Recognizing and Managing Betrayal Trauma

Mardi Winder-Adams: 00:00:05

Welcome to the D shift podcast, where we provide inspiration, motivation and education to help you transition from the challenges of divorce to discover the freedom and ability to live life on your own terms. Are you ready? Let's get the shift started. Hi, and welcome to another episode of the D Shift Podcast. Today, we have Mr. Jay who's on here with us. And he's going to talk to us all about something that I think a lot of us have to deal with when we're going through divorce, or just in relationships in general. And that is we're going to tie later kind of talk around the subject of betrayal and what to do with that. So Mr. Jay is a betrayal, betrayal trauma practitioner, and inspirational relationship coach. So I am, I'm excited to get into this conversation. So thank you so much for being here.

Mr. Jay: 00:00:56

Thank you so much for this platform. So a couple things, I am an interpersonal relationship coach, and what does that mean as I help people get in touch with the relationship they have with themselves because I always say the relationship we have with ourselves sets the tone and standard for all other relationships around us. However, there is one caveat to that, which is my second trait, which is betrayal. We can be in touch with ourselves, love ourselves, know ourselves, but still be duped. And one of the things that I want to make sure that people are listening know is that you were duped. You're not stupid, you didn't deserve it. You weren't duped, you were deceived by somebody you trusted. So, betrayal, trauma, that's what I work with. I work with people that have betrayal, trauma. Now what is betrayal trauma, I can give you the DSM version, which is long and boring. Or I can just basically tell you it is trauma at the hands of somebody that we were attached to, that could be our boss, our child, our parent, it could be our significant other. There's also people that go through betrayal, trauma with God, and even ourselves. How many times have you heard somebody say, I took all the vitamins, the supplements, I drank all the smoothies I exercised, and I was still diagnosed with breast cancer. I feel like my body betrayed me. Yeah, so betrayal, trauma comes in all sorts of times. But for the sake of conversation in time, let's just talk about spousal betrayal for this podcast. Okay. So let me give you an example of so so in my definition of betrayal, trauma is life altering powerlessness. So let me just say this, let's just say you are on a bridge two miles above ground, you're on a very long bridge, it's about a mile long. And it's a very thin bridge. And you have two young kids, and each of your children are in each of your arms. So you're carrying one child in this arm, one child in this arm, and you have to get across the bridge for safety. Under you is fire lava volcano. So if you fall at certain death, you're trying to walk across that bridge, while trying to protect your two babies in your arms, who's guiding you is the person you love and trust the most in life, let's just say your spouse, your partner, the smoke that's coming from beneath you is so blinding at times, you have to put your hand on the shoulder of the person in front of you, your spouse, your significant other your partner, just so they can guide you, and they're guiding you to safety. Out of nowhere, the bridge starts collapsing. You're frightened, your brain is hijacked, and you're falling. You got your two babies in your arms, you're falling into fire. You can't think you're scared, you're nervous, you're in fear, your life is flashing before your eyes, you're holding on to your two babies. And while you're falling, you look up and you see the person you trusted the most with a hammer in their hands. They're the ones that made the bridge collapse. And then you fall into the fire. But you don't die. You have to get up with your kids and start living. Yeah, that's where I come in. Okay.

Mardi Winder-Adams: 00:04:05

So this is a thank you for setting that up. That's really good. I think that that paints a really clear picture. And I'm sure all of us can put ourselves in that situation, whether we got one baby two babies, or dogs, it doesn't matter. We got something that we're carrying with us, our businesses, whatever it may be. So tell me tell me a little bit about how did you get here? What What drew you to this particular area? Because it's not something that people talk about a lot. You know, it's kind of like, oh, he had an affair or he blew the money or he had an addiction or she I mean, it doesn't matter. It could be it could be you know, people in same gender relationships. It doesn't matter. It's your partner that has betrayed you doesn't matter what gender who they are. So tell me a little bit about what what brought you here because this is a fascinating topic.

Mr. Jay: 00:04:52

Yeah, it is, you know, a couple of things. So, I you know, I grew up with with a lot of family trees. Omar and you kind of, you know, buried it under the rug. And I was actually doing coaching for a while intra personal relationship coaching where I was helping people with their, with their relationship they have with themselves. And then a couple of years ago, abruptly My father died. And when I say abruptly, I mean, I was talking to him one day and four days later, we're lowering him into the ground. Thank you. And a couple of days after that, I woke up in the middle of the night, from a panic attack. Now, I've never experienced a panic attack in my life. When people would tell me about panic attacks, I would always downplay it because I couldn't relate to them. But boy, do they feel like you're about to die. Anyways, I woke up to a panic attack, but I smelled smoke. I smelled smoke in the house. So I jumped up. Now I got two young kids, I jumped up and I went to the kitchen, and I'm trying to find the origin of this smoke. I couldn't find any. I'm going in every single room in our house, I could not find the origin of the smoke. I even open up my door thinking it's our neighbor, barbecuing or whatever. But it's three o'clock in the morning, right? I could not find the origin of the smoke. Try as I may. So finally, I went to go lay back down in bed. And as soon as my head hit the pillow, I was transported to being six years old, standing by my mother, who was screaming because we just came home after being on vacation to our chimney in the driveway, because our house was burned down to a crisp. Oh, no, I was smelling the smoke of when I was six years old, and all of that unhealed trauma, right. That led me on a path to look up trauma, which led me on another path to look up betrayal trauma, which led me into a community working with people that were traumatized, from betrayal to getting certified as a betrayal trauma practitioner, and then my call is kinda quadrupled as far as you know, which is which is both wonderful and tragic. Yeah, don't you I say all the time, I'm working hard to put myself out of a job,

Mardi Winder-Adams: 00:06:58

ya know, and this is, you know, trauma. It's one of those things that people are kind of encouraged to just get over it, just deal with it just, you know, pray it away, or go to therapy, or do this or do that or just get more active or literally get over it. That's what I hear all the time. Oh, yeah. This happened in your past. It's done. You live you survive, get over it. What is wrong with that thinking? And why? Why is that kind of the the message that people that have experienced trauma often hear what's what's your sense on that?

Mr. Jay: 00:07:38

Okay, well, first of all, you asked a very good question. And you asked a very deep question. And so I have a lot of answers. Some of them are not going to please your listeners. So here's the deal. Let me just first and foremost, say this, there's a difference between trauma and betrayal, trauma, trauma. Is is it affects our coping mechanisms. Absolutely. But there's, there's not the intentionality attached to it. If, if, if you don't know somebody, and you're traumatized, that's, that's one. That's one thing. If the person you loved and trusted the most, completely emptied your bank account or cheated on you, or, or did something physically to you, you're thinking, well, I trusted this person. It's there's a whole intentionality with it that just did. And betrayal trauma hits us at our core insecurities, because somebody took the best of us and use it against us. Now, the other thing that I just want to say is this. Betrayal, trauma, unlike trauma is a secret society. If you have a family member that passes away, the average person can call their job and say, Listen, I just had somebody passed away. And then you get your bereavement time you get sympathy, you might, you know, get your whatever, you can't call a job and say, I need broken trust time. First of all, you're not going to call your job and say that because you're embarrassed. There's shame, there's Gil, there's, so you're going to hide it. So it's a secret society. And if you need time off, then you got to tell why you need your time off exposing yourself to all of this guilt, fear, shame. And so betrayal. Trauma is a secret society, unlike other traumas. Now, the reason I say and I'm going to be very careful because I'm going to really turn a lot of people off with my next statement. The reason I say that, listen, there's stages to trauma, there's there's your there's your setup stage, which is not allowing our boundaries to be respected, not knowing who we are, what we are our goals and like there's all that setup stage. Then there's actual D Day discovery day where you actually find the lip gloss in the car, or the hair that's not your collar, you know on the seat, or the letters under the mattress. That's D Day when you oh my god, I can't believe I just found out so and so you know, cheating on me. Then we have what's called survive. mode, which is stage three, where you are doing what you got to do to survive, especially if you have young kids. Because listen, you can be in bed in the fetal position for four days, but you're going to be, but you can't do if you have young kids or responsibilities or work or what have you. Then after that, there's what's called the new normal stage. And, and then I want to stop there. There's another stage, but I want to stop there. And the reason being, is because survival stage, a lot of people stay in it for so long, they become comfortable and complacent. Because what happens in the survival stage is there's a lot of false benefits. We get a lot of people's sympathy, we get to be the victim, we get to hold everybody off and say, I'm never going to trust again. So we don't have to do the hard work to trust again. So there's a lot of false benefits staying stuck. And the majority of my clients I'm working with right now, are stuck. I have people that have been stuck for years, even decades, because they're stuck. Now, I understand why people are stuck. Because, listen, we are creatures of habit. I don't know if people listening can watch this, but do me a favor. Can you just fold your arms real quick? And naked? Okay. Okay, so you're relatively comfortable relative, or you know, whatever. Now fold them the other way. Okay. Now, the majority of people I don't know about you, but the majority of people are like, and this isn't as comfortable. I want to go back to the original way. Yeah. Is that you? Yep. Okay, the reason is, is because we always want to go back to what's familiar. So we so growing out of betrayal, growing out of trauma, we we want to, we want to hold on to the techniques that kept us safe. The thing is, is those those techniques that kept us safe, also can work against us and keep us stuck. Because another thing too, is, oftentimes the techniques that we use to heal ourselves. If we don't, on, undo them, because we don't need them the rest of our life. Right? What they do is they they evolve and morph into our personalities, then we go into life, and we go into relationships with quote, who we are. And it's not who we are. It's who we've become based on our experiences. So working from betrayal, trauma is not easy. No, just move on. No, you can't. You can't because listen, I can break your legs right now. Right? I can come over to your house and I can break your legs and then tell you, Okay, come on, get up and walk. You it's impossible. You can't. So telling somebody just to move on from trauma. It's impossibility, there has to be work to be done.

Mardi Winder-Adams: 00:12:36

Yeah, I like I like that. And I don't think that that I don't I believe in telling people the truth. So the truth is not always what people want to hear. And that's one of the things in my divorce. Coaching, we sometimes have those, as they say, down here in the cell phones come to Jesus meetings, where you're going to have to just say things, even though they may not be what people want to hear. Yeah. So talk a little bit more, if you wouldn't mind about that survival stage would How would people recognize because I hear people say this all the time? Well, I don't want to put myself in a position where I ever trust anybody again, is that first of all, Is that realistic? And second of all, can you move forward and live a happy fulfilling satisfied life with interpersonal relationships? If you're in that I will never trust anybody or let them close again? How does that possibly work?

Mr. Jay: 00:13:33

Well, a couple things. Number one, a good majority of people that say I will never trust again or I can't trust again, have a lot of internal work to do because you cannot give away what you don't possess yourself first. And so if you don't trust yourself, there's no way you can trust somebody else. So a lot of times it's people don't trust themselves. And I understand why they don't trust themselves because the person they trusted the most betrayed them which we get into betrayal blindness, and maybe if we have time I can get into words you know, betrayal, blindness, but, but when we are betrayed by the person that we love the most, and this is why a lot of people are upset with like God or creator. Because a lot of times I hear I prayed, I prayed for my spouse and I prayed for a good faithful spouse. And I believed God brought them into my life. And then they did this to me well now I don't even know if I have faith anymore. So betrayal trauma corrodes our our every fiber our mind, body and soul. Now here's the deal as far as you know what you were saying before? Take your favorite Cook, whoever it is Mr. All or, you know, whoever the your favorite Cook is. I'm sure they got burned a couple times by the stove, right? Well, what if they said, That's it? I got hurt. I'm never gonna cook something in my life. Then you have that choice. That is their choice, of course. But what life would they have? Right? So absolutely we can choose never to love again Never to work. be exposed to love never to trust ourselves or anybody else. That's not what life is supposed to be. Life is supposed to be to, to love. And unfortunately at times get hurt, but out of hurt comes growth out of her comes, you know, wonderful I mean, out of out of well, when you assign purpose to your pain, because a lot of people just like to stay in pain. But when you eventually assign purpose to your pain, that's when you see people writing books and people, creating businesses and people, you know, doing all these wonderful things, just like you know, Viktor Frankl and Corrie 10. Boom, and Nelson Mandela, who went through the most egregious of atrocities, but said, I had to make sense out of the nonsense, or else I would have stayed in prison all my life.

Mardi Winder-Adams: 00:15:43

And the other thing, you know, when you were saying that I was just thinking, what does that what message does that send to your kids? I mean, you're not if you're, if your mom, you're not just going through life and saying, I'm not going to have a relationship, but you're teaching your kids don't trust, people don't have relationships, don't open yourself up. Don't fall in, don't be in that situation where you feel dependent on somebody else. Like, that's kind of like almost, and I'm gonna throw in another thing here, but almost generational trauma, right? We talk about that a lot. Now, we're, you know, you don't have to be directly involved in it to experience that trauma through your family lineage. So it is it's scary when people start talking about that.

Mr. Jay: 00:16:23

It's very scary, scary, but but here's the complexity of that. A good month, like studies show that about 70% of of unfaithful couples do come together and reconcile. Now, that doesn't necessarily mean that there's a 70% success rate. But 70% of all couples where there's infidelity in their marriage, they do try to work it out. So here's the deal. Yes. And one way you want to tell that parent be a good example to your kid and love again and trust again. But if they're working with a partner, who's just giving them bread crumbs? Yeah, man, they are. They are ice skating uphill.

Mardi Winder-Adams: 00:16:59

And I am with you on that. It doesn't have to be that partner. It could be a new partner. It doesn't. Yeah, and I'm, as a matter of fact, I'm one of those people that I firmly believe that both people have to be really committed to make that reconciliation work. If there has been that, you know, an affair, that breach of trust, whether it's financial addiction, affairs, you know, whatever it is, that's really committed. So both people have to be really committed touch a little bit on that betrayal, blindness that's got me interested now that you know, that you said,

Mr. Jay: 00:17:34

betrayal blindness. I also call it the Red Riding Hood syndrome. So Red Riding Hood was home for you know, a couple years she couldn't see her grandma, she missed her grandma, she loved her grandma, let's just say there was, you know, COVID She couldn't leave her house and go visit anyone for a couple of years. So she was in her home. So finally the COVID was lifted, and she can go visit her grandma, right? So she bakes all this, you know, banana bread, oatmeal cookies, and in raisin cookies, and she's so excited. She can't even think straight, she wants to go see her grandma. So she makes the, you know, very daunting. trudge through the forest of, you know, full of all these, you know, wolves and monsters. And when she reaches her grandma's house, she opens the door, and something just doesn't feel right. Something doesn't feel right. As a matter of fact, when she sees her grandma, she knows something isn't right, because she even says, Grandma, why do you have a long nostril? unlogged nose, Grandma, why are your eyes or be something inside her said something was off. But she was so focused on not seeing the obvious because she was so focused on seeing her grandmother that she ignored all the red flags, the pink flags, the boundary, breaking the signs, and what happened? It was to her detriment, she died. So here's what happens. Betrayal, betrayal, blindness, is actually a key that was formed, I think, in the early 90s, by a gentleman or lady named Jennifer freed. And what it is, is it's a part of our nervous system. And it actually is supposed to help us. And in some ways it does. And I can get into that in a second. But what it also does is AFTER D DAY happens, it makes us feel foolish. So for instance, you know, we're with our partner, and you know, we see a blonde hair in the car, we say, Hey, why is there a blonde hair in the car, something and our body knows a little Something's off. But our partner says, Oh, my coworker, her car, you know, didn't need it needed a jump in so I gave her a jump. What happens is betrayal, blindness kicks in. And what we don't want to do is we don't want to dig any deeper. Because if the truth is revealed, now our financial security is in jeopardy, our children might have to go without a father if we kick them out. Or a mother if it's the you know, the father, whatever. Our life would be in so much more chaos. If we found out the truth that we just decided to stay blind to it. Yeah, we're betrayal blindness. And that's too great, fine and dandy, but what winds up happening is that when we do that for days, weeks, months and years, when we finally are faced with it, there's no denying it, it's in our face. Now we start saying, Why would I be so stupid? Why did I ignore those pink flags? How can I be so stupid to be so black? Now it works against us. So that's betrayal blindness.

Mardi Winder-Adams: 00:20:20

Okay. And I think I think that's kind of an like you say, I like that idea that it's a natural reaction we want to give everybody most of us want to give, especially our loved ones the benefit of the doubt, right? Even if the story is wild and crazy, we're willing to kind of just like you say, put blinders on and go, Okay, we're just going to accept this, we're not going to ask you any more questions. But you, right, you can only do that so many times until you start losing yourself. And then when you really do see it, I can understand that it just, it's just all over there. And that that self anger and that sense of not maybe not you. And I think that might be where that sense of not being able to trust yourself maybe starts to really ramp up as well.

Mr. Jay: 00:21:04

Oh, absolutely. self trust boundaries are two of the things that I work on a lot with people, because it's two of the things that have been completely marred after betrayal.

Mardi Winder-Adams: 00:21:15

Can you and we're almost at the end of the time, this is such a fascinating conversation, though. Can you tell me one, one technique? Or just a little idea? How could you start building self profit? Again, let's say you've gone through a relationship, you've had this sense of betrayal, you've gone through the stages, and you're, you're into the new normal, whatever that that looks like for you? How could you start to say, I can trust myself again, to get out into a new relationship with and I know, this is a I know, this is a huge coaching program, but I'm just asking for kind of that first, maybe, baby step. Okay.

Mr. Jay: 00:21:53

Okay. Two quick things I said at the beginning of the show, that my definition of betrayal, trauma is life, life changing, life altering powerlessness. So the first thing I would do is you you're when you were betrayed, your choices were robbed from you, your choices were stolen and ripped from you. So empower yourself with choice. What does that mean? That means the little choices and the big choices, if you got to go to the store for bread, don't tell yourself, I'm going to go to the store today at two o'clock to get bread. And you can say, well, listen, I got kids, I have to get bread. No, you don't. You could have went to the store yesterday, you could go to the store today at seven, give yourself empower yourself with the Gift of Choice. That's number one. Number two, what is real? Well, you know what, the sun's gonna rise tomorrow. I know that for real. You know, so whatever is real to you do. But the other thing too, I just want to say is, get a hold of your triggers early on, get a hold of your triggers early on, and triggers are going to happen, the emotional flooding, the flashbacks are going to happen early on, get a hold of your triggers, understand that triggers are here to inform us not threaten us may you know and do some techniques to get rid of your triggers, whether that's put a rubber band around your wrist and snap it. Ask yourself also is this thought is this trigger helping me to become the new Healed person I'm working hard on becoming. So there's a lot of tips and techniques, those are just some

Mardi Winder-Adams: 00:23:17

Yeah, and I know that that's part of the coaching that you work with people on. And so this it does take somebody to guide you through this. Because you only know what you know what you don't know. You can't expect to implement these strategies if you don't even know they exist. So this is the value of having somebody like Mr. J, who is a coach that is trained in this to really step you through the process. challenge you a little bit I'm guessing too, but also really work with you and be that be that support person. So as we're winding up is there you given a ton of information. So thank you, I love the stories, too, that really helped me to identify with exactly what you were talking about. So what's kind of a summary idea or a top of the mind thought that you want people to remember from this conversation when they when they turn off their radio or unplugged their ear thingies what? What's the thing you want them to remember?

Mr. Jay: 00:24:14

So I one of the big things I just want to say immediately after any betrayal is and this is hard, because our filter now is screwed. Don't believe everything you think especially after betrayal, because your filters now all screws here. But one of the big reasons people stay stuck is because they run things through their own filter. And this is what I want people to take away. Other people cause us pain, we cause our suffering. Don't keep running things through your own filter. Because our filter is skewed and betrayal hits our insecurities. So what we do is we start to ruminate and narrate I was ugly. That's why they did this. I didn't take care of the kids. That's why they did this and I always say we narrate then we ruminate and then we we marinate. And once we marinate, we start changing the neural pathways in our brain. So catch that negative narration at the get. So you don't go into rumination and marination. Other people give us pain, we give ourselves suffering.

Mardi Winder-Adams: 00:25:12

Love that thought. And we've had a couple of people on with NLP training that have talked about that. So this all ties in. So this has been phenomenal. Thank you so much for all your wisdom, insight and information. If people want to connect with you, Mr. J, if they want to learn more about you, if they want to get in touch with you about working with you, what's the best place for them to go?

Mr. Jay: 00:25:33

I have the easiest website on the planet. I think it's Mr. J relationship. coach.com. But let me just quickly say this, even if people don't want to work with me, on my website, there's tons of free resources, including a YouTube channel that we're every day I upload tips on trauma, healing, and so forth. So Mr. J relationship coach.com. Even if you never want to talk to me, please just come and take advantage of the many free resources.

Mardi Winder-Adams: 00:25:58

Love that and I am going to encourage people to definitely take advantage of that. I think it's something that we all can use because I think we've all been through some kind of betrayal in our life. So again, thank you so much for your time and your valuable information. And I look forward to checking out your YouTube channel.

Mr. Jay: 00:26:16

Thank you. Appreciate your time.