Is A Focus On "Betrayal Trauma" Betraying Us?
Getting the right care for wives and partners is a slippery slope. Some of us fought long and hard to dislodge the therapeutic abuse tradition of weaponizing our trauma symptoms against us and labeling us as codependent, co-addict or co-sex addict. But misogyny is resilient. It re-invents itself with new branding and fools many. We need to take a closer look at what “betrayal trauma” is actually selling us. Is it another cloaking device?
You may be surprised to learn that it’s not just two words that try to make sense of what men called sex addicts do to us. It’s an idea that became a theory that, in my opinion, became a containment strategy to keep the lid on the full picture of harm these men perpetrate upon us. So, let’s review some basics and follow the breadcrumbs.
What is Betrayal Trauma?
Here are the “Short Definitions” on dynamic.uoregon.edu/jjf/defineBT.html, from the “Freyd Dynamics Lab” (Jennifer Freyd originated the idea of Betrayal Trauma):
Betrayal Trauma: The phrase "betrayal trauma" can be used to refer to a kind of trauma independent of the reaction to the trauma. From Freyd (2008): Betrayal trauma occurs when the people or institutions on which a person depends for survival significantly violate that person’ s trust or well-being: Childhood physical, emotional, or sexual abuse perpetrated by a caregiver are examples of betrayal trauma.
Betrayal Trauma Theory: From Sivers, Schooler, & Freyd (2002): A theory that predicts that the degree to which a negative event represents a betrayal by a trusted needed other will influence the way in which that events is [sic] processed and remembered.
All of this can sound perfectly sensible to wives and partners. And most importantly, it validates the arena of abuse that I believe results in the most immediate devastation to us. As I wrote last week, this is the arena of the spirit where core values, spiritual traditions, the stuff of vows and promises, etc. are chosen and ordered with primacy of place in our lives. In that arena we give things like trust, loyalty, honesty, vows (and more) primacy in both guiding and interpreting our lives. So, the meaning of our lives is mainly determined by the arena of the spirit. In the discovery of our life partner’s secret life, it is our spirit that takes the first hit and feels the damage. Most of our first trauma symptoms, I believe, originate here.
Sounds like we are on track with betrayal trauma, doesn’t it?
So here’s the thing. If you research the trajectory of thinking and assumptions that begin to pile up from these humble beginnings of “betrayal trauma,” the alarm bells start ringing—or they should! And here is one link that makes the codependency connection clear: https://www.relationalrecovery.com/what-we-treat/betrayaltrauma/adult/codependency/#:~:text=Codependency%20is%20a%20set%20of,and%20solid%20sense%20of%20self.
For example, one of the misogynist sideshows of betrayal trauma is something called “betrayal blindness”. From the same site mentioned (first) above, we read this excerpt:
Betrayal Blindness and Institutional Betrayal: Betrayal blindness is the unawareness, not-knowing, and forgetting exhibited by people towards betrayal. The term "betrayal blindness" was introduced by Freyd (1996), and expanded in Freyd (1999) and Freyd and Birrell (2013) in the context of Betrayal Trauma Theory. This blindness may extend to betrayals that are not traditionally considered "traumas," such as adultery, inequities in the workplace and society, etc. Victims, perpetrators, and witnesses may display betrayal blindness in order to preserve relationships, institutions, and social systems upon which they depend. (Also, see Eileen Zurbriggen's essay on Betrayal Trauma in the 2004 Election.)
So let’s just de-construct this.
According to betrayal trauma theory, the “unawareness, not-knowing, and forgetting” wives and partners supposedly exhibit about their husband’s or boyfriend’s secret life is not because we are not aware, do not know, and never knew of it-- therefore don’t “forget it”. No, it’s because we subconsciously choose blindness. We blind ourselves in order to “preserve relationships institutions, and social systems upon which they depend”. So, this is nothing more much than a slightly elevated state of what used to be called co-dependence. It’s another theory that depends on believing it knows more about what we know and don’t know, than we do. After ten years I’m really sick of people still trying to assert that at some level I “knew” about my ex’s secret life. I will not humor this newer version of that “same old, same old.”
Betrayal Blindness is not ours. It belongs to the Betrayer.
The second flag is about why a woman would feel so hopeless at the prospect of leaving a relationship so bad as the one she’s in—so hopeless that she feels immobilized. In my opinion it isn’t because she’s blinded herself. It’s because misogyny has taught a toxic combination of lies and truths about her overall chances at making a success of her life if she leaves her abuser behind. Let’s lay some of those things out more clearly as questions she must face.
Will anyone believe the story she tells?
In how many ways has she been socialized to discount her own experience of life---throughout her life?
How, throughout her life, has she experienced being harassed, assaulted, treated as a sex object, by a man or a social group, organization, or institution controlled by men without any consequence to the man or any advocacy for her in addressing it?
Has she, in fact, been punished for complaining about it?
How has she learned other female victims of male oppression and violence are treated if they report or complain?
What does she believe about her culture’s tolerance and support for men treating women with violence, injustice, and as sex objects?
How is that belief originated and perpetuated?
Will a therapist diminish the impact on her?
Will a therapist ask her to stay with him “for at least a year”?
Will a therapist tell her that it takes two to ruin a relationship?
Will her experience and wellbeing be any treatment industry therapist’s top priority?
Will a therapist or anyone (besides me) want to talk about the current and long-term impact on her physical health due to stress-triggered, stress related or stress-compounded symptoms and illnesses?
Will she be directed to have a complete physical exam including but not limited to a full panel of STD/STI testing?
Will her family support her emotionally?
How will she pay for the legal representation she will need in a divorce?
Will her social circle gather around her with compassion and support, or will they drop her like a lead balloon?
Will what happened be her own fault?
Will her faith community support her?
How many times as a child, teenager or young woman was she silenced, passed over for a boy, or done with less than a boy?
If he infected her with disease or harmed her physical well-being, will she be able to have him arrested or seek financial compensation?
Will the justice system recognize the harm he has done to her and the risks he has taken with her life?
Will she be physically and personally criticized so that she will bear the responsibility for his behaviors?
Will anyone identify what’s she’s been through as intimate partner violence?
Will anyone recognize how their children have been betrayed by how he protected his secret life over protecting them from loss and trauma?
Will she be able to get a job after putting her career aside for his?
If she gets a job will she be able to make a living off of the 72 cents she makes off every dollar a man makes doing a same or similar job?
I could go on and on and on. She may not know anything about his secret life. But she’s been taught to absorb misogyny. And when she does find out, she also knows leaving is not necessarily a simple choice.
The point here is that there is no such thing as betrayal blindness in us. It is almost the complete opposite. A woman has brilliant clarity bred in the bone and learned in the trenches of life as a female that the dangers of getting out of the relationship may be just as bad or worse than the dangers of staying in it. And if she’s making a decision that will affect not just her but also minor children, how terrible and tortuous is this situation for them all? This is not betrayal blindness. It’s betrayal survival learned in thousands of ways through our socialization into a culture of misogyny. We’ve been taught to live with betrayal. It’s in the air we breathe. Betrayal blindness actually belongs to the betrayer and those protecting him.
But wait, there’s more!
Let’s go back to that “bred in the bone” part to identify another critical element to consider before we accept theories incompetent to account for the facts of our lives. The field of epigenetics is revealing how trauma changes the mechanisms operating on our DNA and is passed on through the generations. So, before dealing with what women face in life once we leave the womb, we already have a dose of what our female ancestors endured coded into those mechanisms that engage our DNA.
Spare us the theories about our betrayal blindness. Our DNA already knows what misogyny has done to women. And then our culture underlines it with fresh cuts. We are traumatized and our survival instincts are trying to keep us alive in an overtly and covertly punishing context. We are everything but blind. This is not a level playing field and we must constantly weigh which of its “hills” we should die on. But if we say we didn’t know he had a secret life, we didn’t know. We innocently believed his love vows and promises meant the constant drip of misogyny would diminish, not increase. For this innocent hope we would be accused of being addicted to fantasy thinking by people like “expert” Claudia Black. (Did they finally take that terrible video off “The Meadows” site or is it still there?)
So, why has the phrase “betrayal trauma” resonated with women?
On its own, this phrase sounds exactly like what we’ve experienced and seems the best umbrella for the assault on our spirits that is generating our dominant and debilitating symptoms. But how many women know that this umbrella actually includes other ideas, approaches and theories that drag us backwards in treatment by ignoring the facts of our lives?
Indeed, how many of its proponent practitioners know? When it feels like the first time someone affirms the deep dispiriting of our lives, people stop doing the research and critical thinking needed to grapple with what this theory actually says about women.
Why the treatment industry might love “betrayal trauma”
Another factor in play is how the mainstream treatment industry has zealously adopted this language. In doing so they connect with women on that level of deep spiritual injury and keep the attention there. That means, once again, the correct language of intimate partner violence and domestic abuse has been constrained. By focusing on the spirit wounds of the client they nicely sidestep the universe of physical harm, risk, unfolding damage, and future health problems that will result from this experience for the woman. She might have hepatitis for decades before it attacks her liver. She may suffer autoimmune problems for years without making the connection to what he put her through. In other blogs I have discussed the long lists of physical damage that women endure for decades that is directly related to what he has done to her. Trauma takes a toll on our bodies with or without STD’s/STI’s.
Why wouldn’t the treatment industry want the spotlight on concrete facts of physical harm? Well, they want these women to stay with the men for at least another year, absorb all the risks of him re-offending which the industry tells her to expect. That is not what you suggest to a victim of domestic violence. Can asking these women to stay for a year be defended as in their clinical best interests? I don’t see how. So, it appears to me that industry practitioners keep the focus on betrayal trauma and betrayal blindness, etc.
For me, ground zero for women like us is intimate and domestic partner violence. In my opinion, until we are considered incarnational subjects in the narrative of what compulsive-abusive sexual relational disordered men do to the flesh and blood of their wives and partners, nothing has changed for us at all.
So, when you hear a lot of betrayal trauma talk and nothing about overt and covert abuse, intimate partner violence, or your practitioner doesn’t even know the actual theory of betrayal trauma and what it says about women, you’re probably talking to the wrong person. Clean-up in aisle 6. In my opinion, betrayal trauma is a containment strategy that ultimately fails its clients in spite of any good intentions to be found there. It is, indeed, a slippery slope. Buyer beware.
With you in the stew of misogyny, in the legacy of trauma in your DNA systems, and in the immeasurable value of your life deserving more than you dare to hope,
Diane.
P.S. Some of my resources were previously available on my Teachable.com school site “Still Learning”. I have moved them from that site and no longer host that school. But for anyone who has purchased video, audio, and/or print resources and had ongoing access to that site—please be assured that I will give you the links and passwords you now need to access them.
Just drop me a line. diane@yourstoryissafehere.com I would love to hear from you anyway!