Is Infidelity and Betrayal Trauma a Thinking Problem—or an Emotional Problem?
Is Infidelity and Betrayal Trauma a thinking problem, or is it an emotional problem?
In this video we are going to take a closer look because if you’re using the wrong type of solutions, it might help you understand why you’re still feeling stuck
If you have intrusive thoughts, think about how those thoughts make you feel.
If you could think those thoughts without feeling that way, would you still have a problem?
I’m going to say that when I have thoughts, those thoughts make me feel bad—or maybe I feel bad and then have those thoughts—but it’s really the way those thoughts make me feel that is the problem.
So, if you did not have the feeling with those thoughts, it would not be such a problem.
It is the feeling you are left with after experiencing infidelity or betrayal and then thinking about the experience. It is the way it makes you feel.
The thoughts reactivate the feelings, and they can lead to rumination and feeling even worse.
Common Emotional Symptoms of Infidelity and Betrayal Trauma
You might be having a hard time trusting again.
Trusting the person who cheated. Trusting yourself. And maybe even trusting other people who are not even related to what happened—innocent bystanders.
These are often symptoms of trauma.
You may not feel social. Aside from the embarrassment and humiliation of infidelity, you may not be able to get joy from things that used to bring you happiness, like hobbies and interests.
You may be feeling heartbreak, sadness, confusion, anxiety, anger, and you are trying to get away from those feelings.
You are no longer the person you used to be.
Your life is not the same.
And your partner is not quite the person you thought they were. You may be afraid that you have no idea who your partner really is. Your life was not quite the life you thought it was.
You are not really sure about anything anymore.
You are feeling stuck, and I know that it is not for lack of trying. I know that you have been doing everything that has worked before—meditation, yoga, talk therapy.
But, for some reason, they do not seem to be working as well with trauma.
Why Recovering From Betrayal Trauma Feels Different
Trauma affects you at a whole ’notha level.
It is not just a logical problem where, if you could just get more insight, more answers, more information, or use more logic, you could solve the problem.
So you are asking questions that you really do not want to know the answers to because they are painful to hear. The truth can be devastating. It can reactivate the feelings of D-Day, when you discovered they were cheating.
Not only that, but you are asking someone who has been lying to you to come clean and tell you the truth.
There was a reason they hid this stuff from you.
They did it because they never thought you would find out.
So talking about something they thought they would never have to talk about is probably not something they are doing willingly. This is why you get trickle truth.
And this is also why logic is not resolving the problem: because it is largely emotional.
Infidelity is not a logic problem. It is an emotional problem.
If you could have figured it out logically with your conscious mind, you would have figured it out already.
And here is the thing: if you cannot figure it out with your logical, conscious mind, no one else is going to be able to figure it out with theirs.
That is why, when you are trying to get answers from your therapist, the session is over before you get any.
You spend the entire session laying all the evidence out, and the session is over before you can actually come up with any solutions.
So you leave the session, you leave talk therapy, feeling triggered AF because, by talking about your problems, you have reactivated those feelings.
So, if you have been trying to solve an emotional problem with logic, insight, and understanding, you may want to try something different—something that actually works on emotional issues, which is what infidelity and betrayal trauma have left you with.
It has left you feeling a certain way that you are stuck in.
Why You Cannot Think Your Way Out of Betrayal
The other aspect of why what you have been doing has not worked is that you have been trying to solve the problem at the wrong level.
You are trying to bring everything you do not know up into your conscious awareness.
You are trying to seek out things that are hidden and make them known, like asking your partner what they did, with whom, when, how, and where.
And as new information trickles in, you are not really sure whether you can trust them to actually tell you the truth after they have been lying for so long.
Essentially, you are asking someone who has been lying to your face to tell you about something they never wanted to share with you.
If you are feeling resistance, it may be because they do not want to tell you. Because if they did, they would have told you already. Everything.
You are also trying to remember all the painful things about the infidelity. You are trying to bring what is hidden into plain sight.
You are trying to make what is unconscious—what you are not aware of—conscious. And you are bringing all the painful things that have happened into your conscious awareness.
As you talk about those things, you reactivate the feelings.
And this is what can cause you to stay stuck.
The emotions you are feeling when you get triggered are causing you to stay stuck.
How Trauma Keeps You Stuck
From a neuroscience perspective, when your brain is in emotional overwhelm, it cannot process and integrate. Integration is the process of putting all the fragments of this experience together.
Here is the thing:
You do not require any information from the person who cheated in order to heal.
You already have everything you need for your brain to be able to put this experience into the past—so it is no longer hijacking the present moment and how you feel in the present moment.
So the past is no longer sitting out there in your future.
That is one reason you may be feeling so hopeless: you are not able to see anything but more of the past in your future.
You are not quite sure how you are going to get unstuck because you have been doing everything that has worked before.
But betrayal trauma is different because you have been betrayed by someone you wholeheartedly trusted for your safety.
And the trauma may have even begun in childhood, where caregivers—the people you trusted for your safety and well-being—betrayed you.
Betrayal makes your brain catch on fire.
Your brain may have been on fire since childhood, and this betrayal just reignited it.
Every time you talk or think about the trauma in a highly emotional state, it can be like pouring gasoline on a fire to try to put it out.
You Don’t Need to Remember to Recover
You do not need to remember to recover.
You do not need to talk about the past to recover from the past, because it is all there in your subconscious anyway. So, you do not have to tell me every detail of what happened.
You do not need any more information at this point from the person who cheated to move forward and heal completely.
You will never know with absolute certainty whether what they are saying is the truth. And you may never know whether you have the whole truth.
So do not rely on what other people do or do not do for your recovery. If you do, you might be waiting for a really long time.
And you may always wonder whether the person who lied to your face is actually being honest with you now.
I am not saying that you have to leave that person or never have that person in your life again. Your superconscious can work all of that out.
But we need to stop trying to bring things into conscious awareness from wherever they are at the moment.
We need to work at the subconscious level.
Accelerated Hypnotherapy for Infidelity and Betrayal Trauma
This is where Accelerated Hypnotherapy can help.
It allows you to work at the subconscious level so that it is not painful AF and so that you do not have to keep revisiting the past.
Many people who have experienced infidelity and betrayal report symptoms associated with post-traumatic stress. Hypnotherapy can help create conditions that support the brain’s ability to process and integrate emotional experiences.
When you are triggered, crying, and upset, your brain is not in healing mode. It is moving in the opposite direction. You may be reinforcing the feelings and locking them in even more.
You are talking your way back into a burning building.
Accelerated Hypnotherapy keeps things subconscious so you do not have to consciously deal with every single painful detail.
It creates the right conditions for the brain to integrate all the fragments of what has happened—including fragments connected to childhood.
And when your brain has integrated, you may begin to feel like those things happened in the past.
The emotions will no longer be attached to the memories in the same way.
The past can begin to feel far away.
And that creates space in the present moment:
- Space to rediscover your authentic self.
- Space for safety, security, and trust.
- Space for self-love and self-compassion.
- Space for hope, joy, and happiness again.
Clients often find me after they have tried everything else. One of the biggest shifts I help people make is reconnecting with self-compassion.
The first step is simply taking one small step toward self-compassion and getting the kind of healing that actually works for trauma.
Solve trauma at the emotional level, and leave things unconscious or outside of your awareness.
What do you think about infidelity and betrayal trauma being an emotional—not a logical—problem?
Have you gotten any insights into why the things you have been doing might not be working?
Let me know in the comments. If this helped you, please like and subscribe.
I have left a link in the description, and let’s connect on the next one.
Listen, are you breathing just a little and calling it a life?
-MO
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