Pod Insights The Psychology of your 20s 405. The psychology of betrayal About this episode Betrayal doesn’t just ‘hurt your feelings.’ It shatters your nervous system, hijacks your sense of reality, and rewires your brain for fear and hypervigilance. We can be betrayed - or betray someone else - in a myriad of ways, with life-shattering results. In this episode, we explore the psychological impact of betrayal, delve into the reasons people betray us, and explore ways we can heal.
We explore:
Why betrayal can appear in many forms How the act of being betrayed affects our brain Why someone might betray us Betrayal blindness and institutional betrayal Why the betrayal grief cycle is similar to losing a loved one How we can heal, move on, and learn to trust ourselves again Watch on Netflix: HERE https://netflix.com/thepsychologyofyour20s
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2:55 Jemma Sbeg? Hello, everybody. I'm Jemma Sbeg and welcome back to the Psychology of Your 20s, the podcast where we talk through the biggest changes, moments and transitions of our 20s and what they mean for our psychology.
3:15 Jemma Sbeg? Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the show. Welcome back to the podcast. It is so great to have you here back for another episode. Today, we are talking about one of the most debilitating and painful experiences I think a person can go through. Betrayal, not just heartbreak, not just disappointment, not just a fight, but the moment someone you trusted proves themselves capable of hurting you in a manner, in a way that you never imagined. The moment really that somebody takes everything that you have given them. Time, kindness, energy, love, trust. And they say, this means nothing to me, I'm gonna go and do what I want anyways.
4:01 Jemma Sbeg? It is a pain like no other because betrayal doesn't just change how you relate and how you see that person. It changes how you see everyone, it changes how you approach all future relationships, platonic, familial, romantic or otherwise, and it changes how you see yourself. There is a science, a psychology to this pain that really helps capture how earth shattering, how earth shattering moments like this can be and how they influence our psychology and who we go forward as, as people. So today, we're gonna lay it all out there, from the response of your nervous system to betrayal trauma theory, betrayal blindness, the role of shattered assumptions, but then also the seven stages of healing
4:45 Jemma Sbeg? from betrayal and the silver lining, the optimism that we're gonna end with, that betrayal is something you can recover from. So we have a lot to cover today. If you have been through this, if you are struggling with a recent betrayal, I hope this episode helps you even in the tiniest of ways. Without further ado, let's get into it.
5:08 Jemma Sbeg? When you truly start to think about betrayal and when you start to look for betrayal, you really do begin to realize just how many forms it comes in. I think our mind often goes to the typical things, like at least my mind. When I think of betrayal, I think of cheating, I think of infidelity, I think of a friend lying to you, a friend sharing a secret. Um, there are so many other forms of betrayal that we don't talk about. We don't talk about the promises that a boss makes that they're never gonna fulfill. We don't talk about a parent dismissing what you went through with them or in your childhood. Or favoritism for one child over the other. We don't talk about somebody taking your idea and exploiting it, somebody making promises and never coming through for you.
5:53 Jemma Sbeg? These are all acts of betrayal. Finally, I think we don't talk about institutional betrayal enough and betrayal that can emerge on.
6:05 Jemma Sbeg? On a macro level, from a school, from a workplace, from a medical organisation, from the police force, like, a lot of times, like, the news will spotlight these things and we don't often consider the people that are behind. There is still relationships there that betrayal has occurred within. And just because it's between somebody and an institution doesn't mean that it's not an interpersonal social hurt. There is this huge case in Australia at the moment of, I think it's over a hundred women, they had endometriosis and they went to this one doctor to get surgery. And he would basically perform very severe, very aggressive, very unnecessary incisions and surgeries. These women didn't need, he'd often make their lives worse and
6:48 Jemma Sbeg? he would cover it up, his staff, the hospital he worked at, covered it up, right? How awful is that? And it's awful, as it is awful in all cases of betrayal, because of trust, because trust was there to begin with. The best quote I've heard about betrayal is, the most tragic thing about it is that it never comes from an enemy. You know, these women trusted this man because he was a doctor, because he seemed to listen to them, because he said he'd take care of them. In all cases of betrayal, this is the underlying thing, you don't think this person is capable of doing this to you. Either because they claim to care about you, they claim to love you, they were meant to protect you, they were an authority figure, they were a parent.
7:30 Jemma Sbeg? And the nature of that relationship, like, allowed you to let your guard down. And that is what they saw as an opportunity to then let you down. Someone thought, in all instances of betrayal, your basic needs are less important than my wants. You know, their desire to feel significant, to get what they want, to have people like them, to be entertained, any number of things, means more to them than your basic humanity and the respect that you deserve. This points to a very critical thing about betrayal that I just have to mention, like, it's close to the beginning of this episode, it's possible. It the severity of the outcome of the betrayal does not matter.
8:11 Jemma Sbeg? The the no matter how large the consequence is, it doesn't matter because the damage is done. Like, again, the yeah, the consequences of betrayal don't need to be this big and dramatic thing for a betrayal to be harmful. You know, you might tell somebody a secret that doesn't really have any earth shattering consequences. But it's still extremely hurtful at the same time to have it revealed and for that trust to be broken. Everything from moments like that to massive things all rest on the same thing. There is a loss of emotional safety that is almost impossible to come back from. And not just with them, but with the people who remind you of them later on. And the relationships that have a similar energy to them later on.
8:57 Jemma Sbeg? I think that's the reason we see betrayal depicted in so many like great works of art, like. Literature and movies and poems and plays and TV, um. One of my favorite books, literally, The Secret History, is essentially just a psychological deep dive. Into betrayal. And the reason we see it so often is because we are drawn to depictions like this. The same way that we are drawn to horror movies, you know, betrayal. Is one of those things that scares us, but also fascinates us the most because of how. How much it is perceived as as such a threat emotionally and psychologically, it terrifies us. So let's examine this a little bit further. If you are currently reeling.
9:41 Jemma Sbeg? From somebody in your life doing something absolutely terrible to you. Why does it hurt so much? What I wish more people knew is that being betrayed does and can leave. Long term psychological wounds that have been shown, that have been examined in study. After study and they don't just manifest in your emotional life, they manifest physically as well. So to understand that, we have to look at what happens. I guess biologically, but also neurologically, when you experience betrayal, like what is happening to the network in your brain?
10:21 Jemma Sbeg? First things first, when you experience a betrayal, like your brain's threat system activates like crazy. The discovery of betrayal is literally seen as like a threat to your safety, a threat to your survival. It's gonna cost you socially, financially, in terms of safety, that triggers the amygdala. The amygdala is just gonna flood your body with adrenaline. And it's just gonna try and get us to realize through whatever means possible, like something is going wrong. Often that means pushing you into like fight, flight, or freeze. Um, essentially, your body is just like, this is painful, this is a threat, how are we gonna live through this? That is why, like, when people first learn about betrayal, they'll often talk about how they just
11:05 Jemma Sbeg? felt this terrible rush, they felt shaky, numb, they felt panicked, they felt dizzy. That is your body being hit by a biological truck that is meant to protect you. Our hippocampus, you guys might know this part of the brain that's responsible for um memory and learning. This part of our brain also goes into overdrive. Your hippocampus is basically responsible for deciding what is important for me to remember and what doesn't really matter. The thing is, the more emotionally intense a situation or a learning experience is, the deeper that our brain encodes it. This can lead to what we know in psychology as flashbulb memories.
11:46 Jemma Sbeg? These are like vivid, intrusive recollections that feel almost stuck in time. People will talk about the moment they realized their partner of many years was lying to them. Or the moment a parent betrayed them, or somebody at work betrayed them twenty years later in perfect detail. You know, they could tell you what they were wearing, they could tell you what song was playing in the background, what cologne they could smell, what the carpet felt like beneath them, because your brain is basically like, if we survive this, we better know how we did it. Because it's gonna be a miracle if we did. And we better be able to remember every moment that led to our survival in case there is a next time. This is obviously a real problem for the healing stage.
12:31 Jemma Sbeg? It's honestly so annoying. Because memories like this survive and stand the test of time. And that's why they continue to be difficult to recover from. Third thing that's happening in your, in your brain, your prefrontal cortex is suppressed. Your rational thinking disappears because you are still in that shocked survival state. I'm sorry, I keep using the cheating example. I feel like it's just the easier, easiest one. But say you found out that like your partner has cheated on you. You might later be like, oh my God, why did I not say what I wanted to say? Like, why did I react that way? Why wasn't I angry? Why didn't I say something? Why didn't I scream at them? Uh, your brain didn't think to do it.
13:14 Jemma Sbeg? The rational part of your brain that want prioritize closure of that catharsis was just like prioritizing protection, not analysis. After this fades, this first wave after that fades, the first like true shock of the explosion hits you. Uh, this is when you really start to regain some like cognitive clarity. This is when you start talking to witnesses or people around you who were like, hey, no, that was fucked. Like that, that shouldn't happen. That person was not nice to you. The pain centers of our brain now light up. You know, research has shown that emotional betrayal activates the same neural pathways as physical pain.
13:58 Jemma Sbeg? There was a series of experiments done in two thousand and nine, sh- showing that even when participants imagined unacceptable, you know, non-consensual, terrible acts, their brains, even though it wasn't imagined thing, still experience this as a, as a real threat. And it's still lit up the same pain regions as when you are punched in the gut or when you break a limb. So this is when you really start to feel it. Uh, this is when you really also might start to notice excessive rumination and obsessive thoughts, essentially like.
14:32 Jemma Sbeg? Now, now like the, the data, now the information of the actors has caught up to you. And your brain is gonna start really like trying to review and figure out what happened. Essentially just to restore like the broken narrative of our worldview, to try and find like the, the, the explanation, the puzzle piece for like, why did somebody do this? Like, you want the world to make sense again. You want a logical reason as to why somebody acted this way towards you. This emotional looping of like searching, trying to find an answer, it is a form of coping. And what's ironic about this is our brain is trying to protect us, our brain is trying to conclude the story, find some closure. But that rumination often makes it worse because it starts encoding that memory even deeper and deeper and deeper.
15:18 Jemma Sbeg? In short, I think this whole explanation, this neurological biological explanation, shows us that like betrayal is a form of trauma, betrayal is a profound loss. And it's not just one loss, that's the thing. You are losing so many things. You experience the loss of trust, like firstly. But then you also probably experience the loss of this relationship. Like you don't wanna be with them anymore, be around them anymore. You then experience the loss of the future that you imagined with that person or with those people. Or your plans, all those opportunities, you then lose dignity. You then lose other relationships that were tied to that person. You then lose a loss of future safety, like it is, how many, like that's at least seven, right? It's not just that you lost the trust.
16:04 Jemma Sbeg? Such an expansive experience of loss. Again, that is why this is trauma. That is why it is not dramatic to suggest that like this leaves long lasting emotional wounds. There is this whole theory actually called betrayal trauma theory. That shows.
16:24 Jemma Sbeg? Betrayal can cause even more emotional scarring than non betrayal trauma. Um, I don't always like to compare things like apples and oranges, but like there is impact there that is, that is seen on a similar level as going to war, experience a car accident, experiencing violence. Essentially, all of this is just to validate, right? Going through this, even if somebody wasn't violent against you, even if somebody, you know, didn't do something unimaginable or didn't do something that like would make the newspapers, like it still leaves lasting emotional wounds and it still really does kind of change who you are as a person. And that's exactly what we're going to discuss
17:07 Jemma Sbeg? as well as, as I said, how to heal from this betrayal after the short break. So stay with us.
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20:24 Jemma Sbeg? The real long lasting pain of betrayal is that the other person gets to move on. They get to move on and you are the one that's left with a fundamental sense of uncertainty moving forward with your life. This uncertainty continues to like pop its nasty head up again and again in so many other situations and so many other relationships where it does not deserve to be. In fact, there was a 2024 study that systematically investigated this with over a hundred and forty participants who had experienced partner betrayal, trauma. And the study found that in nearly every single case, individuals had lower self-esteem.
21:05 Jemma Sbeg? They had an increased sense of future relationship anxiety, an increased sense of hypervigilance. And they almost, I think it was all of them, found it harder to imagine ever, ever trusting anybody ever again. I think the reason why this is, is because almost all at once, when somebody betrays us, we are forced to shift our perspective on what people are capable of. It's not to say we were ignorant before, not at all, but we kind of all like to live with the assumption that people are as kind as we are, as are as empathetic as we are. And that if somebody loves somebody else, or somebody cares for somebody else, or makes a promise, they will not break that promise, they will not hurt them.
21:49 Jemma Sbeg? That is like the social contract that we need for society and for relationships to thrive and to continue. And so for that contract to suddenly be revealed as incorrect jeopardizes like all that we think we know about humanity and how we think humans operate. The social psychologist Ronnie Janoff-Bulman, I think their name was, she calls this exact experience the shattered assumption experience. It is a phenomena where. Something traumatic occurs and you cannot readily assimilate that into the previous worldview that you held. And that creates a lot of psychological and emotional chaos and confusion.
22:30 Jemma Sbeg? Essentially, the shattered assumptions theory is that in that exact moment when we realise, when the curtain is lifted, our whole narrative about other people and their behaviour is like disturbed in an instance. And the reaction this creates in us also has a name, it's called systemic mistrust. And it also creates systemic vigilance or hypervigilance. Basically, it creates this reaction where now we question everything, even things that don't need to be questioned. We assume the worst in everybody, like we cannot help it. We don't ever want to feel this way again. We don't ever want to be hurt again. And that makes relationships in the future really, really hard. Another big thing is that we don't just find it hard to trust others because of these shattered assumptions. We find it hard to trust ourselves.
23:15 Jemma Sbeg? And I actually think this is the more insidious part. Although you may rationally know, and I will happily tell you, everybody may tell you, this is not your fault. Nobody asked to be betrayed. Nobody, you don't, it's just not your fault. No matter how much people say like, this came out of nowhere, this, we had no idea, there was no signs. Because your brain is trying to find all possible ways to avoid this from happening again, eventually it's going to turn that skepticism towards you and it's going to turn it inwards. Like it's looking for an answer. Eventually it's going to think, am I the reason? Did I do something to deserve this? Is my intuition just all wrong? Do I just not know how to read people?
23:57 Jemma Sbeg? Am I just stupid? Like, eventually your brain, it's normal, it's going to think that. None of that is true, trust me. You weren't stupid, you didn't know. Really, it's just not true. This is just your brain trying to explore every possible solution. I get this question sometimes. Like, do manipulators know what they're doing? And the answer is, yes, they do. And even when they don't think they are being intentional about what they are doing, they are willingly and actively pushing down feelings of discomfort and guilt that any normal person would be able to read, understand that they are hurting somebody. And if they had a slice of empathy in them. Turn away from, right?
24:40 Jemma Sbeg? Even that naivety, even that avoidance, even that ignorance that they may claim they have. Like, that is still a sign that they, that they are a manipulative person and that they have intention. Because at some point, they ignored that feeling, the feeling that told them they were doing something wrong. There is, I think that is just such clear evidence that this is not, was not, cannot be your fault. This is just sometimes how people operate with, they're just callous and they're cruel. And there are people out there that are like that. I wanna talk about this other strange psychological phenomena that often happens after betrayal. It's called betrayal blindness. Jennifer Frade, uh, she's a professor of psychology at the University of Oregon.
25:21 Jemma Sbeg? And she's actually the founder and the CEO, president, I guess, of the Center of Institutional Courage. Basically talking about betrayal, trauma. And she's done more extensive work on the impact of betrayal on the mind than probably any other human has. Especially institutional betrayal, actually, and interpersonal betrayal. And through her research, she found that sometimes our mind protects us from seeing or processing betrayal early on in a relationship or early on in our lives. Because to do so would be so disruptive that our mind almost willingly ignores it for us. Which is why we then get that sense of like, shouldn't I have known? You literally couldn't have, your brain was blocking you from knowing.
26:04 Jemma Sbeg? An example of this might be, uh, with a parent abusing a child, right? This leaves the child in a terrible situation. They cannot speak up. They also cannot pull away because they have to engage in this relationship to have their basic needs met. And somebody might not listen to them and it will make it worse. This is why children or people sometimes experience betrayal blindness. They just don't even recognize that that was betrayal. Because to do so would mean they would have to leave or no longer have that bond. You know, it's different to when you're an adult, or it's different to when you have a bit more control and you can confront somebody. You can do something, hopefully, and like especially in these situations, if you're a grown child versus a young child, you could confront a partner who cheated on you.
26:48 Jemma Sbeg? You could leave the relationship in some cases. Like, the problem arises with betrayal blindness when you don't have power, you're dependent on them emotionally, financially, physically. Um, our response of withdrawal, like, is the only one that we have. Like, the only way that we can get through this is to be like, this is not happening. This is not occurring because I need my needs to be met and acknowledging betrayal would mean that I would have to, I would have to leave and that would be deeply dangerous for me. This and I actually show up at work too. We might like feel really neglected and like betrayed by a boss, but because we rely on that job for financial security, like, we don't want to rock the boat. Again, betrayal blindness.
27:34 Jemma Sbeg? A- as a means of self-preservation, our brains literally may erase the experience entirely. People have also been observed retelling the experience. And this is awful, but as if it's something they wanted, as if they were in control, when actually they, they weren't. It's something that their brain is doing to make them feel less, uh, I hate this word, but like victimized. Sometimes enduring betrayal is about survival and you cannot blame yourself for what you did to survive. Like, you just can't. What else were you meant to do? I want to circle back for a second to that last thing we spoke about just before that. Do manipulative people know they're manipulative?
28:18 Jemma Sbeg? Or more specifically, like, what does it look like inside the mind of somebody who betrayed you? Like, what is, what's going on in there? This is such a common thing that comes up. Literally a week ago, less than a week ago, I was speaking to one of my friends about this. Um, and about a situation that they've been going through. And we were having this whole discussion of like, how could somebody do this to me? How, how, like, uh, we just kept coming back to it. And the thing is, like, you may never know. Because your mind operates in such a different way to them. You would never do anything like that. That's why you cannot empathize. The question, like, why would anybody do this requires empathy. It requires you to have some understanding of how that person's mind works.
29:01 Jemma Sbeg? And in that moment, it's obvious that it works so differently that it's almost impossible to gain access to. That the fact that you do not understand shows how differently you are as people and shows how much this was a them problem, not a you problem. But let's actually un- unpack some of the common reasons, the common reasons why people betray others that have nothing to do with the person themselves. Firstly, biggest explanation for betrayal, this person is just selfish. There's a lot of self-interest in the world. People often betray others to gain power, to gain attention, to gain money. They might also betray somebody to avoid negative consequences, to protect themselves from harm.
29:43 Jemma Sbeg? In this instance, the betrayer has placed their own needs above the well-being of others. They might even feel justified, like, you know, well, I'm not actually happy in that relationship. So like, why not? Or like, that person upset me this one time, so like, I get one chance to get back at them. This selfishness really stems from a sense of scarcity, like, or a sense of entitlement that their needs are better and need to be more protected than yours. Next, um, insecurity. People commit acts of betrayal because they have low self-esteem. They might feel like they need to control or manipulate others to feel better about themselves, to avoid rejection, to earn a sense of validation that they so desperately need. Does this mean they deserve sympathy?
30:28 Jemma Sbeg? That's up to you. That's, you can decide because, I don't know, we all have insecurities. Most of us don't act this way. I don't know, we all have insecurities and most of us don't cheat on our boyfriends. Most of us don't stab our friends in the back. The other thing is power dynamics. People, there are people who just wanna assert power and they want to assert control. And this can occur in both a personal, professional, relationship setting. And it is a very serious, serious issue, you know. There are people who genuinely, yes, have a lack of empathy, yes, are insecure. Yes, have an inability to understand other people's feelings.
31:09 Jemma Sbeg? And then they also kind of enjoy it. Like, they also, I've noticed this, get a kick out of cruel, controlling behaviour. It it's this strange thing. It's like they enjoy seeing the damage that they can do in other people's lives. It's exciting to them. These people exist, and I think the reason why they do this is that the world feels uncontrollable to them. They feel insignificant. The world feels like it's been very unkind to them. So they rectify that by messing in other people's lives to feel like God almost, to feel like
31:52 Jemma Sbeg? they have a say in their destiny or their fate or the fate of other people. Like, that's how they, that's how they go and do it, like totally, kind of totally off topic, not totally, but in a lot of psychological interviews with like serial killers or murderers, this is an explanation that I've seen a lot of them give. Um, the justification that comes out in a lot of these manifestos and a lot of these interviews is like, I, I like it. I need to be in control. A lot of these men will be like, as a child, as a kid, I felt like things just happened to me. They, that made me angry. So now it's my turn. It's my turn to make these bad things happen to other people. It's this weird, universal karma. Pretty messed up, pretty messed up.
32:36 Jemma Sbeg? But again, shows that you are nothing like these people. It's good news. You can't understand them. It's just, I think that that lack of empathy shows that this is a personal flaw. Okay, we're gonna take one more little itty bitty short break here before we detail the recovery process from betrayal, trauma, and where to go from here. So without further ado, stay with us.
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33:29 Jemma Sbeg? This episode is sponsored by Gymshark. Gymshark has spent over 14 years obsessing over gym clothing and the people who wear it. And let me just say, I think we all know they are very, very good at what they do. No, seriously, their stuff is so good. Their everyday seamless collection is light, it's soft, it's stretchy. All of their stuff just looks good on and it's made for people who love to exercise, whatever exercise that is. Lifting, cardio, Pilates, running around campus, maybe just doing errands. Discover Gymshark and find your new favorite gym clothing at gymshark.com.
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35:59 Jemma Sbeg? Researchers have developed this thing that I think is incredibly helpful in situations like this and so good to cite in this episode called the betrayal grief cycle. And this is how they explain like what you will feel at different stages of recovering from an act of betrayal. The one thing that they really emphasize, and we spoke about this in our trauma bond episode. If you listen to that one, go and listen to it after this, but betrayal doesn't eliminate grief. No matter how horrendous this person was, the good memories, they kind of still linger like a pleasant smell. And that can be really annoying at times, especially for interpersonal betrayal because there was,
36:41 Jemma Sbeg? you know, it's hard because there was a time when everything was going really well. And when they said that they loved you and they cared about you and they were an amazing friend, they were a great parent, they were an amazing lover. Grieving that is important. Your brain lived both experiences equally. It lived the experience of being hurt, but it also lived the experience of before that of feeling safe and that is still resonant in your mind. Because of that, healing from betrayal is so much like grief. And it does often follow the stages of grief that were first developed by Elizabeth Kübler Ross, that you've probably heard of before.
37:21 Jemma Sbeg? But researchers have added a few extra stages in for betrayal trauma over, you know, grieving a dead person. So let's unpack these together because even if you've heard of these stages before, they do look a little bit differently. And they do even look a little bit differently from like the same cycle that's used for a breakup or used for a friendship fizzle, or yeah, used for a death. So stage one is the same. I think anytime something deeply emotional happens, we react with shock. This is what you're gonna have to go through first. We spoke about this earlier before, but there is horror at discovering what the betrayer has done. And we kind of just feel like numb. We are not really comprehending what happened, or maybe a little bit, but not fully and not deeply.
38:06 Jemma Sbeg? Various studies have suggested that shock, actually, the reason we go through this is that it acts as like an emotional anaesthetic. So basically, our brain is like, this is so intense, we cannot feel the full intensity of this. We can't feel this straight away. We will like, we will not survive. So let's like numb us up so we can get through this and we can, we can talk about it later. This is similar to like when people escape burning buildings with like their legs broken or like crazy things like that. The shock delays the pain, allowing you to behave in a life preserving way. And the thing is, is that this can last weeks, this can last months, sometimes it can last years. You will move out of the shock phase when your brain finally thinks like, oh, they can handle it.
38:50 Jemma Sbeg? When they finally are like, okay, we have a little bit more coping going on with, which often sucks, right? Because you kind of think that you've already lived through a little bit of it. And then suddenly, when you actually are coping a little bit better, your brain's like, okay, cool. So we can give, we can give them the first dose now. Stage two is when this is really happening. So it's like the disbelief and the denial and also the first inching or tiny bit of, of pain. You start crying, panicking, start to feel hurt. There is still a sense though of like, it's gonna be okay, right? Like this is just a big prank. This was just an accident. This person didn't mean that. I heard them wrong. I got the wrong facts.
39:31 Jemma Sbeg? Part of you still is feeling it, but wants to preserve the story you know so well. The story that people can be trusted. Stage three, that's when we get to obsession. This is the most confusing and painful stage. The rumination, the hunt for more information sets in.
39:53 Jemma Sbeg? It becomes all consuming. This is when also your brain starts to be like, maybe it was our fault. What could we have done to stop this from happening? This is when your brain starts to be like, friends, family, like, what did you see? What do you know? Confirm, deny, anything that you might have. Like, I need to know. It's a hunt. I would honestly say, especially if you've been cheated on, um, don't go hunting for more information. Unless it's like absolutely necessary, like a legal case, like knowing too much about a betrayal. Might seem like it's gonna make you feel better because it's gonna offer closure.
40:34 Jemma Sbeg? I think it actually just gives an already terrible situation even more detail. And that stuff can be really difficult to unsee. It can cause so much pain further on, or later on, I should say. It's up to you. Like, some people do process better with more information. Especially if it's like institutional betrayal or like a workplace betrayal. It's like good to have your evidence and it's good to have things documented and to be like. Oh, other people know. And if there's like a legal case, like, that's very important. But especially for like interpersonal betrayal, at this stage, like the obsessional thoughts are normal. Try not to feed the beast. Stage four is anger and sadness. During stage four, you will find yourself furious.
41:19 Jemma Sbeg? Furious, like deeply, deeply angry at the other person. I think this is a great sign. Congratulations. If you've gotten to the anger stage, congratulations. This is great because probably for the first half, you've been like, wow, this is just terrible. Everybody's sad, everybody's hurt, like, oh, like, maybe even making excuses and now you are like, I'm ready to fight. And like, that person shouldn't have done that to me. It's when you can see your sense of self returning. You might also be angry at like the person who told you what happened. Cause you might see that as the, as the source of betrayal, like shooting the messenger, if that's how you found out. You might be furious as well at this person for the transference of guilt, right?
42:02 Jemma Sbeg? They alleviated their conscience by, by telling you. And so they've passed the guilt on to you like a little baton. Like, now it's your turn to carry this. They finally feel relieved. Weird sidebar. If you guys remember the Try Guys, the YouTubers, um, and the guy, what was his name? Ned Fulmer? Who like publicly cheated on his wife. He like did this whole YouTube video with her, maybe, maybe like six months ago when he was like, oh, I'm gonna, you know, I'm going, yeah, did this whole YouTube video of like, I'm gonna launch this thing about people's rock bottoms and I'm gonna interview my wife who I cheated on for the first episode. And in it, she talks about the most, like, I love that she stole the spotlight.
42:46 Jemma Sbeg? She talks about this moment when he told her, when she could almost see relief in his eyes. Relief of like, thank God, I don't have to keep that in anymore. Thank God, I can talk about this openly. And she talks about that moment of like, you took off like the backpack of your shame, of your mistakes, of your bad behavior and you were like, oh, can you carry that now? Your turn. And she had to keep it. Like, that is a, is an amazing way of describing it and the describing of like, how you suddenly realize, and when you suddenly realize, oh, like the you, that is, that was not a nice thing for you to do. And like, you were in the wrong.
43:27 Jemma Sbeg? Stage five, when you hit stage five bargaining, you might find yourself really trying to.
43:34 Jemma Sbeg? I think it's kind of like a slight reversal, right? If you can see, it's a lot of this is three steps forward, two steps back. This is another stage of like trying again to shove this experience into your worldview and bargaining about like, what if they only did it once? What if they didn't really know what they were doing? What if, what if like I did give them a second chance? What if like I'm overreacting? Again, this is not a sign to like return to them or to prematurely forgive them. This is just how your brain is adjusting to the situation and trying to figure out the puzzle that is within you and trying to figure out the puzzle that is the situation and how to feel okay again.
44:19 Jemma Sbeg? So it's totally normal to be bargaining before you end up in the final stage. Well, the second final stage of like the grieving process, which is mourning. You had anger, you had sadness, you had denial, bargaining. Now it's just melancholy and just the deep anguish that comes with those shattered assumptions. You realize truly like how much you've lost. You realize you are, you're never gonna get invited to those events with that person again. You're never gonna have, you're never gonna have the future of the wedding and the kids. You're, you're never gonna get the job, that you're never gonna get an answer about that or never gonna get your health back, the time back. Like it's lost, you really lost out.
45:04 Jemma Sbeg? The stage in the grief spaces is known as depression. Um, and we can't underst- understate like how profound that really means, like what that really means. All the adrenaline, all the investigating, all the thinking, the anger is taking a physical toll. Uh, and we will feel that. You might start to get sick a lot more often. You might start to really lose interest in everything that you would normally love. You might isolate as you mourn the end of this thing that you also feel equally like you shouldn't mourn because it ended so badly. It's really tough to adjust to the be- to the beginning of a new chapter. Like you didn't even want, you didn't want this chapter.
45:46 Jemma Sbeg? But now you have to do your best with what you were given because you weren't given a choice. Mourning is just like so hard, it's so uncomfortable. But I also think we tend to rush through it and it's something that you cannot rush through. I think anybody who's experienced this will tell you like grief, sadness, heartbreak, betrayal. Are things that you have to move through rather than try and dodge around. And when you do, you get to stage seven, which is acceptance and recovery. I think the best way I've seen this described, how you know that you are like fully accepting what's happened to you is when the future starts to feel as exciting and good as you thought the past was. Basically, the before and the after start to feel similar, like there's optimism.
46:32 Jemma Sbeg? There's a deep sense of like, this is just what I was dealt, I can deal with it. I, I wanna feel happy, I wanna be alive, I wanna get through this. How am I gonna make this happen despite all of that? It's also probably the first time where you can like objectively see the situation for what it is. I think in the first few stages, there's always like a, a dominant emotion trying to convince you of some reality of this betrayal. You know, that it didn't happen, that it was all terrible, that you could never love again. And, and this is the moment when you just have a bit more neutrality. Not feeling nothing, but knowing that you felt everything, knowing more solidly that you weren't to blame, knowing more
47:17 Jemma Sbeg? solidly their motivations and just being able to look at it just neutrally again. Psychologists talk a lot about um how in this stage it's really important to find meaning, right?
47:30 Jemma Sbeg? There is another very famous guy, um David Kessler. He wrote the book You Can Heal Your Heart, which you may have read. He also wrote a lot of stuff on grieving and he describes meaning when it comes to betrayal as how we learn to carry our grief and sadness differently rather than eliminating it. Finding a way to put all the individual heavy parts of grief and betrayal into a bag and carry it with us. Maybe even put it down occasionally, maybe even forget it's there. It's basically how do we find a story that makes this make sense? Think if I was gonna give any advice to someone going through betrayal, it would be this. Whatever makes the story of this moment relevant or makes sense to you, grasp onto that.
48:14 Jemma Sbeg? Whatever story, whether that is the story that everything happens for a reason. Whether it is the story of rejection is redirection, whether it is the story of karma, whether it is the story of how this will allow you to help others in the future, the story that this is proof of your own capacity to love, whatever it is, find the story that makes this make sense, if you can. Like, find something that allows you to take those shattered assumptions and be like, hearing new assumptions and they feel just as comfortable. Finally, just remember, even though it was done to you, it wasn't about you. I cannot stress this enough. I have a friend going through this at the moment.
48:56 Jemma Sbeg? And the thing we keep discussing is this person isn't going to magically become a different version of themselves for whoever comes next, or for their next best friend, or for their next partner, or for their next employee, or for their next whatever. Like, they're not gonna magically change. This is part of their character. And even if they do, even if they do get help and they do change, whatever they do next doesn't erase the pain they caused in the past. It doesn't suddenly erase this part of their history. Like, just because they're a great person doesn't mean that, like, they've always been that way. The fact that they betrayed you is just as much a part of their story as it is of yours. There will always be a part of them that knows, there will always be a part of them
49:39 Jemma Sbeg? that did that act, like, that had the capacity to do that. So I want to wrap up this episode by just saying, um, by just saying, like, don't think that you as a victim of this betrayal were somehow, and I know this is gonna sound weird, were somehow special. It is them through and through. It, like, the people have the capacity to do this. Something in them just really, again, that quote from the beginning, saw your needs, saw the respect that you were owed, and decided, mm, that's just not, not as important as my own interests, and went ahead with that. That is a completely them situation.
50:23 Jemma Sbeg? I know a lot of this is just like lingo and words and like whatever, psychobabble theories and sometimes like that cannot erase the pain of what you're going through. But I do hope the psychoeducation and the more scientific perspective on what you're experiencing can neutralize some of the shame and neutralize some of like the grief by showing you that like, not that this is a normal experience, but this is like, there are things to this experience that every human would go through and that every human would feel pain by because they are so devastating and you are no different. It's also something that like, I don't know, time maybe won't heal, but does wonders for.
51:05 Jemma Sbeg? And I think the fact that you are moving through this with grace, you're looking to learn, you are looking to understand yourself better through the actions of somebody else is really, really powerful stuff. And I think that there is a lot of healing and amazing things coming your way. I really do believe it. I really do believe that for every terrible person or terrible institution or terrible situation out there, there is like something equally as gorgeous and wonderful. And I think that you are a hundred percent deserving of it and it is on its way to you. So thank you again for listening. Thank you as always to our researcher Lucy Davidson for her assistance with this episode. Make sure that if you enjoyed this episode and you are listening, to maybe go and check us out on Netflix. That is right. We now have episodes
51:50 Jemma Sbeg? on Netflix, episodes just like this one, wherever you are in the world, go and check it out. You can also follow us on Instagram at that psychology podcast. If you feel called to do so, if you want to contribute to episodes like this, we often have question boxes go up. We often look for listener stories that inform episodes just like this one. So it's a great opportunity to get involved. And yeah, there's all these other links. There's all these other things that you can access. I will just leave them in the description down below. But until next time, be safe, be kind, be gentle to yourself. We will talk very, very soon.
52:31 Jemma Sbeg? This episode is sponsored by Gymshark. Gymshark has spent over 14 years obsessing over gym clothing and the people who wear it. And let me just say, I think we all know they are very, very good at what they do. No, seriously, their stuff is so good. Their everyday seamless collection is light, it's soft, it's stretchy. All of their stuff just looks good on and it's made for people who love to exercise, whatever exercise that is, lifting, cardio, Pilates, running around campus, maybe just doing errands. Discover Gymshark and find your new favorite gym clothing at gymshark.com.
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