Transcript #379 How an Unhealed Betrayal is Impacting Your Health, Work, and Relationships with Debi Silber

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1. Find out what’s in store for this Myers Detox Podcast with Dr. Debi Silber who joins the show to discuss how unhealed betrayal could be impacting your health, work, relationships and more, and what to do to address it. She also talks about some of the top things to look out for to determine if you should stay with your partner after betrayal, and the symptoms of post betrayal syndrome.
2. There are four main questions Debi recommends you answer if you are trying to determine whether you are numbing, avoiding, or distracting yourself from betrayal. Learn what each of these crucial questions you must ask yourself are.
3. Healing from betrayal is actually quite different than healing from other life crisis, like death of a loved one, because it feels so intentional and personal. Learn more about how betrayal impacts you.
4. Betrayal can affect you physically mentally and emotionally, and can lead to PTSD like symptoms, which is what Dr. Debi considers post betrayal syndrome. Find out about the most common symptoms and feelings 13,000 participants of Dr. Debi’s post betrayal quiz had.
5. There is now a predictable path for those healing from betrayal, following the 5 stages of betrayal. Find out about each of these five stages and how each stage plays into the healing process.
6. One of the tell-tale signs of post betrayal syndrome is the inability to feel trust towards others, or feel worthy enough, to the point where you may miss opportunities to move forward emotionally or build new relationships. Learn more about some of the pitfalls people experience when they are going through PBT.
7. The first step in healing from betrayal is acknowledging what stage of the the 5 stages you are on, so that you can properly address your feelings. Learn more about Dr. Debi’s techniques in helping people overcome betrayal.
8. In some cases it makes for the betrayed to try to work on reestablishing a relationship with their betrayer, but only when that individual is apologetic and expresses true remorse. Find out some of the things to look out for when determining if you should try to move forward with rebuilding a relationship with a betrayer.
9. In Dr. Debi’s book Trust Again, Overcoming Betrayal and Regaining Health, Confidence, and Happiness she goes through the five stages of betrayal and her four step trust rebuilding process. Learn more about her book.
10. You can learn more about Dr. Silber and her work at https://thepbtinstitute.com
11. Make sure to check out Debi’s book Trust Again, Overcoming Betrayal and Regaining Health, Confidence, and Happiness
12. Take the post betrayal syndrome quiz to see to what extent you’re struggling ThePBTInstitute.com/quiz

Wendy Myers: Hello everyone. I’m Wendy Myers of Myersdetox.com. Welcome to The Myers Detox Podcast. Today, we have a great show for you. We have Dr. Debi Silber talking about how an unhealed betrayal can be impacting your health, work, relationships and what to do about it. We’ve all had betrayal before, in our lives. We’re going to talk about that on the show today, what to know to leave your partner or to try to rebuild. Should you stay or should you move on? What to know about how your partner is behaving? Is your partner remorseful or is your partner a narcissist and not remorseful? What to look for in order to know if you should stay or not, after betrayal. We’ll talk about post betrayal syndrome, what that looks like and if you’re suffering from it. We’ll talk about how to know if you’ve recovered from a betrayal. We’ll discuss what the five stages of betrayal are and where you are on that spectrum.

Wendy Myers: We’ll talk about how to begin rebuilding your life and/or trust again. What are the tools that you need to recover from betrayal, how to heal and move on with your life. I talk about my personal story as well about my ex-husband. I definitely caught him cheating and he had a girlfriend on the side. I talk about my own personal story in regards to that. I used a lot of the things that I talk about on The Myers Detox Podcast. NES health was so pivotal for me. I also used biofield tuning and a lot of other bioenergetic methods, to try to transmute any negative emotions out of my energy field. That’s what I personally did, but there are lots of different tools that we will talk about today on the show, to recover from betrayal.

Wendy Myers: Our guest, Dr. Debi Silber, is the founder of the Post Betrayal Transformation Institute. As a holistic psychologist, a health mindset and personal development expert and the author of the number one best-selling book, The Unshakeable Woman: Four Steps to Rebuilding Your Body, Mind and Life After a Life Crisis. She has a new book out called, Trust Again. Her recent PhD study on how we experience betrayal made three groundbreaking discoveries that change how long it takes to heal. In addition to being on Fox, CBS, the Dr. Oz Show, TEDx twice and more, she’s an award-winning speaker, coach and author. She is dedicated to helping people move past their betrayals as well as any other blocks preventing them from the health, work, finances, relationships, confidence and happiness that they want the most. You can learn more about Dr. Silber and her work at thepbtinstitute.com. Dr. Debi, thank you so much for coming on the show.

Dr. Debi Silber: Thank you so much. Looking forward to our conversation.

Wendy Myers: What are some questions that we should ask ourselves, to see if we’re numbing, avoiding or distracting ourselves?

Dr. Debi Silber: You know, it’s so common to do that. I actually did a study on betrayal. What holds us back, what helps us heal and what happens to us physically, mentally, and emotionally when the people closest to us lie, cheat and deceive. I’m happy to share. We made three discoveries during that study, but one of them was that there are these five stages. If we are to fully heal from our betrayal, we will move through these five, now proven and predictable stages. When we’re numbing and distracting, that’s something we typically see in a classic stage three. This is where we don’t know it gets any better than that. What used to work doesn’t work anymore. What used to make sense doesn’t make sense anymore, so we numb, avoid and distract.

Dr. Debi Silber: Here are four questions. I invite everybody to write them down, which is my way of saying, write these down. The first one would be, “Am I numbing and distracting?” If so, how? Call yourself out on it. Do you go into the cabinet when you’re not the least bit hungry, and you find yourself at the bottom of the potato chip bag? Do you walk into a room and put the TV on just to drown out the sound of your own thoughts.

Dr. Debi Silber: The second question, “What am I pretending not to see?” Am I pretending not to see trouble in my relationship? Am I pretending not to see that health issue that needs my attention? Am I pretending not to see I hate my job? What are you pretending not to see?

Dr. Debi Silber: The third question, “What’s life going to look like in five to 10 years if I do nothing?” Play it out, play it all the way out. Take that health issue that you’re ignoring, play it out five to 10 years. What’s that going to look like? The same with the relationship issue and the job issue.

Dr. Debi Silber: The last question, “What could my  life look like in five to 10 years if I changed now?” I’m not saying that’s easy, but transformation begins when we tell ourselves the truth.

Wendy Myers: I just want to give full disclosure here. I left my last husband because I found out he had a girlfriend and she had an apartment. It was this whole thing and it didn’t really surprise me because you can sense when your partner is betraying you. There’s a lot of signs there. He was working out, trying to lose weight and he was actually being nice to me. I was like, “He’s not really being himself.” You just know something is off. It really can be very, very traumatic. For me, it was very liberating. I was finally like, “Oh, now I actually have to leave.” For me, it was a catalyst to do what I already knew I had to do. For some people, they’re more conflicted. They want to stay in that partnership, even with the betrayal. Tell us about betrayal. Why does it hurt? What does it impact? What does it create?

Dr. Debi Silber: Yes, think about it. These were the people that gave us that sense of safety and security. The way it works with betrayal is it’s the breaking of a spoken or unspoken rule. The more we trust and depend on someone, the bigger the betrayal. For example,  let’s say, a child who’s completely dependent on their parent and that parent does something awful. That’s going to have a bigger impact than your best friend telling your secret. Still, it’s going to have an impact but not at the same level. When the very person who gave us that sense of safety and security is the person to destroy it, it hits us on every single level; physically, mentally, emotionally, psychologically and spiritually. It’s a lot to manage.

Dr. Debi Silber: Actually one of the other discoveries was that healing from betrayal is very different from healing from other life crises like death of a loved one, disease and natural disaster. Originally I was studying betrayal and post traumatic growth, kind of the upside of trauma. How that trauma, whatever it is and regardless of what it is, leaves you with a new insight, perspective and awareness that you didn’t have beforehand. I had been through the death of a loved one. I’d been through disease but betrayal felt so different for me. I had two horrible betrayals, one from my family and then my husband. I didn’t want to assume, so I asked my study participants and I said, “If you’ve been through other traumas, do they feel different for you than betrayal?” Hands down, unanimously, they said definitely they do and here’s why.

Dr. Debi Silber: When you experience, let’s say loss of a loved one, you don’t necessarily take it personally. Betrayal feels so intentional. We take it so personally. It’s a complete and total attack to the self so the whole self has to be rebuilt. Confidence, belonging, trust, rejection, abandonment, worthiness, they all get destroyed. It didn’t quite qualify as post-traumatic growth, so if I had to come up with an equation it would be, post-traumatic growth plus rebuilding the self equals a new term which is called post betrayal transformation. That’s the complete and total rebuild after betrayal.

Wendy Myers: I love that. Everything you’re saying, it’s so good. I have a friend, recently her husband left her and she found out he was cheating. Six months later, she’s now completely physically debilitated and with pain syndrome. I intuitively feel like those two things are related. It’s almost like a PTSD reaction. What are some physical signs of betrayal and even emotional and mental symptoms, as well?

Dr. Debi Silber: There are so many. I’m so glad you asked that because one of the other discoveries was that there is this collection of symptoms; physical, mental and emotional, which are so common to betrayal. It’s known now as post betrayal syndrome. We have a quiz on our site to see to what extent people are struggling. We’ve had over 13,000 people take it in the last year and a half or so. I actually pulled some stats to share with you, just so you could see how profound that link is between the trauma of betrayal and what it does to our bodies. I’m going to go through the stages of betrayal, so you can see where it shows up. It’s almost impossible not to be physically affected. I’ll go through some of the steps.

Dr. Debi Silber: First of all, out of 13,000 people plus, 81% felt a loss of personal power. 94% deal with painful triggers. You mentioned PTSD, so often we think it’s reserved for war vets. No, it is very common in betrayal. What happens is we’re triggered and our bodies are right back there remembering D-Day, discovery day. Cognitively, you may say, “Well, that happened a while ago,” but the body is remembering it right there. Here are some physical symptoms. 71% have low energy, 68% struggle with their sleep and 63% have extreme fatigue. They can sleep and then wake up exhausted. 47% have weight changes and 45% have digestive issues. That could be anything from IBS, Crohns, diverticulitis, diverticulosis, constipation or diarrhea. What I found so interesting with that is when you think of the gut, the gut absorbs, digests and processes food. Well, isn’t a betrayal difficult to absorb, digest and process? Is it any wonder the gut would be off? That’s just physical.

Dr. Debi Silber: Here’s some mental ones. 78% are overwhelmed, 70% in a state of disbelief, 64% in shock and 62% are unable to concentrate. Now here you are, you’re trying to do your work, you’re trying to raise your kids or whatever you have going on. You’re unable to concentrate. You have a gut issue. We haven’t even talked about the emotions.

Dr. Debi Silber: Some emotional symptoms are 88% had profound sadness, 83% are angry, very angry. Just mix those two and that’s a lethal combination. 82% feel hurt, 80% are anxious and 79% are stressed. Here’s why I wrote trust again. 84% out of 13,000 plus people have an inability to trust. 67% prevent themselves from forming deep relationships because they’re afraid of being hurt again. 82% find it hard to move forward. 90% want to move forward, but they don’t know how. Betrayal takes a toll, but it can all be healed.

Wendy Myers: When I left my husband, I felt so many of those things. I thought, “You have to rebuild your life. You have to reinvent yourself.”  I thought, “How am I going to detox my husband? How am I going to deal with this?” You mentioned that you did a study and you had a breakthrough doing this study, with 13,000 plus participants.

Dr. Debi Silber: That was just people who’ve taken the post betrayal syndrome quiz, but that study led to three discoveries.

Wendy Myers: One of those was the five stages of betrayal. Can you go through what those are?

Dr. Debi Silber: When we saw this, it was so exciting because now there’s a predictable path. If you know where you are, it’s like, “Okay, here’s what stage I’m in. This is what I have to do to move to the next stage.” With that, healing from betrayal is now predictable. I’ll talk about the three groups that didn’t heal and why they didn’t heal, but these are the five stages. There were three groups that didn’t heal. 

Dr. Debi Silber: The first was a set-up stage. I saw this with every participant, me included. If you can imagine four legs of a table, the four legs being physical, mental, emotional and spiritual. What I saw with everybody was this real heavy lean on the physical and mental, and kind of neglecting the emotional and the spiritual. What does that look like? It looks like we’re really good at thinking and doing, and not really prioritizing the feeling and being. That’s where intuition lies and we turn that down. That’s not to say, if you are busy thinking and doing it’s a setup for betrayal, it’s just what I saw. If there were a table with only two legs, it would be easy for the table to topple over, and that’s us. That’s what happens.

Dr. Debi Silber: Stage two is shock. This is by far the scariest stage. This is the breakdown of the body, the mind and the worldview. This is D-day, Discovery Day. I’m sure you remember exactly where you were and exactly what happened. This is like the person takes the mask off saying, “This is who I’ve been.” It’s a shock, it completely tattoos itself on your body and mind. With this, you evade the stress response. Now you’re headed for every single stress related symptom, illness, condition and disease. Your mind is in a complete and total state of chaos and overwhelm. You cannot wrap your mind around what you just learned. Your worldview is shattered. Your worldview is your mental model. These are the rules. This is how it works. This person’s safe. Don’t go there. In a moment, everything you knew is shattered. Here’s truly where the bottom bottoms out on you. It’s so interesting when you think about it. If the bottom were to bottom out on you, what would you do? You would grab hold of anything and everything you could to stay safe and stay alive. That’s stage three.

Dr. Debi Silber: Survival instincts emerge. It’s the most practical of all of the stages. If you can’t help me, get out of my way. How will I survive my experience? Where do I live? Who can I trust? Where do I go? How do I feed my kids? It’s basic but here’s the trap. Here’s the thing. When you figured out how to survive, and I bet when you’re going through your experience you’re like, “Okay, I remember that. I remember that.” Survival feels so much better than the shock and trauma from where you just came. You’re like, “Whoa, okay, I’m good. I’m good. Let me settle here.” It’s not good, it’s just better than the shock and trauma. You don’t even know there’s a stage four and stage five, that’s transformation. What happens now is you’ve figured out how to survive. You think that’s as good as it gets. Now what happens? A few things happen. Now you start getting all that secondary gain, all those small self benefits from being here. You get your story. You get to be right. You get someone to blame. You get a target for your anger. Everyone you tell your story to gives you all kinds of sympathy. The longer we stay, we start planting roots here. Then your mind starts doing things like, “Well, maybe I’m not all that. Maybe I deserve it. Maybe I’m not that great.”

Dr. Debi Silber: Energy attracts like energy. Now you’re calling situations, circumstances and people to you to confirm this is where you belong. It gets worse, but I’ll get you out of it. It gets one step worse because you don’t like it here, but you don’t know there’s anything better, Here’s where you start numbing, avoiding and distracting. Here’s where you used food, drugs, alcohol, work, TV, whatever, because you don’t like it, but you don’t know there’s anything better than this. Here’s what happens. You start doing that a day, a week, a month, a year, five years, 10 years and 20 years. I can say to someone, 20 years out, “Did you ever think this emotional eating issue, this drinking issue, this numbing issue has anything to do with your betrayal?” They say, “Oh my gosh, that happened 10 years ago.” It doesn’t matter. They were in a perpetual holding pattern since that day. That’s why most people get stuck in stage three.

Dr. Debi Silber: If you’re willing to let go of those small self benefits and do all these other things, you can move to stage four. That’s finding and adjusting to a new normal. Here’s what you acknowledge. “I cannot undo this experience, but I control the meaning I take and I control how it affects me. I control myself.” This is like if you’ve ever moved to a new house, office, condo, apartment or whatever and your old stuff isn’t there. It’s not cozy, but it’s going to be okay. You’re turning down the stress response. You’re not healing just yet, but you’re not causing the massive damage you were causing in stage two and stage three. What I found so interesting in this stage was, think about it, when you move, you don’t take everything with you. You don’t take the things that don’t represent the version of you you want to be in that new space, right? Here’s what I saw. If your friends weren’t there for you, you don’t take them with you. Here’s where you’ve outgrown them.

Dr. Debi Silber: People say to me all the time, “But Debbie, I’ve had these friends forever. Is it me?” “Yes, you’re undergoing this transformation and you’ve simply outgrown them.” So you’re in this stage four. You settled into it. You’ve made it your own. You can move into the fifth and most beautiful stage.

Dr. Debi Silber: This is healing, rebirth and a new worldview. Here, you turned down the stress response. Now you want to take better care of yourself, self love, self care, eating well and exercise. You didn’t have the bandwidth for that earlier. You were surviving. In your mind you’re making new rules and boundaries, based on your experience, You have a completely new worldview based on the road you’ve just been on. Remember the four legs of the table, it was all about the physical and the mental, but at this point we’re solidly grounded because we’re focused on the emotional and the spiritual, too. Those are the five stages.

Wendy Myers: Fantastic. Let’s talk about post betrayal syndrome. What is that and how do we know that we have it?

Dr. Debi Silber: Post betrayal syndrome is that collection of physical, mental and emotional symptoms specific and very common to betrayal. Some of the symptoms that I shared were pulled from the post betrayal syndrome quiz. It’s interesting because people think, “Oh, well, it’s just aging or it’s just because of this.” They attribute it to so many different things. No, it’s because of your betrayal. This is also what I found so interesting about the quiz, there’s a question that says, “Is there anything else you’d like to share?” We’ve all heard that time heals all wounds. I have the proof that when it comes to betrayal, that’s not true because people write things like, “My betrayal happened 40 years ago and I can still feel the hate.” “My betrayal happened 35 years ago, I’m unwilling to trust again.” “My betrayal happened 10 years ago, it feels like it happened yesterday.” We know when it comes to betrayal, time may soften it a bit but we need to proactively face it, feel it and heal it in order to move through it. Those are the common symptoms and we see it in health, in work and in relationships. We can spot an unhealed betrayal a mile away.

Wendy Myers: It’s so sad. We all have those friends that were betrayed once or twice, and they’re just in this mode where they don’t trust people. They don’t trust men. They don’t trust women. They don’t trust their business partners or whatever the relationship may be. You can just see them. You can just see the suffering. You can see them manifesting and attracting the very same kind of person that will betray them again, because they attract that until they learn the lesson or work through that.

Dr. Debi Silber: It’s so true. I’ll see it in two ways in relationships. One is just like you said, someone will go from relationship to relationship or the boss has changed. The face has changed, but it’s the same thing. The friends change. The face has changed, but it’s the same thing. They say, “What the heck gives, is it me?” Yes, it is. It’s you unless and until you learn that profound lesson, that you are worthy, deserving and lovable, that you need stronger boundaries in place. You keep getting opportunities to learn that. We also see it where someone puts that big wall up. I’m sure you know people like this, they’re like, “Nope, not going there again. Been there, done that.” They think it’s coming from a place of strength. It’s not, it’s coming from a place of fear. They were so hurt that they feel the only way to move through life is to keep people at a distance. Let’s say you cook and let’s say you get burned on the stove. That’s like saying, “Nope, never cooking again.” Should we be cautious and careful to put a glove on and do all kinds of things? Yes, but saying, “No, I’m never cooking again,” that’s not fair to you if that’s what you love.

Wendy Myers: It’s great to be in a relationship because they really hold a mirror up to you. You grow when you’re in relationships. That’s the state that I want to be in, growing and not having my past affect my future relationships. Your future partner or your current one, have nothing to do with your past. It’s so easy to project our victimhood or our past onto the current partner. It’s not fair to them. You have to do that work so that your past doesn’t come back to haunt you.

Dr. Debi Silber: Absolutely, that’s what happens. We just automatically assume because this is what we know. Here’s the thing, if something feels familiar, we think it’s good. It’s not. It’s only familiar. The thing that we never want to do is to get into another relationship once we’ve just gotten out of one, because that is the best time to heal. Until and unless you do, the only thing you could ever attract is more of the same. That’s when you want to do that work. You’re just resonating at a whole different level. This is also what I see so often, let’s say a couple is reconciling. We teach in the PBT community how to know when it’s safe and in your best interest to reconcile or how to know if it’s in your best interest to move on. It really requires death and destruction of the old, the old you and the old relationship in order to rebirth the new. That’s not always the case because I mentioned in the study, there were three groups who didn’t heal.

Dr. Debi Silber: I remember there was one group and this was the group where the betrayer had no consequences or very little consequences. Whether it was out of fear, religious reasons which came up a lot, financial fear, not wanting to break up a family or whatever it was. They tried to put it behind them. They tried to ignore it. Tell that to your broken heart. It doesn’t work. Not only did I only see a further deterioration of the relationship, but that group was by far, the most physically sick.

Wendy Myers: Oh really, the people that stayed with their partner?

Dr. Debi Silber: They stayed without consequences.

Wendy Myers: Stayed without consequences, got it.

Dr. Debi Silber: Yes, without consequences. Rebuilding is always a choice, whether you rebuild yourself and move on or whether you rebuild something entirely new, with the person who hurt you. With my family, it was not an option, so I rebuilt just myself and moved along. With my husband, that was a very different case. Here’s where if you’re willing, if the situation lends itself and you want to, as two totally transformed people, that’s when you can have something entirely new. Not long ago we married each other again.

Wendy Myers: Wow. That’s beautiful. I love that, just because someone is betraying you doesn’t mean they’re a bad person. I mean, people cheat on you for very, very different reasons. Sometimes it’s just a catalyst for change. It’s a cry for help. Some person is not getting their needs met or something. For me, I already knew that I wanted to leave. It wasn’t the right relationship for me and that’s why my husband was cheating. It wasn’t the right relationship for him either. It didn’t work. People have different reasons for staying. Can you talk a little bit about that, about why people cheat and betray?

Dr. Debi Silber: There are so many reasons and so many factors. What I find, for someone who’s been betrayed, is if you have to say this a hundred million times, it’s worth it. Even though it happened to you, it’s not about you. This is about that other person, their lack, the void that they’re experiencing or whatever’s going on with them. They may have learned the most profound lesson at your expense or not, but there are so many reasons. Even just with my case, it was very unusual. What happens is with betrayal, trust is completely shattered. You don’t even trust yourself. You’re like, “I’m a bright person. How did I not know? How did I not see?”

Dr. Debi Silber: You can venture and say, “Well, at least I could trust in something bigger than me. Let me trust in the universe, God source, whatever.” This was proven to be true in the study. We saw this with everybody. Personally, I remember seeing a spiritual counselor and I was like, “I just need some help and she’s got the universe on speed dial so let’s go.” I remember walking into her office and sitting down. Maybe it was our first session or so. She just starts laughing. She’s like, “Oh my gosh, you two planned this.” I was like, “What?” “He needed something so catastrophic to crash and burn so that he can become the husband, father and friend he’s supposed to be. You needed something so painful so you can heal and then really teach from this deep place of knowing. You’re going to have an Institute and books and this whole following around betrayal.” I’m like, “You’re crazy.” You never know, it could be in our scenario that this was to serve a bigger purpose. I don’t know. Everybody’s story is different.

Wendy Myers: Yes, these horrible things that happen to us, they can happen for a reason. They’re not always a bad thing though in the moment, it doesn’t feel like that. No, it’s horrible and I’d always wonder, “Am I totally healed? Have I really gotten past this or am I just thinking that?” How do we know if we really healed from betrayal?

Dr. Debi Silber: You know you’ve healed when you’ve really experienced that place of post-betrayal transformation. When you have rebuilt from the rejection and abandonment, confidence, worthiness, belonging and trust. When you’ve rebuilt all that, you know, because you really do create this new identity. There’s this version of you so healthy, so strong and so healed. There’s very little about me from before the betrayal. What happens is you get this opportunity to take with you what you like and leave behind what no longer serves. You really do get to recreate all of it, and it’s a very exciting place. That’s where the fun begins because you’re like, “Ooh, I’m feeling good. I’m seeing things so much differently than I ever have. I have new rules, new boundaries, new everything in place.” The world becomes very different. It’s almost like you go from this reactive place, hoping everything goes okay where it’s almost like you’re sitting on a bus and you hope the bus driver knows where he or she is going, to that place of being proactive. Where you’re the driver and you decide where you go.

Wendy Myers: You can create a whole new relationship or get into a relationship with someone who’s a better fit for you, someone that is fully committed to monogamy. For me, I felt like my husband now, that is his sole focus, “I want to be in a monogamous relationship”. He just says it over and over and over. I’ve never had a guy talk like that before. I always felt like they had one foot out the door for some reason. I feel much, much happier in my current relationship. That was a gift that was given to me out of this betrayal or a gift I gave to myself.

Dr. Debi Silber: You did, because of your healing, that’s why.

Wendy Myers: Yes.

Dr. Debi Silber: From an unhealed place, you would have had another relationship which was more of the same. That’s how you know you did the work.

Wendy Myers: I decided not to date for like a year and a half. I’m like, “I want to focus on myself and work on myself. I don’t want to date and distract myself. I just want to do that work.” You talk about the five steps of betrayal, the five stages. What do we need to do to move forward and heal from this betrayal experience? What do we do to get better? What are your tips?

Dr. Debi Silber: You know, the first thing you want to do now that you know the five stages, you want to acknowledge where you are. If you are in the most common stage, stage three, there’s so often a lot of anger there. You could be in stage three for like two or three decades. You’re like, “What the heck? Here I am spending my entire life at this stage.” It’s a process. You want to know where you are. You want to know that it wasn’t about you. Then you want to know that you don’t have to stay there. It takes a proactive approach to say, “Okay, you know what? This was horrible, but I don’t just want to be the poster child for betrayal. I don’t want to be like it’s like a bad game of hot potato where it’s now stuck on me. No.”

Dr. Debi Silber: What you did, what I did, that is no different than what everybody else could do. Personally, I looked at it saying, “This is awful and I’m going to figure out a way to move through this. If I do, I’m taking everybody with me.” That’s it. You want to say, “Okay, where am I now?” Then you want to be willing. I found the biggest needle mover is to see if someone will or won’t heal? So often it’s a willingness because they have to give up their story, they could have gotten a lot of sympathy and benefits and secondary gain from hanging onto it. You have to really see, is this serving me anymore? You have every right to hang on to it but at the end of the day, that’s all you have. You have your story or have you given this enough life and now it’s your turn to heal.

Wendy Myers: It’s one of those things that can be very intoxicating, to talk to all of your girlfriends. “He’s such a jerk and he did this to me.” Just talk about it over and over, relive it over and over and play this victim role. You are a victim but at a certain point, you have to choose not to be a victim any longer and move forward. It makes me sad when I hear people throwing the baby out with the bath water, like, “My husband cheated, therefore all men are cheaters. All men are Abels or they’re all like that.” That could not be further from the truth. I think people that tell themselves that, manifest that. They think like that. They talk like that. They attract a-holes to them.

Dr. Debi Silber: That’s what they believe. I use this analogy a lot and it explains it so much. This is exactly to your point. Here’s the difference between resilience, trauma and transformation. Resilience you need for your everyday. Trauma and transformation is a whole different thing. Resilience is bringing back and restoring. Imagine a house. Imagine that that house needs a new boiler. Then you get a boiler. That would be resilience. Let’s say it needs a new roof and you get that new roof, that would be resilience. Here’s trauma and transformation, say a tornado comes by and levels the house. A boiler’s not going to fix it and a roof’s not going to fix it.

Dr. Debi Silber: Here’s the thing, you had every right to stand there at the lot where your house once stood and say, “This is the worst thing I’ve ever seen,” and you’d be right. If you called all your friends over and said, “Look at this, isn’t this horrible?” They’d all agree. You can mourn the loss of your house until your last breath, however, if you choose to rebuild that house, there’s no house there. Why not make the most beautiful house you can? You can create whatever you want. There are so many people mourning the loss of their house forever, and that’s all they have. Where other people say, “Okay, clearly the house isn’t here. Let me grieve it and let me build something spectacular.”

Wendy Myers: When should someone decide not to try to rebuild the relationship. Maybe they’re not aware of it, they’re in a relationship with a narcissist and the narcissist is cheating and doing it repeatedly and has zero remorse. They don’t express remorse or care about the person or their feelings. They really don’t seem to care. What cues should people be looking for that it’s safe and they should move forward with rebuilding their relationship, if they choose?

Dr. Debi Silber: I call it the window of willingness. I write about it in Trust Again. This is when you know that rebuilding is not an option with someone. With a typical narcissist, you’re better off healing and moving on, especially if there’s no remorse, apology, restitution or anything. They don’t even think they’ve done anything wrong. Here’s where the wrong type of support does more harm than good. If someone isn’t highly skilled in this, let’s say with your typical narcissist, and the wife somehow gets him to go to counseling together, couples counseling. If that counselor isn’t really highly skilled in this, so often she’ll look at the betrayed person and say, “You know, if you communicated better, this may not have happened.” It’s like, “What?”

Dr. Debi Silber: Think about it from let’s say the mother-in-law of this same couple. She doesn’t want to see the family broken up, so she may say to the betrayed person, “You’re fine. Get over it. You’re okay.” You have to be very aware of the fact of whose lens is it coming through? It’s coming through that person who either doesn’t really know how to work with this, or has a vested interest in just having you put it behind you. That’s one thing. If someone is not remorseful, not apologetic, they haven’t had the greatest shock of their life waking them up that this was the absolute, most horrific thing they could have done, then you’re not working with much. As much as the betrayed person has the shock of their life realizing what just happened, the best case scenario is also when that person said, “Oh my gosh, I just hurt the person I love the most. What the heck?” You’re coming from a very different space than that person who just said, “Okay. It’s what I did. Get over it.” What are you working with there?

Wendy Myers: Run, run for the hills.

Dr. Debi Silber: And don’t look back.

Wendy Myers: Or if they’re just upset they got caught. They’re just sad that they got caught. How can we learn to trust again?

Dr. Debi Silber: I look at trust like a brick wall. There’s no shortcut to putting up that brick wall. How does it go up? Brick by brick by brick. Then in one earth shattering moment or series of moments, the whole thing goes tumbling down. How can it be rebuilt? The same way, brick by brick by brick. It takes time. Again, you could look at the rubble of bricks and say, “I don’t have the least bit of interest sticking around and watching that thing get rebuilt.” That’s totally fine. Then just heal yourself and move on. If you’re looking to rebuild trust, if trust is an option with this relationship, if you’re willing and if you want to, you need a willingness to watch that brick wall get rebuilt and the other person needs to be a really good bricklayer. With every single opportunity to show that they’re trustworthy, that’s a brick in the brick wall. It’s just like that. I teach a four step process, but to sum it up, you truly need to take time and rebuild foundationally, rebuild trusting yourself and rebuild trust in your own intuition, higher wisdom and all of that before you even think about trusting other people again.

Wendy Myers: Tell us about your book.

Dr. Debi Silber: It’s Trust Again, Overcoming Betrayal and Regaining Health, Confidence, and Happiness. So much of it was my dissertation, my PhD dissertation. I was like, “Well, you know what? It can’t just be that only a few people read this because there’s thousands of hours of research in here.” What it is is I walk you through the five stages of betrayal. I teach you the four step trust rebuilding process. I will tell you my story. I also give my study-participant stories, so every reader can be like, “Wow, I get it. I really resonate with that person and experiential activities.” It’s not a book that you read or listen to. It’s a book that you do.

Wendy Myers: Awesome. Where can we learn more about you and your work? Are you still seeing couples or clients? Do you work with people?

Dr. Debi Silber: Yes, we have the PBT, which stands for Post Betrayal Transformation Institute Membership Community. It’s the only full-service space to heal physically, mentally and emotionally from the betrayal of a family member, a partner or a friend. Everything is in there. We have our certified coaches who walk people through the five stages. They’re also bringing their own areas of expertise. In our signature program, we literally walk you through the stages. I’m in there, teaching. We bring in experts to teach a master class. I’d love you to teach one. That would be fun. We have an amazing community who  just lift and inspire. It’s not like an awful club where when you heal, you don’t belong. This is like, “Wow, what’d you do? That worked for you? How can I do that?” That’s the PBT community. I really recommend everybody take the post betrayal syndrome quiz to see to what extent you’re struggling.

Wendy Myers: What is that link? Where do we take that?

Dr. Debi Silber: That’s just the PBT as in Post Betrayal Transformation, ThePBTInstitute.com/quiz.

Wendy Myers: Okay, fantastic. You can go to ThePBTInstitute.com to learn more about your programs and your book. I’m sure you have lots of articles and things like that, too. These are amazing resources, so go check that out if you are struggling with a betrayal and with trusting again. You can rebuild your life and build an amazing life. Debi, thank you so much for coming on the show. That was a great  interview. I love talking about this topic. Hopefully we can reach some people and help them to overcome this trauma, that we all deal with at some point in our lives.

Dr. Debi Silber: Thank you so much. Thank you.

Wendy Myers: Everyone, thanks so much for tuning in to The Myers Detox Podcast. I’m Wendy Myers of Myersdetox.com. We talk about all different ways to overcome toxins and trauma in our life and learn how to transform our health and our mentality as well. Thanks for tuning in this week. I will talk to you guys very, very soon.

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