The Body’s Side of the Story

One of the most painful things about betrayal is not always the betrayal itself. It’s what gets put on top of the feeling that locks it in place.

The person who did the betraying often reflexively minimizes. If it was someone close to you, or someone you held in esteem, you may be inclined to partly believe them, that it’s not actually that big of a deal, so you can keep the relationship.

Betrayal can hurt us so deeply that if we acknowledge it to ourselves, we feel we will need to end the relationship. Many times we do, but not always. When it’s someone like a parent, we may still want to keep the relationship, and in those instances acknowledgment can go a long way toward feeling safe with them again. You don’t need their acknowledgment to heal, though. Chasing it may just leak your power.

It’s too easy to overlook how betrayal is really a nervous system experience. It doesn’t just live in our thoughts. It lives more deeply in the unconscious nervous system, represented by the body. Sometimes we aren’t even consciously aware that we’re carrying betrayal trauma in our nervous system.

I wasn’t aware I felt deep betrayal from my parents for years. They didn’t do anything wrong, really. I was put under anesthesia as a small child and didn’t understand what was happening, so I fought. A number of adults came in and held me down for an important surgery. My parents watched it happen.

After that I started having major behavioral issues. I got arrested a number of times and did hard drugs as a young teen. It was only years later, unpacking my history in somatic work, that it became clear a lot of my behavior was a response to that early experience. Part of me was seeking revenge. They could have intervened, sure, but they were doing the best they could, and I needed the surgery. My feeling of betrayal wasn’t conscious. It was held in my nervous system as general mistrust of others.

Betrayal can wire your attachment system into your self-protective response, so that when someone gets close enough, your body reacts before you have a say. It’s important to learn how to untangle these two systems so you can reclaim deeper safety in relationships, and in my experience, that changes the quality of nearly everything else too.