mind at home and trying to know how to talk to people.
None of that was there. I was able just to talk and share my story and not feel judged or getting good advice or bad advice. Sometimes, you just want to talk and have somebody listen. It was a really great experience.

Anne: It was a good experience for me too. I really enjoyed the personal interaction. I enjoyed being able to give people hugs. I enjoyed crying with people. That sounds really awful that I would enjoy crying with people, but it was just nice to have that personal connection and feel things as a group. I really appreciated that.

But it’s very difficult for women to get out of their homes. It’s very difficult for them to drive down the street. They’re afraid. “Oh, what if someone sees me pulling up to this therapist.” All of the concerns that women have when they start to go for help. We’ve tried to figure out a way, at BTR, to work around those, so that women can feel the strength from other women online.

Others Who Have Felt Trauma Can Be Lifelines For Your Pain

Lisa: I want to throw out there that I’m sure donating helps continue how you all are already working on spreading the word. I don’t know. I just want to throw that out there. I think everybody should donate. I want to help you guys any way I can.

Anne: Thank you. We do need your donations. I appreciate you bringing that up. Like I said, Satan hates it. Your donations really help us cut through that. When I started Betrayal Trauma Recovery, it was just me with, literally, no money, crying in my basement.

Because of your donations, I’ve been able to purchase a really nice microphone, so the sound has improved. I’ve been able to purchase really nice editing software so that I can edit the podcast better. I wanted to thank donors, and let you know that Betrayal Trauma Recovery was built by all of us.

There’s no way I could’ve started it without the emotional support of all the women that were listening. All the donations small and large, and knowing that there was someone on the other side of the microphone listening to me. Because, when I would feel just so dark and sad and just be speaking into a microphone in my basement, the support that I’ve received has been overwhelming. There’s no way I could’ve done it without you and without the coaches.

Why Betrayal Pain Hurts So Much

I’m very, very grateful that this is a organization by trauma survivors, of trauma survivors. It feels like a community that I’m a part of that I’m proud of and I’m grateful for.

Lisa: If you can say Satan hates it, you’re probably doing something great.

Anne: Yeah. I think he hates women. I really do. I just think he hates women in general.

Lisa: That’s funny.

Anne: He hates us. Since many women can’t get to a retreat, I invite you to join Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group.

Like I mentioned, it meets daily in multiple time zones.

Then they find out about the porn, but when they also realize that the lies and the gaslighting and the manipulation are a form of abuse. It’s very intense for a little while to realize, “Holy cow. I’ve been abused for 20 years and I didn’t know,” or, “I’ve been abused for five years and I didn’t know.” I’m really hoping that women can turn their focus to that for a little while, to get really educated about emotional abuse.

Abuse Causes Confusion But Connection Can Help

The best way to get educated about it is to read Lundy Bancroft’s book called, “Why Does He do That?” It was life-changing for me. If I had the money, I would literally fly over everyone and dump this book out of planes. I think it would change everyone’s life.

Lisa, thank you so much for coming on today. Thank you for your questions. I’m sure many other women have those same questions. Thanks for talking today.

Schedule an individual session with one of our coaches today!

If this podcast is helpful to you, please rate it on your podcasting app. It helps women who are isolated find us.

Until next week, stay safe out there.