Dealing with betrayal - it's hard.

Let’s face it; we’ve all been there. It hurts. You’d have envisioned so much about this person, believed so much in them, committed a lot to them, but all that feels meaningless when you know they’ve let you down. How do you deal with the myriad of emotions that has bundled up inside you and is ready to burst? How do you deal with all the self-doubt and loss in self-esteem that comes with it to a few people? If not addressed properly, it might lead to a condition called betrayal trauma. As a heads up though, we won’t be talking only about betrayal in romantic relationships. No. I’m sure there’s a million articles on recovering from a breakup. We’re going to be speaking of a much widespread feeling - the feeling of being let down or betrayed, and FYI, this includes breakups too. Let’s get right to it.

We can start this discussion by agreeing on a simple fact that all the pain we go through during a betrayal is because we were attached to the person - whether we like it or not. Attachment and expectations is the one sole thing that ties people to pain and suffering but since it bears the sweeter fruits, people tend to attach over things, completely negating the ill effects of it.

When you feel betrayal, you're actually sensing an absence of a certain type of experience from their end. This experience is what you would be expecting on a normal basis. When it’s absent, you feel all the painful emotions mentioned above. This, by far, is the most simplest breakdown of why we feel what we feel in a betrayal.

Simple steps to heal from a betrayal:

1. Acknowledge: Before you even start healing from a betrayal, you first need to assess your injuries. This is the acknowledgement step. In this step, you’re supposed to acknowledge what you’re feeling and assess how much you’ve been hurt.
   

2. Thought-ification: This is the step where you give a form to the formless emotions. This makes them easier to deal with. The simplest way you can do this is by assigning a magnitude of hurt from a scale of 1-10. You can also give it a certain form, a shape, a color. The crux is to convert the raw emotion of feeling betrayed into a thought. Abstract forms of emotions are hard to deal with. You have no single clue what you’re dealing with. Give it a form in your mind and visualize them as thoughts - which are way easier to comprehend and deal with.
   

3. Assessment and Acceptance: In this step, you assess what needs to change in order for you to move on. It might be as simple as deleting their number from your phone. Once you have changed whatever is in your control, now it’s time to deal with whatever that is not in your control. This is where acceptance comes in. Whatever you can’t change, you accept. An example of this would be: If you broke up with someone who you will be seeing on a regular basis, you can start by accepting the fact that things are over, and there’s nothing you can do to avoid them or the awkward interactions that come with it.
   

4. Keeping yourself occupied: This is by far, one of the most important steps. I can guarantee, most of the people don’t have enough will power to go through betrayals without distracting themselves. Distraction helps in making moving on a whole lot easier. When your mind is idle, you give it the opportunity to drift off towards the same train of thoughts that you’re trying to move away from - in simpler terms, undoing your progress. That is why you need to find something to distract you - something that is both interesting and sustainably engaging.
   

5. Forgiving: This is the single, hardest step. Harboring resentment and anger only hurts you in the long run. It's important to try and forgive the person who betrayed you. This doesn't mean forgetting what happened, but rather, releasing the burden of bitterness that you bear within. Letting go of the past allows you to focus on the future and opens up new possibilities.

Closing note

So folks, that was the complete and simple breakdown of dealing with a betrayal. In this blog, we strive to become a better version of ourselves. Instead of grieving and leaving deep scars to form as time takes its time to heal, I’ve tried to provide you with simple, actionable steps on overcoming a betrayal.

Well then, that’s it for this blog post. I’ll see you on the next one. Cheers!