Neurobiology of Betrayal Trauma & How to Heal

hi everyone my name is Kristen Snowden I'm a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist in the state of California but this isn't therapy this is just a live webinar and then a taped video to kind of help you navigate the most extreme and painful relationship crises that that tend to come up so it's not just for those who are struggling with sex addiction which is often why people come into the sex in relationship healing calm webinars but it's also for people who are trying to navigate infidelity in general and other kind of emotional physical abuse stuff that comes up in a relationship that triggers a lot of pain and confusion so one of the most commonly hit topics on my site is always on betrayal trauma and those are some of my highest viewed videos so I thought I'd spend a little bit more time on that subject because I think we've worked so hard in our community to try to get the word out that betrayal trauma is real so often we'll say in the community in treatment and recovery that your partner's more likely to leave you for the lies that you tell the manipulation that you engage in the gaslighting that occurs rather than the you know the events that you engage in the behaviors you choose because that piece while the other piece is also very traumatizing and hurtful the betrayal trauma of someone who is supposed to be a trusted loved one someone who's supposed to be putting you and your relationship and your family's safety and interest as a priority um suddenly shows you through an uncovered addiction whether it's sex addiction or gambling were there hundreds of thousand dollars in debt to drug and alcohol addiction where they've maybe been emotionally absent physically abusive emotionally abusive uncovering that I thought I knew this person and really they've had this whole double life outside of what I thought our life was you know if if that either there's severe trauma that occurs and I'm gonna spend a little bit of time on that but I've also done several videos kind of explaining what betrayal trauma is the symptoms of it so I'm going to encourage you to get more details from that but it's also just kind of thing realizing that if that wasn't real you know from all the lives of manipulation what was real and it really causes people to completely break down and lose everything not just their their safety in a marriage but safety and just confidence in their basic decision-making confidence in Who am I then you know what am i what is this marriage you know if if I've been married to this person who's capable of lying and boozing me then maybe everything that's been a lie you know if his or her addictions run the past three years that we've been married for the past ten years I'm gonna question the entire ten years I'm gonna question all of my relationships because clearly I have bad decision-making you know these are all common shaming voices that come upon us when we uncover the very devastating reality that our partner has been living a double life beyond us and another element besides like sex addiction and other addictions and infidelities which cause betrayal trauma I find that it also exists in any kind of relationship where there's kind of been a highly manipulative person in the relationship maybe you didn't engage in infidelity but they're constantly regularly gaslighting you because they're invested in always being right then you always be wrong and I'm always staying up here because they don't have the ego strength they're too fragile emotionally to ever own that they're like you know they're just a flawed human being so let's say that that but maybe there's not infidelity but that person tends to have narcissistic traits let's say so that also Kurt occurs there so that's applicable to people as well so today's focus is going to be not defining what betrayal trauma is because I think many webinars have defined that and I hope you all understand that but talking in detail about what the evidence-based treatment options are for clients to get dig their way out of kind of the physiological emotional and spiritual consequences of being betrayed so the book that I always like to hug on a reference a book when where I'm doing my webinar so you guys can always go back and do you obviously anyone who's chiming in here is great at doing their independent study work so you're great about looking things up online this is bar none one of the best trauma educational books for the layman's person right so someone who's not a neurological scientist who just wants to kind of understand what the heck is going on in my body and why do I feel so out of control like none of this stuff is in my realm of control the body keeps score is really great because you can apply all the concepts to to the most recent crisis you he does get a lot in two phases like the adverse childhood experiences and stuff but I want you to hear that there are lots of people out there who are betrayed partners who do not have like extreme obvious trauma in their childhood you know several things just happen upon the road in their marriage and relationship one thing led to another and now they suddenly by themselves in deep levels of betrayal so don't read from this book that if I find myself in the state of a trade partnered and that must mean I had this deeply traumatizing childhood one doesn't necessarily connect the other but one thing I find that rings true to both scenarios is the trauma consequences that happen in the brain so basically when you uncover the trauma of finding out that your partner's been lying that there's been some addiction going on that there's been infidelity but all the things that the person's been saying and doing it is a big lie there's gas lighting so gas lighting is when is highly invested in highly manipulative and trying to tell you that what your reality is it's not your reality so a really common example is no I'm not having an affair stop asking me why I'm getting these blocked phone calls it's for work because I'm working really hard to pay the bills and how dare you not be grateful of the fact that I'm working my butt off to support this family and know I don't have sex with you because you're a nag like this that's a common story but the truth is is the block calls are his affair partner and he's having an affair so meaning you had these instincts and intuition telling you that something's going on and they regularly are saying no this is the new reality I want you to adopt so anyway the state of what happens in your brain when you are traumatized is you are triggered it's as if I kind of basically like stabbed you the same part comes out it's as if I just put a giant grizzly bear in front of you and said okay I'm fine you're way out of the house so you and the grizzly bear are stuck in the house it lights up everything in that back part of your brain that fight flight or freeze that is saying your life is in danger you are being threatened and and guess what when that's on fire when that's highly deeply aroused as you continue to uncover more and you continue to question more and you continue to feel so unsafe as you figure out I'm extending with this person am i leaving it's he leaving is she leaving how much money was involved oh my gosh our lives are in ruined our retirements bond as you continue to uncover that you stay back there in that involuntary part of your brain which is that fight flight or freeze trying to your brains working overtime trying to make sure that it stays alive you know it thinks it's keeping you alive but unfortunately what's also happening is your brain can't operate in two areas and so your prefrontal cortex or the neocortex which is like your rational thought which helps regulate and kind of tell the back of that brain it's okay you know it's gonna be okay and this is how you're gonna figure it out and resourcing and decision making and in calming down a reaction to something so an emotional reaction that cannot be on because it is too busy back here so then the secondary consequence is always this shame of like I feel like my emotions are out of control and there's in it in a moment of crisis there's so many important question questions that had to be answered so many important decisions that have to be made and you can't even pay attention to the information coming in to you and you have almost no memories I mean the common thing is clients years later they'll look at pictures and be like I don't even remember that vacation and I remember that holiday where where was I what's the story you know just talking to another client who was saying that I can't remember people's names I can't hold on to anything and so again in this time where it is the most crisis intensive where the decision making is so life-altering and you find yourself stunted there can be just so much additional shame on top of it the other thing about the emotional dysregulation is when you go like let's say you and cover that your partner's been having an affair so you go into couples counseling right to an untrained clinician and you walk in and your partner's already you know I've done I have an article that's pretty popular it's called the myths and realities of divorce after betrayal and it's kind of how the partner who's already been cheating and lying and kind of covering it up minimizing it for sure the damage they certainly often come into couples therapy in a much more calm state you know because they even invested in putting up the defenses being completely disconnected from their body and feeling it's because they just are acting without thinking the betrayed partner is the one who's coming in with high emotional reactivity high dysregulation because again they're in that fight I mean the bear is running after them so to an untrained clinician to just the average marriage or couples therapist who does not understand betrayal trauma might make that betrayed partner the identified patient right because they'll they'll look and not understand the concepts of gaslighting and manipulation and no have a framework or a reference point of going Kosh because you may owe traumatizing maybe you have three kids and you unravel that you know your partner is leaving you for the secretary and you don't know what your finances are and you've been a at home mom and understanding of someone lying to your face and the trauma of all that that happens and not having that filter of understanding what betrayal trauma looks like and having the right assessment and questions to ask those people might erroneously skip over to like okay let's talk about healthy communication and let's talk about the relationship dynamics and let's talk about these kind of general marital techniques and treatment that that we're all taught to do in our master's program those could just be more damaging in the immediate kind of months of uncovering unfolding unraveling so I definitely encourage anyone and I always say this to anyone who emails me and asking questions please find a therapist who understands the concepts of relational trauma betrayal trauma we call it lots of different things who has I'd send often people to sex certified sex addiction therapists even if there's just a single infidelity or some poor news uncover E or some addiction issue that you don't feel like requires a sex addiction therapist but I always say look they're the ones who understand these concepts and so they are not kind of gonna be confused or distracted by the fact that you're strongly emotionally disregulated that you have really strong emotional reactions and then your partner just like yeah I wish he or she had had sex with me more complimented me more or you know he or she's just now that I work too much they are just more deeply and intensely trained to understand the entire framework of what's going on okay so with that said let's dive into the actual healing components so your mind body and spirit have completely been annihilated by uncovering these betrayals so there there's oftentimes an extreme disconnection from your brain and your body they even call like alexithymia is the idea of like you just know your teeth Blee confused or in pain or miserable but you can't put words you can't understand you can't connect the two there's there's a lack of language there to be able to come in to like treatment and and properly kind of explain what's really going on and obviously if if you can't explain what's going on and you can't put a language to all that it's gonna be really really hard to treat that um and also it's a it's something important to say before we talk about the healing options right we can never undo what happens right that's never the goal of trauma treatment unfortunately these are things that are going to be part of your life story forever we hope that it's not the trauma and the crisis is not what defines you does find your marriage and we hope that we can just provide you the proper tools to kind of diffuse you know any kind of flashbacks to fuse memories and the reactions that happen to them help you reconnect with your body and reconnect with a full contextual story of understanding all the pieces and all the dynamics that are going on and then also create some state of empowerment you know helping you reconnect with your intuition so you can identify warning signs learn how to speak up how to kind of fight for yourself out of Bend yourself out of have shame resilience in that respect to show up and help to prevent it from happening again and maybe not necessarily being able to vent it from happening again but certainly feeling more resource and more powered next time because this time you just were like blindsided and thrown onto your back so these are the most common things and again if you want to learn in more detail the body keeps score talks but these are the kind of evidence-based research based approaches that he is used obviously he is a proponent of talk therapy you must you know sharing your story lessens the isolation the state of isolation and sometimes again because you have like the alexithymia or you don't have the language or it sometimes the trade partners might benefit from working out of a workbook like a more structured kind of thing where they're given very specific questions so it's like hey open-ended kind of process therapy like how are you feeling how are things going versus like alright let's write a Boundaries plan you know what it what's okay what's not okay what's a safety plan what do you need to feel safe how did you feel about this trauma how did you know what was going on here sometimes having a more structured on plan is is more ideal because you're kind of just in a daze often obviously one of the most important things is any kind of way that you've learned to down regulate your emotional response you are gonna experience almost everything even a look from a person at school when you're walking through dropping your kids off as a threat and I'm not saying that in a credit criticism kind of way it's kind of like a way of show yourself some grace and love this is an involuntary part of your brain that's there to keep you alive and it's just on fire because it's so confused about what is safe right now and so any so they use the box breathing is a really common evidence-based things though breathe into count of three hold it for a count of three breathe out for a count of three breathe in for a count of three hold it so it's just this idea that you're reminding your brain you're calming it down breathing in and out will alter your your heart rate and so that's kind of giving you the chance to UM what I like to say is this takes very little oxygen and blood so it flares off without you know any kind of hesitation this part takes a lot more oxygen and sought in blood so you have to provide your body that extra oxygen to turn it on bringing that impulse-control bring in that emotional rate reactivity one of my favorite of grounding exercises that clients laugh at when I ask them to do it is um count backward from 100 by seven because you got to think about that one and so what's that basically doing is it's not letting you worry about the grizzly there that's running out for you potentially and you have to stop and turn on that prefrontal cortex to think okay I'm 193 and onward and so forth and so that turns on your prefrontal cortex other one is my one of my favorite go twos are naming boys and girls names with like particular letter so named for boy boys names with the letter T name three girls names with the letter R and so again it's just kind of turning on that prefrontal cortex crowning you so you can move on to the next situation going assess okay how big is the threat right now what are we really talking about here um vessel van der Kolk is a big fan of EMDR actually he does go into detail about how he feels like some EMDR certified therapists do it wrong or aren't properly trained so it's actually really interesting to hear him talk about it but um he I've had other people tell me that um dr's great for single traumas that you can kind of dive into single traumas versus complex trauma so let's say your whole life you've gone from child abuse to stuff that happened in your teens now you're married to an addict and all that trauma so EMDR might be great for a single infidelity or several very difficult traumas that you're trying to transcend through I'm not so sure about complex over long periods of time trauma but it helps the client basically integrate everything instead of experiencing them kind of in flashes of loud sound scary moment he said this she said that I drove by that restaurant and that's where that happened it helps you integrate everything so you can kind of I don't know make sense of it all instead of it kind of pieces of the feelings and memories and sensations happening at you and triggering your physiology it helps you put it all together into kind of one coherent integrated experience so you can make sense of it all and your brain likes that your brain likes things to be put in a bento box it's important to know that when you start doing EMDR eye movement desensitization and reprocessing you're it's extremely uncomfortable because there is some events exposure so just know that but studies show that if you stick with it at first it's extremely uncomfortable your heart rate goes up your blood pressure goes up you are not comfortable but over the course of several sessions um your stress hormones go down your heart rate goes down etc I will say this look EMDR there's something really important coming up with clients recently EMDR therapists are trained to not do trauma exposure therapy or EMDR work with anyone who does not show the ability to properly down regulate and kind of resource to get back to that safe place because they would be held liable if they kind of cracked you open exposed you to this trauma and then sent you on your way knowing that you had no skills that you already were on the cusp of feeling suicidal um so you need to show evidence to your trauma therapist that you have some level of being able to do those down-regulation skills and a couple of these other things that i'm going to suggest to you to show that you will take responsibility for putting in the work to try to down regulate the fact that you are definitely going to get a hyper aroused by this experience somatic experiencing the idea behind that is that when we get stuck there's i've talked to you before about there's a cycle of trauma when you experience it and when we get maybe immobilized or think our powers taken away or we get held down we're helpless we feel immobilized we don't fully transcend the trauma experience into the recovery part where we kind of shake out the stress hormone and let it like move through us like other animal species tend to do when they're threatened somatic experiencing kind of goes back to those stuck points and helps you kind of get through them in a virtual sense so to speak he also is a huge proponent of art music dance movement those are ways of kind of getting into the flow of your brain and doing some healing with the flow and the synchronicity of dance music art they do things to your brain and I've talked a little bit about that in my talks about like playing creativity and stuff like that neurofeedback is really interesting either he was a fan of that he says it helps a lot with attention deficit due to the crisis and trauma so saying often you can't pay attention because you're constantly in that aroused State it helps whips traumatized it helps increase your executive functioning from trauma because remember you rush your rational brain turned off because you're hyper aroused and the person who was talking about it that he was referencing was that they hope the neuro feedback basically intervenes in the circuitry of a trauma brain on that promotes that constant state of like fear shame and rage and instead kind of sends feedback to the brain to help the wiring of it to allow it to stabilize and increase resilience so in those moments of stress you kind of have a longer pause button that allows you to make the next best choice he's a proponent obviously of actually the things he talks most detailed about he's yoga he's said that his initial Studies on yoga and breath work related to yoga has shown on phenomenal responses to actually like brain repair so being able to it can increase the active activation of the insula and the medial prefrontal cortex which is basically that self-awareness part of your body that kind of reconnects with the rest of your body because the idea is how do you service a body that you're not even disconnected with you know how do you care for yourself when you're not even connected with what's going on with it and he's basically saying that yoga has shown really great promise in allowing people to to stimulate the parts of their brain that allow that self-awareness and reconnect with their body so I encourage clients all the time to try it out some people are like nope not going to do it but I I mean studies Shalin that's what it does writing spending a lot of time to just freely write we're not talking caring about your grammar or your sentence structure write a letter you know how you're hurting how scared you are write a letter to your partner that you're never gonna send write a letter to your partner's a fair partner that you're never gonna send the point is is to kind of again like the art music dance movement get your brain into this like free flow state where it's kind of coming out um and then in turtle Family Assistance he's a fan of internal family systems you want to read more of it it's by it's created by a guy named Steven Schwartz I read I'm a little cannot training ifs at all but what I could gather from it I did since idea of internal family systems of saying there's internal parts of you like a family of opposing needs and wants all the time so something that came up for me is it's this idea like you loved your you love your partner you have these memories and this life with this person and part of you wants that you don't want to lose your marriage your family you have good memories along with these hugely you know traumatising memories and then and but sometimes there's the shame voice that doesn't want to acknowledge that right because it's the same person that's harmed you and hurt you just one examples that all of these parts of your brain need to be acknowledged need to be given a voice none of them are unreasonable or wrong and to push them away it's just cause more harm lastly there's form healthy relationships connection with community and/or animals if people are too unbearable at the vulnerability of relationships with other people are unbearable that is why like wolf therapy F coin therapy therapy with dogs that is the purpose of it is they are finding that you can start repairing those parts of your brains and be willing to be vulnerable um with these animals in a way that's just as reparative as support groups so I obviously always encourage support groups always always but we're all perfectly imperfect and sometimes that can be difficult but for sure the animal therapy is showing a great deal other side options are medication management CBT and DBT dialectical behavioral therapy and also he notes any kind of for any basic trauma recovery balanced eating and sleeping are also required you know any kind of working out balanced eating sleeping those are just the kind of basic necessities to to stay healthy and to move forward and the big question to ask yourself too as you're engaging in these trauma recovery processes if is the threat still there it's gonna be really really difficult for you to heal your trauma brain and your emotional state if you are constantly signing more information out if your partner is not engaged in a full you know full wholehearted effort at recovery if you still question that the affair partner is lingering or it's gonna come back around or you're still gosh I know somebody feels that are having had affairs with someone where they go to the same school and every day the woman has to walk on campus where that other woman is and they may be reconciling but that's like exposing yourself to the bear every day whether or not you want that person to have that much power over you that's involuntary that person is considered one of the most dangerous people in your life and you're walking past them every day that's gonna be really really difficult for you to heal from and so I'm just gonna really encourage you to explore with your therapist or professional what do you need to be safe what do you need to help your brain stop feeling threatened from your partner from your environment from your support system that's those are great questions to be asking yourself in establishing and that's it so how do you help them find that spot where they can still go I'm gonna count backwards from 100 by sevens like you know I mean yeah I mean what i I can't obviously I'm not sitting next to them in the car when they hear a song that makes them fall to pieces but what I just try to do is do repetition so when I'm in session with them and I see that they're highly agitate agitate 'add will do some of the grounding exercises because I want them to to remember them kind of it's drilling so that the idea is when you leave this office they're still there those options are still there like you have the power right because it's so disempowering how these involuntary physiological consequences to this trauma and I want them to know that no you're still the boss of your body you just have to put way more work into it to kind of rekindle that connection again you know the thing that comes to mind well I spent a lot of my career trying to educate people on what trauma is because I think again I agree that I always used the term ironically speaking of criminal cases judge and jury would say okay dad beat me anyone like everyone in the group agree that that's traumatizing and everyone raised their hand and then I say okay well dad was working full time was a single father and he would pick me up two hours late from school everyday is that trauma and everyone be like you know because I think we feel more comfortable sinking our teeth into the tangible of a bruise a cut hitting violence things like that are just so obviously like that's not okay the intangible of emotional abuse of emotional and neglect of abandonment rejection shame as you mentioned those are internal and they're so intangible information but thank you all for being here and join the other opportunities and Kristen will see you in 2020 happy holidays Happy New Year

Channel: Kristin Snowden

Views: 106,437

Keywords: love addiction, betrayal trauma, interpersonal neurobiology, relational trauma, codependent relationship, sex addiction, insecure attachment, anxious attachment, PTSD, narcissistic abuse, shame, brene brown, yoga breath work, EMDR, somatic experience, internal family system, bessel van der kolk, healing trauma and shame, divorce, infidelity, addiction, addiction recovery, rob weiss

Id: tLb5gWkmWwE

Length: 31min 14sec (1874 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 28 2020