Therapy for Betrayal Trauma
When someone you trusted shattered that trust, and you're left trying to make sense of what was real and what wasn't.
When Trust Gets Destroyed
Betrayal trauma happens when someone you depended on—a partner, family member, or close friend—violates your trust in a significant way. Infidelity, lies, hidden lives, financial deception, emotional affairs. The specifics vary, but the impact is the same: your reality got rewritten, and you're left questioning everything.
This isn't just about being hurt. It's about discovering that your understanding of your relationship, your partner, maybe even yourself, was built on lies. And now you're supposed to figure out what to do with that information while your nervous system is in crisis mode.
This might sound familiar:
You're consumed by intrusive thoughts and mental replays—trying to piece together what was real.
You're hypervigilant, checking things, looking for more lies, unable to settle.
You don't trust your own judgment anymore—if you missed this, what else are you missing?
You swing between rage, numbness, and desperate attempts to understand why this happened.
People expect you to "move on" or "make a decision," but you're still processing the fact that this happened at all.
You feel like you're going crazy—the emotional intensity is unlike anything you've experienced.
You're ashamed that you didn't see it coming, or that you're having trouble leaving, or that you're considering staying.
What Therapy Actually Looks Like
I work with betrayal trauma using a trauma-informed approach that recognizes this as a legitimate traumatic experience, not just relationship drama. Your nervous system is responding to a real threat—the person you trusted turned out to be dangerous to your wellbeing.
Stabilizing your nervous system—you're in fight-or-flight mode, and we need to address that before anything else. This includes understanding the trauma response and why you're reacting the way you are.
Processing what happened without getting stuck in obsessive loops. Making sense of the betrayal, the relationship, and what you missed or ignored along the way.
Rebuilding trust in yourself—your ability to trust your judgment, read situations accurately, and protect yourself. The betrayal shook your confidence in your own perceptions.
Working through shame and self-blame—you didn't cause this, but you might be blaming yourself anyway. We need to separate responsibility clearly.
Making decisions from a grounded place—whether to stay or go, how to move forward, what you need. These decisions shouldn't be made while you're in crisis mode.
My Approach
I use an integrative, trauma-informed approach that combines somatic work, narrative therapy, ACT, and psychodynamic therapy. What this means in practice: we work with both your body's trauma response and your need to make sense of what happened. We also look at relationship patterns—sometimes betrayal trauma taps into older wounds or patterns that need addressing.
This work is paced carefully. We're not rushing you to forgive, forget, or decide. We're helping you process a traumatic experience and figure out what you actually want, separate from what others think you should do.
