Blind to Betrayal: Why We Fool Ourselves We Aren't Being Fooled (18 page)

There can be no doubt that betrayal is toxic. It can cause dissociation and dissociative identity disorder, memory loss, numerous mental health symptoms, instability of personality and relationships, and revictimization. Betrayal and its harm are all too common—from family members to institutions. The picture appears hopeless. Or does it? Our next two chapters examine how we can, as individuals and as a society, overcome the effects of betrayal to become more aware, healthier, and better able to face the future together.

Notes

1.
L. A. Kaehler and J. J. Freyd, “Borderline Personality Characteristics: A Betrayal Trauma Approach,”
Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy 1
(2009): 261–268; J. J. Freyd, B. Klest, and C. B. Allard, “Betrayal Trauma: Relationship to Physical Health, Psychological Distress, and a Written Disclosure Intervention,”
Journal of Trauma & Dissociation 6
(3) (2005): 83–104.

2.
P. J. Birrell and J. J. Freyd, “Betrayal Trauma: Relational Models of Harm and Healing,”
Journal of Trauma Practice 5
(1) (2006): 49–63; B. Belford, L. A. Kaehler, and P. J. Birrell, “Relational Health as a Mediator between Betrayal Trauma and Borderline Personality Disorder,”
Journal of Trauma & Dissociation 13
(2) (2012): 244–257.

3.
J. J. Freyd, A. P. DePrince, and E. L. Zurbriggen, “Self-Reported Memory for Abuse Depends upon Victim-Perpetrator Relationship,”
Journal of Trauma & Dissociation 2
(3) (2001): 5–16; J. J. Freyd, B. Klest, and C. B. Allard, “Betrayal Trauma: Relationship to Physical Health, Psychological Distress, and a Written Disclosure Intervention,”
Journal of Trauma & Dissociation 6
(3) (2005): 83–104.

4.
J. A. Chu and D. L. Dill, “Dissociative Symptoms in Relation to Childhood Physical and Sexual Abuse,”
American Journal of Psychiatry 147
(7) (1990): 887–892.

5.
B. Plattner, M. A. Silvermann, A. D. Redlich, V. G. Carrion, M. Feucht, M. H. Friedrich, and H. Steiner, “Pathways to Dissociation: Intrafamilial versus Extrafamilial Trauma in Juvenile Delinquents,”
Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 191
(12) (2003): 781–788.

6.
J. Lavino, “Guest Commentary: Forgiveness—The Ultimate Revenge,”
Camera
, August 2, 2011,
http://www.dailycamera.com
.

7.
J. J. Freyd,
Betrayal Trauma: The Logic of Forgetting Childhood Abuse
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996).

8.
J. J. Freyd, A. P. DePrince, and E. L. Zurbriggen, “Self-Reported Memory for Abuse Depends upon Victim-Perpetrator Relationship,”
Journal of Trauma & Dissociation 2
(3) (2001): 5–17.

9.
T. Schultz, J. L. Passmore, and C. Y. Yoder, “Emotional Closeness with Perpetrators and Amnesia for Child Sexual Abuse,”
Journal of Child Sexual Abuse 12
(1) (2003): 67–88.

10.
J. A. Sheiman, “Sexual Abuse History with and without Self-Report of Memory Loss: Differences in Psychopathology, Personality, and Dissociation,” in L. M. Williams and V. L. Banyard, eds.,
Trauma & Memory
(Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1999), 139–148.

11.
V. J. Edwards, R. Fivush, et al., “Autobiographical Memory Disturbances in Childhood Abuse Survivors,”
Journal of Aggression, Maltreatment, & Trauma 4
(2001): 247–264.

12.
J. J. Freyd, B. Klest, and C. B. Allard, “Betrayal Trauma: Relationship to Physical Health, Psychological Distress, and a Written Disclosure Intervention,”
Journal of Trauma & Dissociation 6
(3) (2005): 83–104.

13.
R. Goldsmith, J. J. Freyd, and A. P. DePrince, “Betrayal Trauma: Associations with Psychological and Physical Symptoms in Young Adults,”
Journal of Interpersonal Violence 27
(3) (in press): 524–544.

14.
V. J. Edwards, J. J. Freyd, S. R. Dube, R. F. Anda, and V. J. Felitti, “Health Outcomes by Closeness of Sexual Abuse Perpetrator: A Test of Betrayal Trauma Theory,”
Journal of Aggression, Maltreatment & Trauma 21
(2012): 133–148.

15.
A. P. DePrince,
Trauma and Posttraumatic Responses: An Examination of Fear and Betrayal
, doctoral dissertation, University of Oregon, 2001.

16.
J. A. Atlas and D. M. Ingram, “Betrayal Trauma in Adolescent Inpatients,”
Psychological Reports 83
(1998): 914.

17.
S. C. Turell and M. W. Armsworth, “A Log-Linear Analysis of Variables Associated with Self-Mutilation Behaviors of Women with Histories of Child Sexual Abuse,”
Violence against Women 9
(2003): 487–512.

18.
M. Okuda, M. Olfson, D. Hasin, B. F. Grant, K.-H. Lin, and C. Blanco, “Mental Health of Victims of Intimate Partner Violence: Results from a National Epidemiologic Survey,”
Psychiatric Services 62
(8) (2011): 959–962.

19.
A. P. DePrince and J. J. Freyd, “The Intersection of Gender and Betrayal in Trauma,” in R. Kimerling, P. C. Ouimette, and J. Wolfe, eds.,
Gender and PTSD
(New York: Guilford Press, 2002), 98–113.

20.
S. S. Tang and J. J. Freyd, “Betrayal Trauma and Gender Differences in Posttraumatic Stress,”
Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy
(in press).

21.
J. J. Freyd, B. Klest, and C. B. Allard, “Betrayal Trauma: Relationship to Physical Health, Psychological Distress, and a Written Disclosure Intervention,”
Journal of Trauma & Dissociation 6
(3) (2005): 83–104; R. L. Gobin and J. J. Freyd, “Betrayal and Revictimization: Preliminary Findings,”
Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy 1
(2009): 242–257.

22.
A. Campbell, “Oxytocin and Human Social Behavior,”
Personality and Social Psychology Review 14
(3) (2010): 281–295; A. Charuvastra and M. Cloitre, “Social Bonds and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder,”
Annual Review of Psychology 59
(2008): 301–328.

23.
J. S. Seng, “Posttraumatic Oxytocin Dysregulation: Is It a Link among Posttraumatic Self Disorders, Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, and Pelvic Visceral Dysregulation Conditions in Women?”
Journal of Trauma & Dissociation 11
(4) (2010): 387–406.

24.
American Psychiatric Association,
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders
(4th ed., text rev.) (Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Association, 2000).

25.
L. A. Kaehler and J. J. Freyd, “Borderline Personality Characteristics: A Betrayal Trauma Approach,”
Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy 1
(2009): 261–268; L. A. Kaehler and J. J. Freyd, “Betrayal Trauma and Borderline Personality Characteristics: Gender Differences,”
Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy
(in press).

26.
B. Belford, L. A. Kaehler, and P. Birrell, “Relational Health as a Mediator between Betrayal Trauma and Borderline Personality Disorder,”
Journal of Trauma & Dissociation
(submitted).

27.
R. L. Gobin and J. J. Freyd, “Betrayal and Revictimization: Preliminary Findings,”
Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy 1
(2009): 242–257.

28.
A. DePrince, “Social Cognition and Revictimization Risk,”
Journal of Trauma & Dissociation 6
(1) (2005): 125–141.

29.
R. L. Gobin and J. J. Freyd, “Betrayal and Revictimization: Preliminary Findings,”
Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy 1
(2009): 242–257.

30.
R. L. Gobin and J. J. Freyd, “Betrayal and Revictimization: Preliminary Findings,”
Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy 1
(2009): 242–257.

31.
J. J. Freyd,
Betrayal Trauma: The Logic of Forgetting Childhood Abuse
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996).

32.
R. Gobin, “Partner Preferences among Survivors of Betrayal Trauma,” in
Trauma, Attachment, and Intimate Relationships,
guest editors Eileen Zurbriggen, Robin Gobin, and Laura Kaehler, a Special Issue of the
Journal of Trauma & Dissociation 13
(2) (2012, in press).

33.
K. C. Pears, J. Bruce, P. A. Fisher, and K. K. Hyoun, “Indiscriminate Friendliness in Maltreated Foster Children,”
Child Maltreatment 15
(1) (2010): 64–75.

34.
R. Yehuda, S. L. Halligan, and R. T. Grossman, “Childhood Trauma and Risk for PTSD: Relationship to Intergenerational Effects of Trauma, Parental PTSD, and Cortisol Excretion,”
Development and Psychopathology 13
(3) (2001): 733–753.

35.
R. E. Heyman and A. M. S. Slep, “Do Child Abuse and Interparental Violence Lead to Adulthood Family Violence?”
Journal of Marriage and Family 64
(4) (2002): 864–870.

36.
J. Goodwin, T. McCarthy, and P. DiVasto, “Prior Incest in Mothers of Abused Children,”
Child Abuse and Neglect 5
(2) (1981): 87–95.

37.
N. A. Cort, C. Cerulli, S. L. Toth, and F. Rogosch, “Maternal Intergenerational Transmission of Childhood Multitype Maltreatment,”
Journal of Aggression, Maltreatment and Trauma 20
(1) (2011): 19–38.

38.
A. C. Hulette, L. A. Kaehler, and J. J. Freyd, “Intergenerational Associations between Trauma and Dissociation,”
Journal of Family Violence 26
(2011): 217–225.

39.
M. L. King,
Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence
, speech presented at Riverside Church in New York City, 1967.

10

The Risks of Knowing

There are advantages to not knowing about betrayal. Relationships can continue, and we don't risk big changes happening in our lives. If we're comfortable enough, it is possible not to know—at least on the surface. We do know that
something
is wrong. We can't trust. We have difficulty growing and thriving in relationships. Perhaps we become depressed and closed in on ourselves, rather than taking the risk of caring and sharing ourselves.

The discovery of betrayal—the breakdown of betrayal blindness—always seems to bring about a profound new awareness: the world is not the same. Discovery inspires new values, beliefs, behaviors, and loyalties. Someone who was trusted is now acknowledged to be unsafe. Perhaps even the world seems less safe. As sobering and frightening as the newfound reality may be, freedom from betrayal blindness also opens up new possibilities for intimacy and growth. Given its insidious underbelly, how does one dare break free of betrayal? Let's examine the risks of knowing and telling.

“Knowing” about Betrayal

First, we must become aware of the betrayal itself. Perhaps the evidence has become undeniable, or we have come to a time in our lives when we are safe enough or have enough social support. Or we meet someone we think we can begin to trust. Whatever the reason, we reach a point where we can risk that free fall of dropping into knowing. Our lives are turned upside-down, and everything begins to look different. The marriage or the relationship ends, perhaps we leave the job, or we can begin to look at our family differently. Our lives become different.

This “knowing” about betrayal is interesting. We usually think we know something or we don't, but it turns out that there are different ways to “know” things. We can know them internally and on the level of sensation or behavior, or we can know them at the level of words. Jennifer Freyd proposed a theory of shareability in 1983 that attempts to describe the difference between our private knowledge versus our public knowledge.
^1.
Shareability theory proposes that through the sharing of information—that is, through communication—internal knowledge is reorganized into more consciously available, categorical, and discrete forms of knowing. This means that information we have never shared with others is organized differently than information we have shared. So disclosure affects the
way
we know our own experiences internally.

Much childhood abuse and interpersonal violence happen without the opportunity for communication; thus, our knowledge of and memories for these experiences are actually different than those concerning experiences we have communicated.
^2.
These internal and external kinds of disclosure are mutually influencing each other. By not disclosing to ourselves, we are able to avoid disclosing to others. Once we do disclose to others, it changes how we understand an event ourselves.

Let's put this another way: information inside our heads is often difficult for us to gain access to in words. That “free fall” we've been talking about—how do you put that into words? It's often a long and difficult period of time when we're struggling with finding the right words that seem to fit our experience. When we do find good enough words, we can begin to share our experience with others. It becomes transformed from “free fall” into “my friend betrayed me and it hurt.” This is no easy transformation, and as we figure out the words and share our experiences, things become more obvious to us.

You will see this very clearly in Beth's story, because her inner knowledge at first looked (and was labeled as) crazy, until she finally gained the words to speak about it. We can also see that in disclosing her betrayal to another person, Beth was in a way disclosing it to herself. This fact is really at the heart of one of the core aspects of dissociation, when individuals are able to not know of an experience that they have endured. One reason that nondisclosure to oneself (or not knowing) occurs is exactly because internal and external disclosure are so tied together. To the extent that it is not safe to disclose
externally
, it is not safe to know, or disclose internally to, oneself.

Beth's Story

One of the most important things for our psychological well-being is to develop our own unique and true voice. Betrayal not only harms us, it also makes us feel crazy at times and silences us. Whether we are blind to the betrayal or not, we have difficulty telling our story. We don't know whom to trust.

We interviewed Beth McDonald one sunny summer day in July. Beth was a petite woman whose smooth complexion and dark hair gave her the look of someone much younger than her thirty-eight years. Beth was a successful businesswoman and the owner of a camp that had programs to help abused children. Sitting in a private and pleasing office cooled by a summer breeze, we asked her about a betrayal that had almost cost her life.

She told us, “I experienced this firsthand when at seventeen years old, I started having flashbacks of abuse that I experienced when I was four years old at the hands of sadistic teenage boys. I started having weird urges in my late teenage years that had to do with self-harm. It started as giving myself black eyes and goose eggs. It progressed into cutting on my face, particularly around my eye. I don't want to minimize these behaviors, because they were serious cries for help. I could not speak what to me felt unspeakable. I didn't have the words to voice what had happened to me. I couldn't cry. I was numb. Everything—my voice, my memories, and my tears—was trapped inside, with no way out. The act of cutting I now believe was my attempt to free the tears and to ‘speak' what I could not voice. Was it the best way? No. Did it appear ‘crazy'? You bet. Was there meaning in it? Oh, yeah.”

We asked Beth what her therapist had done to help her with her numbness and self-injury.

“I was suddenly diagnosed with a great many labels and medicated to the point of zombie-ism,” she said. “Not one of those labels or medications helped cure the flashbacks or reduced the cutting. In fact, my therapist's main mode of treating these behaviors was to throw me into the local mental hospital
after
I had cut myself—not before, mind you, because I was not allowed to call her—only afterward, when the deed was done. Never once, though, not once, in the three years that I saw this woman did she ever ask me what the cutting was about or ask why I did it.

“In fact, it was her rule that I not talk about what had happened to me—that I was to shrink it down, push it away, and not look at it. I was told not to speak of it because it was ‘upsetting' to me. Also too ‘upsetting' to me was to have contact with my family. She asked that I not speak to or be around my parents because they could get in the way of the healing. So this dynamic was set up in which I was not able to talk about what I needed to, I was not able to see or talk to my support system, not able to have real feelings or work through them, and if I refused to try to push it away or shrink it down, I was told to leave her office. The anger festered and grew in me like black mold.”

Beth cringed as she told us about her frustration during this time. She was disconnected from her support system and found herself in another system that called cries for help “crazy.” Beth found it an impossible position. This went on until she was sent to an inpatient unit and found someone who would truly listen to her: “For the first time in years, there was someone who was willing and wanting to listen to me and to my story. She was not afraid of the hard stuff, and she listened with her heart. I was able to talk to this woman about what I had been through as a child. The connection between Judy and me grew and flourished. I thrived.”

Yet then, after Beth went home, Beth's therapist cut off Beth's connection with Judy. It was framed as “professional boundaries,” but Beth experienced it as a profound betrayal. Part of Beth's reaction we have already talked about.

“And in that very moment,” she said, “with those words, I felt myself falling down into a black chasm. A feeling of coldness washing over me—much as it felt every time a doctor administered anesthesia before surgery—a feeling that I had just died. I fell into a black void of nothingness.

“The guilt consumed me, night and day. I had dreams of my therapist raping me repeatedly. I stopped talking. I sat in our therapy sessions with a blanket over my head—not willing to let her see me ever again, not wanting to see her.”

For several years, Beth was blind to her therapist's betrayal. Although she was angry with her therapist, she could not allow herself to call the actions wrong. There was always the nagging doubt that maybe she was crazy. But then came the day when Beth could really allow herself to feel the depths of betrayal and begin to change things. At this point, Beth had moved to a town thirty miles away and was commuting to see her therapist. She had also entered a sexual abuse survivor group: “And then one summer day, as I sat with the blanket over my head, I heard her tell me that I just needed to shrink it all down. I felt my body respond in a way I've never felt before. It started with a little spark in my belly that grew stronger as it traveled up through me and out my mouth. My voice was as strong as I have ever heard it before.

“‘I can't do this anymore.' The blanket was shed, and I got up and walked out into the sunshine and never looked back.”

We are motivated to be blind to betrayal to maintain important connections and relationships, but as we grow, we realize, as Beth did with her therapist, that those relationships are false and confining. If we can let ourselves, and we have support for falling into that disoriented place, we can begin to truly find ourselves. There can be no healing without talking about the betrayal, disclosing it to someone else, whether a close friend or even a support group.

Beth's story is about success in facing her betrayal, as we'll see in the next chapter, but it was risky. Beth
could
have found herself in worse circumstances after walking out of her therapist's office—she could have found herself being treated as more and more “crazy,” as she attempted to make her inner experience of betrayal one that could be shared in words. Instead, she found a person who could listen to her beyond her words and stay with her while she figured it all out. That story we share in chapter 11.

Telling May Risk More Betrayal

Telling and knowing can be risky because a bad response from others can constitute a new and harmful betrayal. The rape survivor who is blamed for being raped, the child abuse victim who is not believed—these individuals are experiencing profound betrayal. This betrayal can be deeply damaging. If getting a bad response to a disclosure can be a profound betrayal, it also means that there can be disclosure or nondisclosure of this experience as well, with all of the related complications and implications.

Bad responses to disclosure come in many varieties. One very bad kind of response is called DARVO.
^3.
This stands for:
D
eny the behavior,
A
ttack the individual doing the confronting, and
R
everse the roles of
V
ictim and
O
ffender, such that the perpetrator is assigned (or assumes) the victim role and turns the true victim into an alleged offender. That is a very negative response for the survivor. Not only does DARVO likely cause psychological harm, but we suspect it also often leads to retraction or silence.

A perfect example of this is when a guilty person is accused of rape. When confronted with this, the accused person denies that rape occurred, explaining it as consensual and acting in an outraged, affronted way, painting himself as a hapless victim. The perpetrator goes on to describe the actual victim as a vindictive person. The perpetrator therefore paints a picture of the victim as an aggressor, deserving of being spurned. The person disclosing the rape is thus raped again.

There are other risks as well—marriages fail, relationships fall apart, family members fight with one another. If workers talk about betrayal on the job and become whistleblowers, they are likely to lose their jobs. One example that demonstrated the risks of disclosing betrayal actually happened to us.

First, some background. In late 1990, Jennifer Freyd started to remember some childhood abuse by her father. She was discreet with the information but did share it privately with her therapist, her husband, her parents, and a few close friends. One of the results of her telling about the betrayal was the formation of the False Memory Syndrome Foundation, founded by her parents. There were other insidious outcomes as well, and here is the story of one of them, told in Jennifer's voice. She is referring to an article (the “Jane Doe article”) written by her mother and widely disseminated in 1991 and 1992.
^4.

“The existence of this Jane Doe article first came to my attention in a most disturbing fashion. I was sitting in the office of my colleague Dr. Pamela Birrell in the fall of 1991, when she passed me a copy of the journal
Issues in Child Abuse Accusation
. She said the journal issue had mysteriously appeared in her mailbox, and she wondered what I thought about it. I lazily flipped through the journal and skimmed a few words here and there. When I got to the article ‘How Could This Happen?' authored by ‘Jane Doe,' I read a paragraph or two and was astounded to discover personal details about someone named ‘Susan' who sounded remarkably like myself. Suddenly, my attention was riveted on the article.