Stages of Betrayal Trauma: 4 Powerful Steps to Healing

A husband’s lying, infidelity, gaslighting, and emotional abuse causes betrayal trauma. The effects can leave women feeling lost, confused, and unsafe. Understanding the 4 stages of betrayal trauma can help you process what’s happening and take meaningful steps toward healing.

Most men who betray their wives are emotionally abusive. Before moving on, take our free emotional abuse quiz to see if you’re also experiencing emotional abuse.

The 4 Stages Of Betrayal Trauma

When a husband lies, cheats, or manipulates, it can make a woman feel stressed and worried. She might have trouble eating or sleeping. Betrayal can hurt a lot, but that’s why it’s so important to figure out what’s going on. Then, you can start to heal and feel better as soon as possible.

Betrayal Trauma Stage 1: Confusion

Long before a woman discovers her husband’s lies or infidelity, women feel confused and unsure about what’s wrong. If it happens to you, you usually know something feels off, but it’s hard to pinpoint exactly what. This is critical, because that unease is your intuition signaling that there’s an issue. Often, abusers contribute to this confusion by blaming you, making you feel like you’re the problem. Many women try couple therapy during this time, which doesn’t seem to help.

Sometimes, trusted friends or professionals accidentally make things harder by giving simple advice. Like saying you should work harder on the relationship. During this time, it’s normal to feel confused and even blame yourself. However, it’s important to remember this: feeling confused means you are standing up to the abuse and trying to understand what’s really happening. Keep going, and don’t give up!

To learn more about this type of psychological abuse, listen to The Free Betrayal Trauma Recovery Podcast.

Betrayal Trauma Stage 2: Discovery of Lies & Infidelity

When a woman finds out about her husband’s lies and infidelity, it’s a new type of trauma – and also a relief. They feel relieved that they discovered what’s wrong, but they’re often re-traumatized. Because the wrong kind of support can worsen the trauma. Most professionals don’t understand that emotional abuse and coercion are what’s causing the betrayal trauma. Instead, they blame women and say she is the cause. This can be confusing and frustrating.

It’s imperative that you find the right help, because this stage of addiction recovery counseling or couple therapy will make things worse. Our daily, online Group Sessions are a safe place where only women will share their betrayal trauma experiences. We’d love to see you in a session today.

Betrayal Trauma Stage 3: The Right Education

When you finally get the right kind of support and education, the puzzle pieces begin to fit together. You’ll recognize betrayal trauma for what it is, and you’ll start to see abusive patterns for what they’ve been all along.

You will see that lying and gaslighting are not your fault. These actions are done on purpose to hurt and control you. This is when many people stop blaming themselves. Then, they start setting rules to keep themselves safe, both emotionally and physically.

The Betrayal Trauma Recovery Living Free Workshop helps women know exactly what’s going on and gives them safety strategies to protect themselves from this type of emotional and psychological abuse.

Betrayal Trauma Stage 4: Safety Is The Treatment

The final stage is applying what you’ve learned to gain more and more emotional and psychological safety. At BTR.ORG, we help survivors protect their thoughts from manipulation and trauma. First, you’ll learn how to create a safe life for yourself. This could mean leaving an abusive husband or building strong emotional boundaries. Next, you’ll start to see how strong and capable you are. Step by step, you’ll gain the tools to feel safe and in control again.

Our coaches guide you step by step, so you feel calm and confident again.

The 4 Stages Of Betrayal Trauma: Take The Next Step

Betrayal trauma can feel really hard to handle, but you don’t have to face it by yourself. At Betrayal Trauma Recovery, we help women feel safe and start healing. No matter if you’re in a relationship, separated, or divorced, we have tools and resources to support you every step of the way.

Transcript: What Are The 4 Stages Of Betrayal Trauma?

Anne: It’s just me today, I’m going to talk about, the 4 stages of betrayal trauma. And how important it was to figure out how to set boundaries with my husband. That’s where the Living Free Workshop comes in. Because safety is the treatment. Women see that once they’re emotionally and psychologically safe, their betrayal trauma symptoms almost completely disappear.

I started podcasting in 2016. A long time ago. If you look at the podcast feed, it doesn’t go back that far. And the reason it doesn’t go back that far is when I started podcasting, I learned in real time and shared my experience of attempting to get to safety.

As I studied, I also did over 300 long form interviews with betrayal trauma victims, both on the podcast and in person. Through doing that, I began to see clear patterns. And I was also running my own experiments, seeing what worked and what didn’t in my own life. And seeing what was working and not working in other women’s situations. I learned the 4 stages of betrayal trauma.

After discovering the Living Free strategies, I actually got to safety. And then I realized that many of these very old recordings also had incorrect information. Theories or principles that I was testing through trial and error that I now know do not work. I didn’t want to hurt any woman, so I removed that incorrect information. But today, I’m going to share several recordings from long ago, when I was still trying to learn how to apply the safety principles.

You’ll hear a section where I talk about helping my son visualize his emotions. And those same types of visualizations are the pattern I later used to write in the workshop. I used that to help me heal, and has since helped so many other women heal from the inside out.

Sharing Old Recordings

Anne: As you listen to these old recordings, you’ll hear the seeds of all the services we have here at Betrayal Trauma Recovery being planted. And the rest of this episode is snippets from those old recordings. After seven years of attempting to “help my husband” deal with his addiction and his anger problems. He sprained my fingers and pushed me against the kitchen cabinets during an argument.

He was arrested for domestic violence. The judge gave him a no contact order, which is a protective order. And that was the first time I’d ever conceived that he was really an abusive person. I waited, hoping for him to take accountability, change, truly repent and return home to us for nine months. And he decided to file for divorce. During that nine months, I prayed and prayed. And the only answer I received was to start a podcast, which is how this podcast started.

I used to go by the name Anon, Anne Blythe is not my real name. My friend had a Facebook account with the name Anne Blythe. Named after Anne Blythe from Anne of Green Gables. I ended up adopting that name and that Facebook account to represent all of us, because my story is the universal story. The details might be a little bit different, but we all go through a period of trying to “help our husbands” or support him this is one of the first stages of betrayal trauma.

The 4 Stages Of Betrayal Trauma: Gardening As A Metaphor

Anne: I am an avid gardener. I have nine fruit trees, five 12 by two garden boxes, a huge section of my garden in my front yard, where I grow self-proclaimed prize winning pumpkins. On Monday, my five year old son and I planted the corn. It was such a sweet time. I dug the hole and he put the seed in. The obvious symbolism of faith that it takes to plant this seed so small and hope that in a few months we’ll have an eight foot stalk with delicious corn on it.

All my garlic is growing great, and I planted that in the fall. So planting a little bulb that, the next year, will turn into the most delicious, rich, buttery garlic. It’s called Romanian Red, and it’s amazing, and you can’t get it at the store. In my front yard, I have irises and tiger lilies, canna lilies and salvia. Every kind of beautiful perennial you can imagine. Every year they get better, bigger, and more beautiful.

It’s been almost three years since my ex’s arrest, and back then my front yard and all the perennials were kind of sad. It was like three irises that came up, but now they’re gorgeous. Everyone comments on how beautiful my garden is. I didn’t know that my garden would be so beautiful, but I had faith that it would be. And I dug things up, I split plants, and I moved things around.

And had faith that my hard work would pay off, and it has. I have not yet seen the hard work pay off with my setting boundaries.

Struggles Of Single Motherhood

Anne: My life is still really hard. I’m a single mom of three kids. Life is hard every day. It’s hard to get dinner on the table. It’s hard to keep the house clean, it’s really stressful and very overwhelming.

There are days when I sit on the couch and stare into space, and then end up crying because I’m overwhelmed. I’m still nervous about the future. I still don’t know exactly what’s gonna happen. But if my garden is any indication, as I stand there, especially my front yard with all the beautiful perennial flowers, I’m like, this feels safe, and this feels secure, and guess what else?

Beautiful, I have faith that my life will be beautiful like that. My garden has evolved to be something amazing. Maybe I will evolve to be something amazing someday. Right now, it seems like I’m still digging around in the dirt with nothing to show for it. Talk about late bloomer, I’m like the world’s latest bloomer, ha ha. But maybe when I do, I’ll be like that big, beautiful iris.

I want to talk about nightmares for a minute. My ex was supposedly in recovery, but I was still having nightmares. In the dreams, I was a single mom, and I knew I needed a husband. So I was like, there was that one guy I remember him. He was kind of nice. Where is he now? Why isn’t he here? And then I would try and find him and then I would find him and he would be kind of mean to me, brush me off. That was the nightmare. I had different forms of that all the time.

Nightmares & Intuition

Anne: I remember I would put my hand over on him and touch him, and be like, oh good. It was just a dream, whew, like every night. And then I would tell him about it, and I would say, I’m having these nightmares. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Everything seems fine with us. One night when I was lying in bed right next to him, I said, I’ve been having these nightmares.

Not knowing this was one of the 4 stages of betrayal trauma. I really feel like something bad’s gonna happen. And I didn’t pause to let him speak. I said, yeah, but it’s just crazy. It must just be me. I’m still mentally messed up. Well, he never said anything about it. But now that I look back, he not only didn’t say anything, and I talked myself out of it.

But he also didn’t try and comfort me. There was a woman I talked to recently. She said, I’m having nightmares almost every night, but I wake up and look at him and everything’s fine. And I said, when you tell him about your nightmares, how far away is he? Is he standing more than four feet away from you? Looking at you, but not responding? She started crying. She said, that’s exactly what’s happening. Confusion is one of the 4 stages of betrayal trauma.

I said, I’m not sure what’s going on. But an empathetic, caring, connected person would not be four or five feet away in that situation. They would be giving you a hug. They’d say, I’m so sorry you’re having these nightmares. I love you. I care about you. Is there anything I can do? Something, some kind of connecting, interacting thing.

Stages Of Betrayal Trauma: Is Something Going On?

Anne: But the standing like four or five feet away with this blank stare on your face, like a deer in the headlights. And more and more as I hear these stories of women who have these nightmares. And then, months later, they find out something was really going on. Even though in their waking hours it seemed like everything was fine. Not to say that everyone who has a nightmare, her husband is lying.

Because thinking my husband was in recovery when he was not. He was lying to me and manipulating me. And I had those dreams. Now I see an indicator of a warning to me. Now that I’m disconnected from him. I rarely have those nightmares anymore.

I have a friend whose husband has labeled her borderline and kept taking her in to get help. Her husband had been lying to her and gaslighting her, and he had a double life. Addiction was going on, and this was a way for him to avoid anyone looking at him and making her look crazy. There’s no way to actually recover if you’re still being abused like this. This friend of mine, she has now separated herself from her abusive spouse, and her borderline symptoms are gone.

Now she’s having trauma symptoms. I have an unnamed autoimmune disorder. It’s not lupus, it’s not arthritis. I’ve been trying to get a diagnosis for a long time. I get super, super sleepy and all of my joints hurt really bad. So it has a lot of the same characteristics of these autoimmune diseases.

So the doctors are like, yep, you have one. We don’t know what it is, it’s unnamed. And we should call it the betrayal trauma autoimmune disorder.

Therapy & Being Present

Anne: I have spent so much time and money going to therapists, but not getting help for my trauma symptoms. I am paying them to sit there in their office and educate them about betrayal trauma. There was one therapist, it was like three months after my husband’s arrest. I was trying to convince her that my husband was abusive. It was crazy, wait a minute, what am I doing? I’m not going to her anymore. And I think she was confused because I didn’t want to divorce.

So she was like, you’re saying your husband’s abusive, but you don’t want to get a divorce. Like, I don’t know how to help you. Yes, he’s abusive, I don’t want to get a divorce, and I need help. Like, can you accept me where I am? And she had no idea how to help me. Part of my betrayal trauma symptoms were that I did not hear my children when they were talking to me.

And I wasn’t doing anything else. So I was available, and ready and willing to talk to them, but just didn’t hear them until they had said my name a few times. And then I was like, Oh, yeah, what is it? So zoning out, I found myself doing that frequently. So if I’m having a hard time concentrating. I feel the couch, maybe feel the couch fabric, maybe even touch my child’s arm, something that I can reconnect with the present moment.

I actually sat on the couch with my five year old son, and we just sat there for like, probably a half hour. And he was spouting off. I didn’t even know what he was talking about.

Striving For Peace & Stillness

Anne: I was listening to him. And I was acknowledging him. I was looking him in the eyes. I was like, let’s have a stare contest. And we just looked at each other and smiled for a while. And it was just that I thought, Oh, this is what I’m trying to do. Okay, I’m going to be in the here and now with my daughter. And I’ll be available to you.

That’s, I think my biggest hurdle is, I’ve sat here with her for four minutes, and this is boring and I need to do the dishes. That’s what I’m struggling with the most right now.

When I stop and stare at my daughter, I think, how long do I have to do this for? I want to get better at it and more practiced. Until that is what I crave, those quiet moments with my children, and living in that moment with peace and stillness. And also, my soul needs that every day. We need a period of time of quiet, both spending time with ourselves in a quiet place, and spending time with the people that we love.

Visualization & Healing From Betrayal Trauma

Anne: I’ve actually been doing visualization with my son every night about his emotions and his anger, and where he’s going to put it. One of the things we imagined was that he put all his feelings about how he doesn’t want to do his schoolwork. Like, I don’t want to do my work. I hate doing schoolwork, you know, that sort of thing in a box. And then if he was holding that box, could he pick up his pencil? to do his schoolwork. And he was like, no, I can’t.

So I said, well, where do you want to put the box? And he’s like, Oh, I’m just going to put it over here. And then he was like, Oh, mom, I can do my assignment now. He has improved significantly in his schoolwork. So using a betrayal meditation or visualization as a tool is an option for healing from betrayal trauma because I have used visualization before to be able to connect with my children.

Since that time, I haven’t solved all my problems. But in relation to my abusive ex husband, who abused me post divorce for eight years. I’m completely delivered from him, and so are my children. And I did this through the Betrayal Trauma Recovery Workshop Strategies. I spent so much time and effort putting everything I learned over the years into that workshop,

Applying those strategies and having those strategies deliver us was for sure the miracle I had been praying for. And I hope you find all the strategies to be the miracle you’ve been praying for too.