We create stories to give us the illusion that we can interpret other people’s behavior. Such stories appear in our minds many times each day. It happens when we hear a message with an abrupt tone, or the boss says, “See me after lunch.” The purpose is to give us a sense of being in control, often by anticipating worst-case scenarios. Planning a response to possible negative outcomes can be good in some cases. This tendency needs to be explored if you consistently produce feelings of being rejected.
The Child and Protector create stories that produce automatic suspicion and self-doubt. Their intention is to shield you from criticism and betrayal, but these stories are not helpful in building trust in yourself and others. They create suffering and barriers between you and those you love.
None of us can control all our thoughts and feelings. However, you can learn to recognize when you are building a story from your thoughts. The Adult needs to be invited to step in and meet a painful idea with a positive and realistic counter thought. For example, the thought that someone who hasn’t called must have forgotten you can evoke the troubling feelings of rejection. Choosing a different story, one where you imagine that the lapse is unintentional, eases the Child’s fears and calms the Protector. You can then feel empathy for the other person and cope with the situation in a relaxed and grown-up manner.
Victory over destructive story making begins when you believe you have a choice about the stories you tell yourself. You can see ways to do this by understanding how each of your three core selves handles betrayal.
How the Three Selves Handle Betrayal
Trust is the powerful foundation that supports every aspect of our lives. The three core selves have separate reactions when trust is threatened.
The Child Reacts with Helplessness
The Child has a great deal to lose when friends or loved ones betray you. The fear of loss can plunge the Child into helplessness. What is your first reaction to this list?
Three close friends go out to dinner and don’t invite you.
A friend offers only a weak “thank you” and barely looks at the gift you made by hand.
A date greets you at the door with, “Oh, I forgot you were coming.”
Your partner neglects a very important errand, despite your diligence on his or her behalf.
The Child is left holding its feelings all alone. No one asks if you are upset. Imagine five-year-olds facing these disappointments. They would react by pouting and wondering what is wrong with them. Their concern is to hang on to whatever remnants of belonging still exist.
As an adult, you can’t call your friends and pout, or berate an ingrate by telling him or her how much care you put into a gift. As for the date that you prepared for, you may never want to go out with them again. The partner issue can leave you feeling sorry for yourself, which is not effective in building trust and intimacy.
You’re helpless to do anything with the Child’s voice without making yourself feel worse. That’s what your Protector is for.
The Protector Leaps to Right and Wrong
The Protector helps the Child escape pain. This older and resourceful self achieves this using anger and self-righteousness and by rejecting those who hurt you.
Getting angry feels good because it counteracts fear and self-pity. In each of the circumstances listed above, the Protector is convinced that the others are clearly wrong. The Protector will list reasons for never seeing any of them again.
Your voice may sound cold when dealing with the people who have hurt you, or you may avoid them if your stress response is freeze or flight. Anger might leak through by neglecting telephone calls or through sarcastic remarks. This hides your pain and prevents more hurt because you stay on the defensive.
The Child’s and Protector’s manner of handling things leaves the ones who hurt you in charge of addressing the betrayal. An apology may elicit enough warmth to allow reconnection. You might respond by saying, “It’s no big deal.” Love and intimacy can be bridged over the painful part, but it often leaves a scar that doesn’t completely heal.
The Adult Responds to the Whole Story
The Child’s and Protector’s physical and emotional responses are unmistakable. Your reactions let you know that something might be amiss. The Adult self can then assess the situation from a larger perspective.
A healthy Adult response begins with acknowledging your instinctive reactions and then looks at likely stories to explain them. The Adult’s role is to face the fear by admitting your concerns and mistakes, and then asking for honest dialogue. Your Adult self recognizes that this makes you vulnerable to real rejection, but helps you also understand that such openness more often results in increased trust and understanding. Choosing to trust is an essential skill of the Adult self.
The Adult responds to feeling betrayed by considering alternatives, including the possibility that the trust was misplaced. The Adult moderates fears of rejection and possible separation with the faith that honesty and compassion will produce healthy results.
Overcoming Uncertainty
You deserve to feel certain of where you stand with someone you care about. There is a dread of possible betrayal if you don’t know where you stand with each other. Conversation is stilted between you so that you won’t reveal anything that could lead to rejection. This causes both people to be guarded.
The first test after someone hurts you is to dispel the doubts that limit your confidence in what feels real. Do this by asking to hear the explanation of the other. Listen with respect and feel what resonates.
Challenging Uncertainty After Betrayal
“If I can understand it, I can stand it,” will help you survive the uncertainty caused by upsets. Ask yourself if the action feels deliberate, careless, unintentional, or subconscious. It may be just one of the above, but often it feels like a mixture. Asking this question begins your Adult’s entry onto the scene.
Listen to what the other person has to say after an emotional storm has quieted. Ask real questions. Listen carefully to the story you are told. It might be the truth or a variation of the truth. If you are not convinced, what feelings are coming through that make you doubt the story?
Whether or not you trust the answer depends on how it matches with your own experience. Put the relationship on hold for a while, so you can assess the situation from an Adult viewpoint. Take time alone and do the following exercise.
Self-Discovery Exercise: Asking Your Adult to Assess a Betrayal
This exercise gives your Adult a chance to practice looking at a betrayal without having to act. It will help you understand what you think and believe after a betrayal, and it will make you more aware of the feelings and doubts that limit your ability to trust.
In your journal:
Choose an issue that has affected your trust with someone important to you. Practice on a small, recent event. Afterward, you can look at older, larger betrayals.
If you choose a betrayal that happened when you were a child, note how little you could have understood at the time. What has your Adult learned since then?
Write down the name of the betrayer and the specific betrayal. State what form you think the betrayal took, and then write your responses to each of the following questions. Note the emotions and physical sensations that arise.
How did the other person justify what was done to you?
What did you believe was his or her excuse?
What else was going on that you weren’t told about or that you wanted to know?
Did this person do this only to you? Were there selfish or cruel acts against others?
Have you ever done anything like this to the other person or to anyone? What is your story about that?
What stopped you from seeing this coming?
Did you do anything to deserve being treated this way?
Do you believe you were responsible in any way? Were you told it was your fault?
Should you quit the relationship?
What does this betrayal
remind you of? Name other times, people, and betrayals that come to mind.
Do a brief Trust Check-In to see how your Child and Protector are responding to the betrayals. If they’re feeling a little shaken, gently remind them that you are not taking any actions, just remembering. Take a walk or call a friend.
The following excerpt from a story that appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle demonstrates the power our early experiences continue to have over us:
The husband of a woman I once knew committed suicide in his early forties. Afterward, the woman and her two young, now fatherless children endured a kind of exile. They hadn’t died, but essential supports fell away. Even some close family members pulled back, fearing that if they extended the usual kindness and invitations to Thanksgiving dinner they would be called upon to carry a much heavier burden—to offer financial help, for example. In time, the diminished family of three wove a new social web composed of some loyalists from the past and some gradually acquired new friends. Back in the city after years in the suburbs, the widow trained herself for a different career and flourished in it. She remarried, happily. The kids went to good schools, where they excelled.
The woman’s son, now a middle-aged man with children of his own, told me that those childhood years in the wilderness of the socially cutoff had left him forever wary. He’s slow to invest fully in a new friendship, and hypersensitive to slights, real and imagined. A friend’s inattention or silence always conjures his childhood time of sudden, devastating, inexplicable loss and rejection. When you’ve been treated like a pariah, it’s hard not to feel like one. You never stop sensing that the seemingly solid ground you walk on may at any time split open without warning. (Leider 2003, 68)
It might be tempting to stay in the role of innocent victim, but that leaves you unable to trust anyone very deeply. You can change your relationship to your past by adopting new habits and skills that support the wisdom and compassion you want to experience.
The next step is to see new options and express the truth as you see it. This gives you the power to know what you want. Only then can you share your needs and dreams with those whom you choose to trust.
Knowing What You Want
You have an innate sense of knowing what you want. Telling others what you want and listening to what they want forms the basis for deep and lasting relationships. You can begin the process by considering what you don’t want. The trail of broken trusts holds lots of good information, and each day brings new ideas.
Avoid Blocking Intimacy
We create a major block to intimacy when we tell ourselves that we already know what the other person will say. This stops us from considering what we want. We soon forget how important discussing what you want is to maintaining any relationship.
Think about what isn’t working for you and focus on what you want to try. We often wait until a relationship is at its breaking point. When someone demands, “What do you want?” it doesn’t invite our best response. Most of us feel our minds go blank or are overcome with anger, which blocks a coherent answer.
The following foundation skill will encourage you to discover what you want to change in a relationship after you have felt betrayed. This process is inspired by the work of John Gray (1994) and Laurel Mellin (2003). Repeat this with as many people and incidents as you wish. The more you do, the more efficient you’ll become in knowing what you want.
Second Foundation Skill: Finding Out What You Want
Practice on a recent event when your Child was stuck in helplessness or your Protector couldn’t let go of being right. Working on a recent hurt can produce insights about your past. An example is at the end, so read all the way through to calm your Child’s fears.
In your journal:
Write a short letter to a person about a current issue of betrayal that upsets you. If you don’t have one right now, choose an issue that bothered you recently. Don’t choose the worst event in your life, at least not yet. This letter will not be sent, so be as outrageous as you need to be. Allow all the feelings out of your body and onto the page. Don’t judge any thoughts or worry about sentence structure.
Complete each sentence with spontaneous, emotional language. Answer in whatever order you prefer, going back and forth between the questions as different emotions arise. This should take about twenty minutes to complete and should be done in one sitting. (Write by hand instead of using the computer, at least the first few times you do this exercise.)
Dear __________, I am writing this letter to tell you how I feel about __________ (drinking too much at my birthday; not returning my calls; not giving me the raise you’d promised).
I am angry that you __________. (Keep the words simple so that a child can relate to it; express “stuck” feelings of hate; call the person names; make “you” statements.)
I am upset that __________. (Be straightforward with no apology or effort to understand or forgive.)
I am scared that __________. (Include your fears about bringing up this topic and the consequences of telling your feelings; explore any fears that may have played into the scene.)
I feel guilty that __________. (Acknowledge your part in the relationship. Perhaps you feel sorry for the pain that the other person experiences in his or her life. This is to recall compassion for another’s suffering, regardless of the cause.)
This reminds me of __________. (Let the feelings bring back memories of being treated in a similar way. This is the most important realization and can help you separate the present from a painful past.)
What I want to happen is __________. (Ask for what you wished had happened, and what you want from the other, to begin healing the relationship or to end it. Don’t block anger and other feelings as they come up. Ask for what you want even if you don’t believe it’s possible.)
What I appreciate about you is __________. (This might be only, “Thank you for reading this.” It can also be a remembrance of how much you appreciate specific qualities the other person has.)
Your signature __________. (Sign it however you want.)
Here is an example: Two friends formed a walking club and didn’t invite you to join. Your “Finding Out What You Want” letter might read as follows.
Dear Friends,
I am so angry that you excluded me. You had to have talked about me and decided I wasn’t acceptable. How would you feel if I did the same? Which I never would because I am a nice person.
To say I am hurt is too small. This exclusion cuts me deeply. I’ve tried too hard to be good friends with each of you, and now I feel like I’ve lost two friends at once. My heart is broken.
I’m afraid something is wrong with me. This brings up all my feelings of not being chosen for teams, and being so lonely growing up—the oddball who studied all the time and wasn’t popular. I feel scared that you didn’t want to include me. I don’t know what to do.
I don’t feel guilty, but I guess I’m sorry that I am so battered by this I can’t even call one of you and ask what is wrong. I’m sorry you didn’t think you were important enough to me that I’d care. I know you’re good people, but ...
It reminds me of my childhood. I felt this a lot with my father always choosing my brother to spend time with him, not including me.
What do I want? I’d like an apology or explanation from you. You’ve not contacted me about anything since last week, and I want you to be my friends. I want to find out if there’s anything I’ve done to deserve exclusion. I’d also like to be strong enough to allow people to get together without my involvement without me feeling wretched about myself. I want to feel okay and for you to feel good, too. This is not the end of the world, and if for some reason I have ignored signals from you, I want to learn them. I will survive.
What I appreciate: You are strong and honest people. I feel now that I can approach you with this. You’ll be honest with me and I can tell you how I feel and what I want. If this is the end of our relationship, I want to think of the good times, and how much I
love and admire you both.
xoxo, Me
Working through negative stories of feeling betrayed helps clarify your authentic feelings and needs. It is often the case that there is no intention to reject you. For example, the two friends from this example might have needed privacy to talk over a personnel problem at their business. Still, every time you acknowledge hurt feelings and release the pain, you increase your ability to cope whenever you feel betrayed.
Preparing for the Next Chapter
It can be just as devastating to realize you’ve hurt someone as it is to feel betrayed by another. The next chapter will give you new ways to view how you can betray someone you love. The exercises from chapter 5 can be used to help you sort through the healthy guilt and old shame that could be limiting your self-worth.
Practice the exercises and questions from chapter 4 as new issues come up. Your ability to be trustworthy increases when you improve your skills in understanding betrayal by others.
Chapter 5
How You Can Betray Another
How can I mend a break in trust?
This chapter will help you sort out what happens when you have betrayed someone you care about. When you feel betrayed, your response is based on your history and the stories you tell yourself. When you betray others, you observe the betrayal from a different perspective.
Guilt is a powerful teacher but a terrible master. You can become more trustworthy by studying how you have hurt others. Some forms of betrayal will be painfully familiar, while others may be only in your past. Practice compassion for yourself as you explore this difficult topic.
How We Can Hurt and Betray Others
This chapter will explore four different forms of betrayal:
passive dishonesty and avoiding conflict
The Courage to Trust Page 7