Betrayal Trauma destabilizes your emotional, physical, and mental functioning, making it very challenging to determine whom to trust. While desperately looking for some solid ground to stand on in the middle of the quicksand your life has become, it can feel impossible to know who to turn to. After all, you thought you were on solid ground before and it turned out to be a sinkhole. Now it … [Read more...]
Embracing Failure in Recovery
By: Robert Rubinow, LPC The addicted mind is permeated with thoughts that bend one’s view of reality into an unrecognizable panorama. These negative thoughts—like little seedlings deposited by our adverse experiences of the world, and often, the families or cultures we grow up in—grow over time into an interconnected labyrinth of beliefs with deep and hazardous roots, like a dense, defended … [Read more...]
Weathering No Man’s Land, Part 2
The stretch of desert called no man’s land feels intolerable for betrayed partners. Nevertheless, the inherent manner in which healing betrayal trauma unfolds requires us to temporarily weather this untenable and painful stretch of territory. In some way, betrayed partners must figure out how to tolerate the intolerable for a period of time, and that is no small task. Years ago, when I was … [Read more...]
No Man’s Land, Part 1
When betrayed partners first enter treatment they are often mid-trauma.There is no post-traumatic stress; instead, they are dealing with ongoing traumatic stress wrought by newly discovered past betrayals, currently unfolding betrayals, and the very real fear of future discoveries and betrayals. Research shows very clearly that the antidote for relational distress resulting from attachment … [Read more...]
The Gifts of Gratitude in Recovery
“Gratitude is the ability to experience life as a gift. It liberates us from the prison of self-preoccupation.” ― John Ortberg It is easy during recovery—when our eyes are turned toward our failures and our hopes toward sobriety—to become lost in self-preoccupation and unhealthy introspection. After all, depending on our medicated self to “figure it all out” has been our modus operandi for a … [Read more...]
What You Have A Right To Know
Let’s talk about what you, as a betrayed partner, have a right to know about and be involved in when it comes to the unfaithful individual’s healing process. This topic can be very confusing for a lot of partners. For instance, you may have a spouse who is participating in a 12-Step program who keeps telling you, “You are not supposed to be in my program. You need to stay on your side of the … [Read more...]
But If Not
My sister is a potter. Well, really she is an artist and one of the ways she expresses all the pent-up artistic ability she carries around is through pottery. I get pictures texted to me at random times of vases, pots, sculptures, and platters, all thrown and carved, showing exquisite care and intricate detail. Often, these are pictures of the raw clay item waiting to be glazed and fired in the … [Read more...]
Gaslighting Part 2
We are still exploring the topic of Gaslighting this week. Last week’s blog defined Gaslighting as the emotional and psychological trauma that results when a person is chronically lied to or manipulated by a loved one. Then we looked at the first two types of Gaslighting: the straight-up lie, and reality manipulation. This week we are looking at the final two types: scapegoating, and … [Read more...]
Gaslighting Part 1
Somewhere in your healing process you may have heard the term Gaslighting. This word is used to describe the emotional and psychological trauma that results when a person is chronically lied to or manipulated by a loved one. This term originates from a movie released in 1944 called Gaslight. In this movie a woman, Paula, is seduced by and marries a charming man who deliberately and … [Read more...]
The Importance of Supportive Community in Recovery
“We have all known the long loneliness, and we have found that the answer is community.” -Dorothy Day I smiled the other day when I read the familiar bumper sticker on the car in front of me: “I was always the black sheep. Then I started going to meetings and found the rest of the herd.” Beyond a good chuckle, there is more truth embedded in that statement than we may realize. Without a … [Read more...]
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