A short YouTube talk by Dr. Karol Darsa, Psy.D., introducing the concept of betrayal trauma — emotional distress that follows when a trusted person (commonly a romantic partner) violates trust, lies, or leads a double life. The speaker explains typical reactions (shock, anxiety, depression, isolation), contrasts two main response paths after discovery (attempting to repair the relationship with specialized therapy, or separating), and gives practical self-care and recovery advice (avoid self-blame and rebound relationships, seek specialized therapy/support groups, journaling, exercise, healthy coping). The video emphasizes taking time before decisions and consulting professionals. Closing tagline: “trauma equals disconnect. Healing equals reconnect.”
Chapters
Hi, I'm Dr. Carol Darca, author, psychologist, and founder of Reconnect Trauma Treatment center in Los Angeles. If you've experienced that your spouse or partner has a second life or has been cheating on you, you might still be experiencing betrayal trauma. A lot of people think trauma is all about being exposed to violence or war or abuse. But actually, there's something that's called betrayal trauma. When somebody that you trust betrays your trust, lies, or cheats on you. I'd like to talk today about a special betrayal trauma among couples when it's in a romantic relationship. But that's not the only time that can happen. It can happen in family or among friendships as well. So this type of trauma really refers to the pain and the emotional distress that occurs when the trusted person, again especially your spouse, is violating your trust. So it may create a shock in your life. It's almost like a rug being pulled out of your feet underneath you and can cause a lot of anxiety, a shock, depression, addiction, or an isolation. I want to read a quote for you from William Blake. It's easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend. And I think that is exactly why a betrayal with such a close person that you are sharing your life with is considered a trauma at this point. Because the more you love, the more you trust someone, the more fragile and vulnerable you are to be hurt. So when the betrayal comes from that person, really, a person's life is often quite altered or their world could be shattered. So sometimes, in fact, betrayal really represents almost like death. Yes. It's not that somebody died, but what you know as your life, what you know as your truth could be dead right now. So I have often experienced people who talked about finding out that their partners had a completely second hidden life. Right. With everything, it's almost like they were living a double life. And you can imagine the shock that a person feels in front of that. So let's talk about two possibilities. What happens after such a trauma. Either the person decides to stay with their partner and they want to work on it, or they decide that this relationship is not solvable, and so they go their separate ways. And I think those two ways are important to explore in different ways. What's very important is this decision has to be made only by you. So be very careful when you reach out to your family or loved ones or your friends, that they don't give you a direct suggestion or their opinion about what you should do. Because it's very easy to be out of a relationship and say, oh, you should break up or give it a chance. But please take your time. Ideally consult a professional to make that decision. And you might not be able to make a decision right away because it will take some time. And often we actually recommend as therapists to not make a decision in the moment of a crisis. So let's say that you decided to stay with your partner. There's a lot of steps in a way that you would have to take. I highly recommend in that time to go with a professional. There are people who are specialized in the betrayal trauma. They're specialized in understanding the dynamic of how you guys got there and how, and if it can be repaired. And there's, I'm not going to go through it, but there's a lot of process about telling the truth and the confession time and the support and, and the new rules of a relationship and how things could look like. Again, I would recommend that you do with the guidance of someone specialized in that, not just any couples therapist, but people who understand betrayal. Well, let's assume you decided this is not something that I can work with. I'm not going to give my partner another chance. Then you are looking for separation. And of course in that time I also recommend that you go for professional help. But if you can't, number one thing I want you to know is that do not blame yourself. Do not blame yourself for what happened. That doesn't mean do not explore of how it happened and why it happened. And yes, of course, in any relationship I think there's a contribution from both parts parties, but be careful that it doesn't turn into blame and a lack of like, oh, if I was only better, prettier, more handsome, more intelligent and if I did this and that, then I would have been maybe not cheated on. So because this, this is such a complex system of, of why a person betrays their partner, it's not as simple as oh, because we weren't doing well. In fact, it's a well known fact that some partners cheat on each other even if their marriage or their relationship is going well. So it's not an automatic assumption that they were not getting along or it wasn't working. So it could be a lot of different things. In fact, for those ones, I'm going to refer you to my favorite author and speaker, Esther Perel. If you really want to know more about infidelity and the betrayal, you can definitely read about that. So again, if you're separated from your partner, one other suggestion I have is avoid rebound relationships. So don't jump from this relationship into Something else without actually having the time to process, to grieve what happened. Because you're gonna need some grieving. There's again the death of the relationship that you knew and maybe the death of your illusion of what your family look like until today. So take your time well seek out success. Look for support in friendships and family, maybe giving some time to volunteering or focusing even on your work. Those could be some positive ways to deal with this loss and this shock. Definitely take care of your physical health and your mental health in general. Do not jump into wanting to use drugs or wanting to drink alcohol or wanting to just really lose yourself. You have to be careful about how you're trying to actually deal with that because there's dealing like positive distraction, but then there's dealing with actually trying to numb yourself. So if you try to numb yourself, then you still won't really learn the grieving and the lessons that, that you have to learn. So that's what I mean by taking care of your health. So exercise regularly. Do some mental exercises, meditation or yoga. And again, the support. Think about actually keeping a journal. If you've watched my other videos, I'm a big fan. Or if you read my book the Trauma Map, I'm a big fan of writing journal. Journaling daily about your feelings is actually the cheapest form of therapy and sometimes the most effective one. Don't keep it in really allowing yourself to talk about it without a shame, without embarrassment and without judgment is highly critical here. And that's where the journaling comes in because there's nobody that, that's going to judge you back. Again, be careful with who you are sharing with. And you, you might want to sort of warn people about how sensitive this topic is so that they're not jumping on you trying to really save you. You might say something like, I just want a listening ear. Please just, you know, be sensitive to how fragile this topic is for me. Be also careful during your conversations with your support system that despite all their intentions, they might actually say a lot of negative things about your part partner, which is also not really helpful because ultimately, no matter what they did, you shared maybe years or a lifetime with that person and you don't want to now put them down either. That's not a healthy way to deal with them. So again, that's the reason why I often say therapy is sometimes better for these situations. Because as therapists, we tend to be more unbiased and really objective in our advice and our guidance. Don't be surprised if you're really feeling a sense of emptiness. It's almost like you can feel it in your body because you have built something with this person and all of a sudden when they're gone and when your image and the reality of what you thought was reality is taken away, you almost will have a sense of falling down in in a maybe state of shock. So validate your feelings. Read about griefs of stages of grief in fact, because this will be like a shock to your system at first and you might find yourself vacillate between acceptance, anger, sadness, jealousy, self doubt. All of those feelings are okay. That's the reason why from the very beginning I said don't go into blaming. Just really validate yourself and work towards adapting and accepting to your new life with the right support. Especially if you want further help. There are great books about betrayal trauma and support groups. Some places offer that which I highly recommend. If you've been through betrayal trauma, feel free to ask questions and write your comments below. And if you need professional help, we are here at Reconnect center at Pacific Palaces to support you. Thank you for watching and remember, trauma equals disconnect. Healing equals reconnect. Stay connected.
