What is Betrayal Trauma?

There are many types of trauma that present to the clinic. One, perhaps, overlooked trauma is that of betrayal trauma. This unique type of trauma refers to the psychological and emotional injury when someone is betrayed by a person or relationship that they depended on for safety, care, trust or survival. Moreover, this can also occur in relation to a system.

What sets betrayal trauma apart from other forms of trauma is that it is not only about the ‘what’ but also about the ‘who’. This is especially the case when the source of harm is also the source of attachment and protection. The source of love, authority or security. When this occurs, the impact can be particularly damaging.

How Betrayal Trauma is Different from other Trauma

Most commonly, people tend to associate trauma with fear-based events and threats to life such as accidents, assaults, crimes or natural disasters. Whilst the impact of these is not to be downplayed and are often deeply traumatic, betrayal trauma adds an additional level of complexity to the traumatic experience.

In betrayal trauma, two things need to happen in concert.

The individual senses danger (in the mind and/or body)
The person needs the betrayer for connection, safety, security (housing or financial) or belonging

The end result leaves a profound and deep internal conflict. Often it is the case that the mind and body tend to adapt in ways that prioritise maintaining the relationship or system over adequately responding to or recognising the harm. In essence, this survival process leads one to ‘attach to’ rather than ‘run away from’ the source of danger.

Common situations where betrayal trauma can occur

There are many situations that can give rise to betrayal trauma. These are listed below:

1 – Childhood and Caregiving Relationships

Emotional neglect
Chronic invalidation
Physical abuse (by caregiver/trusted adult)
Sexual abuse (by caregiver/trusted adult)
Unpredictable, unsafe or emotionally unavailable caregivers

2 – Adult Relationships

Repeated deception, lying or gaslighting
Emotional abuse
Coercive control
Infidelity combined with denial, blame, and/or minimisation
Boundary violations being dismissed or reframed as ‘normal’

3 – Within Institutions and Systems

Being harmed or abused within organisations meant to provide safety (and/or justice)
Having reports mishandled, dismissed, covered up or other similar forms of corruption
Experiencing retaliation and/or silencing for speaking up

In the third instance, this can also be referred to as institutional betrayal and often significantly compounds trauma symptoms.

Difficulties in recognising betrayal trauma

Sadly, one of the most common experiences of betrayal trauma can be the struggle to name the experience. Many people will go on to experience:

Permeation of self-doubt (‘maybe it wasn’t that bad’, ‘I’m over-reacting’)
Shame or self-blame (‘I should have known’, ‘it’s my fault for not realising sooner’)
Emotional numbing or disconnection
Difficulty trusting others, themselves and/or feeling isolated
Confusion about their own experiences and memories of the events (‘maybe I am remembering this wrong’)
Staying in harmful situations longer than they expected to (‘I just stayed to clear my name’)

Often, these responses can develop because recognising the full reality can be difficult, or threatening on an emotional, relational or practical level.

In cases of relationships, people can often hold onto hope of returning to previously positive experiences from earlier in the relationship (e.g. ‘we got along so well at the start’).

Common signs of betrayal trauma

There are many signs and symptoms that can arise from betrayal trauma for those who are impacted. Such as:

Strong emotional reactions to secrecy, dishonesty, or broken promises
Hypervigilance in relationships (‘I felt so paranoid when we were together’)
Push-dynamics in close relationships
Intrusive thoughts and rumination about what may (or may not) have happened
Shame-based beliefs such as ‘I’m not good enough’, or ‘I can’t trust my judgment’
Physical symptoms such as headaches, insomnia, nausea, and chest pains

It is important to understand that not everyone will go on to experience all of these symptoms and that they may appear long after the original betrayal had occurred. Moreover, these can tend to persist well past the situation that gave rise to the betrayal trauma.

The impact of betrayal trauma over time

When betrayal trauma is left unaddressed, it can impact:

Self-esteem and self-confidence (believing ‘I’m not good enough’)
The victim’s identity and sense of self (shrinking oneself to accommodate the other)
Relationship patterns (e.g. entering new relationships, feeling safe to communicate with one’s partner)
Boundaries and decision-making (being fearful of setting boundaries or trusting one’s own judgment)
One’s overall sense of safety in the world (often referred to as shattering of assumptions)

Many people find that betrayal trauma often shapes how they relate to others and can continue even into relationships where there is no current or historical threat.

How does betrayal trauma show up in relationships?

1 – Chronic and repeated deception or hidden lives

Betrayal trauma often develops when one partner maintains a double reality.

This can take the form of

Ongoing lying about important aspects of life (friends, routines, finances, substance use, online behaviour)
Secret accounts, phones, messages or identities
Repeated minimisation or denial of concerns raised

The most damaging part of this is not simply the deception itself, but the erosion of shared reality. The injured partner begins to doubt their perceptions and intuition and is often asked to accept the reality of the perpetrator.

2 – Infidelity combined with gaslighting and/or blame

Infidelity can be extremely traumatic for the other partner on its own. This is especially likely to lead to betrayal trauma when there is also

Denial despite evidence
Blame shifting (‘you’re making things up in your mind’)
Rewriting history (‘remember when you hurt me’)
Pressure to ‘move on’ without making changes or repair (‘it’s in the past’)

In cases such as this, the trauma is not only about the infidelity, it is also about the invalidation that accompanies the incident.

3 – Emotional abuse and coercive control

Betrayal trauma can also occur where there are repeated violations of emotional safety.

Intimidation and threats (physical or reputational)
Manipulation and gaslighting
Monitoring movements, behaviours (friends, spending) or restricting autonomy
Implicit and explicit threats of abandonment, reputational damage or removal of access to shared children
Unpredictability via withholding of intimacy and communication (silent treatment, selective intimacy)

4 – Repeated boundary violations

Trust can be eroded over time through consistent violations of boundaries. Often these are mocked, dismissed or ignored leading to further traumatisation.
This can include:

Sexual pressure or coercion
Sharing of private information with explicit requests not to
Disregarding limits around contact with others (e.g. maintaining contact with previous affair partner)
Persistently crossing emotional or physical boundaries

This leads to betrayal trauma when the injured partner comes to understand that their needs are not taken seriously within the relationship. This can often lead them to shrinking their needs over time or avoid sharing their needs altogether.

5 – Emotional abandonment within the relationship

Often betrayal does not involve obvious wrongdoing. It can also arise from emotional absence within the relationship where it would normally be expected.

Being physically absent at times of need (e.g. emergencies)
Persistent emotional unavailability
Being relied on for support with little or no reciprocation
Dismissal of distress (‘you’re being too sensitive’)
Feeling unseen, unheard, or unprotected during vulnerable moments

Over time, this can lead to deep feelings of betrayal of relationship expectations.

6 – Invalidation or dismissive responses to harm

Another source of betrayal trauma is how harm is responded to and not simply to the harm itself. This can often take the form of

Minimising the impact (‘it wasn’t that bad’)
Defensiveness of one’s actions instead of empathy
Refusal to take ownership or accountability
Shifting the focus to the injured person’s reaction (‘it was how you spoke to me that was the problem’)

When repair is repeatedly made impossible, problems are not able to be resolved. In these cases, the relationship itself becomes unsafe for the injured partner.

7 – Power imbalances that are exploited

Betrayal trauma can also occur when one partner has a disproportionate balance of power. This can often create:

Financial dependence
Immigration or visas dependence (e.g. partner visas)
Health or disability-related dependence (withholding a partner’s wheelchair)
Age, status or authority differences (using one’s position or public reputation)

When this power is used in a self-serving manner, trust between partners becomes fundamentally violated.

8 – Attachment-based betrayals

For many people, betrayal trauma can also link to attachment injuries such as

Threatening to leave (to gain compliance)
Withdrawal of affection, attention or commitment
Abandonment during times of crisis
Inconsistent caregiving such as push-pull dynamics

These experiences can often erode the fundamental belief that is so crucial to safe and supportive relationships (‘my partner is there for me’, ‘I am safe and valued in this relationship’)

Why these experiences are so impactful

Betrayal trauma develops when the injured partner realises ‘the person I relied on for emotional safety was also the source of harm’
This leads to:

Confusion
Self-doubt
Shame
Difficulty trusting oneself and one’s own judgment
Difficulty trusting others

For many people who have been impacted by these kinds of relationship dynamics, they can find that they stay in these relationships longer than they would expect. This is not due to weakness but due to attachment and survival systems that are engaged earlier within the relationship.

Often it is the case that these kinds of relationships start out as being seemingly caring, supportive, and nurturing. This, in turn, creates a profound, attachment-driven bond leading to a deep sense of belonging and emotional safety within the relationship.

It is often not until later in the relationship that these kinds of behaviour begin to surface, leading the injured partner to yearn for the earlier version of the relationship that once existed.

A common strategy used by those with narcissistic traits is the use of ‘love-bombing’. This is a manipulation technique aimed at showering with love and affection and utilising mirroring to make the relationship seem ‘perfect’. This is often what secures the bond in the first place and leads to the injured partner holding out hope for a return to this initial ‘honeymoon period’.

Common clinical questions

Often survivors of betrayal trauma attend therapy asking:

‘Why didn’t I leave sooner?’
‘Why didn’t I see it?’
‘Why am I still affected?’

These types of questions usually arise through adaptive responses to threat and are not a personal failure. Often it is those who are most caring and nurturing that are the most severely impacted.

How EMDR can help

EMDR is an evidence-based intervention which aims to alleviate the distress associated with traumatic events and experiences. The aim of EMDR is to assist individuals to reprocess events so that they no longer hold the same emotional charge or memories that have become ‘stuck’.

When specifically referring to betrayal trauma, EMDR can assist by:

Processing specific memories related to the betrayal, discovery of betrayal and of invalidation or dismissal of these events
Reduce the overall emotional intensity linked to reminders and triggers of the event(s)
Addressing cognitive changes such as shame-based beliefs and self-blaming beliefs
Supporting reconnection with oneself and trusting in one’s own judgement with increased clarity
Integrating earlier experiences that may have increased vulnerability to betrayal
Understanding the impact of the betrayal and building optimism for the future

Because of the nature of betrayal trauma involving attachment injuries and additional layers of complexity, EMDR therapy is specifically tailored around the individual’s needs to allow for a suitable pace for therapy to be most effective.

Giving compassion to the self

Often it is the case that individuals experiencing betrayal trauma blame themselves for the events that formed the betrayal trauma. It’s important to understand that their responses are based on what made sense at the time and with what little or distorted information that was available to them.

Many times, perpetrators of betrayal trauma utilise a range of tools of manipulation, gaslighting and deception in order to carry out their actions. This often results in feelings of confusion, numbness, minimising the perception of harm, staying in the relationship and or doubting themselves.

If you would like further information about how we can help, please do not hesitate to contact us. It’s important to know that help is available and that it is possible to move towards a more positive and optimistic future.

What is Betrayal Trauma?

Understanding this Unique Trauma Subtype