E079 - How Long Will This Hurt? Why Betrayal Wounds Linger Even When You've Tried Everything To Move On

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[00:00:00] In this episode, you'll discover why that betrayal from your ex is lingering even when you've tried everything to move on

Speaker: Welcome to Heartbreak to Wholeness, the podcast helping you heal from the mindfuck of narcissistic relationships and move towards the secure, peaceful woman you want to become. I am your host, Bre Wolta

Relationship Clarity Coach and EFT Certified Practitioner. Let's dive in.

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Hello and welcome back to the episode. Okay. I have to ask you, have you ever said to yourself, I should be over this by now, maybe while even frustratingly sobbing yet again over how your ex cheated on you? And I ask because I have totally been there too.

And there are important reasons that you are feeling stuck that we need to talk about. So in this episode, you will discover the real reason that you're still crying. Months later over your ex's betrayal. You will understand what needs to become your primary focus when healing your heart, [00:01:00] Angie will hear how one woman not only moved on from her betrayal trauma, but finally, stop taking responsibility for everyone else's problems and be sure to stick around to the end of the episode because I will pull an Oracle card that will offer you a message that you can use this week to stay more conscious in your healing.

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So I wanna share with you a story of a client session that I recently had, and this client session is so important. It's so important to share this message because I know so many of you are getting stuck in the same place that she was. So this client of mine came to me. She's, she entered into my program because she had just been betrayed.

She had just been cheated on by her narcissistic partner and was trying to figure out what the hell happened, how it went from. So good to now, so bad in trying to figure out how somebody could do that to somebody else.

She was really deep diving into the rabbit holes on Google about [00:02:00] learning about narcissists. She was listening to all of the podcasts about how narcissists do what they do and what betrayal is. She was reading self-help books about how to get over betrayal. And just intaking information, right? Trying to make sense of the mind fuck, which is what we are always doing when we get out of these relationships.

And rightfully so, it is mind fuckery, right? We need some sort of orientation around what happened. But she was fending months in this place of learning all of this stuff, learning what betrayal was, learning what, who narcissists are, and yet she was still finding herself. Having these weeping episodes right where the, the wave of emotion around being betrayed came in so hard and she felt so sad and so frustrated.

She was crying and just asking herself like, how could someone do this? Why would someone do this? And really kind of staying in this spiral of, [00:03:00] I can't believe this happened. Why did this happen? How did this happen? How did I let this happen? A lot of the places that we go, especially when we are blaming ourselves for something that went wrong in a relationship and she was so frustrated with herself, she is like, it has been several months and yet I can't stop crying. I feel like I'm trying, I'm feeling my feelings. Why isn't this going away? So in my individual session with her, we had 75 minutes to dive completely into her specific. Situation and her specific feelings.

And so we're starting to tap. And if you're not familiar with tapping, it's a modality that I use called EFT, tapping Emotional Freedom Techniques. And this is a technique that helps to regulate your nervous system while you're talking through something that is charged. So a triggering event, a traumatic event, something that has heightened emotion in your body.

And what started to happen as we were [00:04:00] tapping is that we were able to get a little bit more curious about the sensations that she was feeling in her body. So she was telling me about how frustrated she was, how angry she was, that she just kept crying and couldn't figure out how to heal from this. And I asked her, I'm like, where do you feel this in your body right now as you're talking about it?

She's like, I feel nauseous and I feel just heavy. I feel heavy everywhere on my body. And so we took a pause and we got curious about that sensation. Again, while she's tapping, she's regulating her nervous system and I'm asking her these guided questions. These curious questions about the sensation, about where she's felt the sensation before

And a memory came up for her for when she was five. So we sat with that memory. We're continuing to tap, we're continuing to get curious. And, and in the rational part of her brain, she's like, why are we having to go back to when I was five to process through this betrayal that I had when I was 35?

But she went with it and as we're getting more curious about this 5-year-old part of her, [00:05:00] and the memory of her when she was five, she started to cry. And I asked her to share as she was crying what was coming up for her, and she said, I'm just having this understanding that I was never good enough for my father.

I was five years old and I was trying to get him to play with me. I was trying to run around the house or be super cute or put on really funny outfits so that he would engage with me, and he just kept telling me to go away, to go away.

And then eventually he got up and he left the house and he didn't come back for several days. Her, her father was an alcoholic and her in that moment as the 5-year-old. Made the understanding that she wasn't good enough and there was something that she did that pushed her father away, that pushed him to leave for several days at a time to push him into his alcoholism.

And a five-year-old right, doesn't understand that she's not the cause of that. But that was the meaning that she made out of that experience. So she's sitting with this little girl and I'm coaching her on how to be with this [00:06:00] little girl and witness this little girl's pain of watching her father leave, and she starts gutterly crying.

This is a cry that is coming from her five-year-old self. A deep, deep cry. I don't know if you've ever experienced these type of cries where you feel almost like you're turning inside in your body and you are touching into something. So tenderly painful.

This guttural cry was really her trying to release decades of feeling not good enough, decades of holding this pain. And she's moving through it and she's tapping and she's, she is just so beautifully holding her five-year-old self and.

When she came out of that experience, she was able to understand why being cheated on. Cut her so deep? Being cheated on in general is horrific, and being betrayed is something that is painful. But for her, [00:07:00] it also touched on this much, much deeper wound of not being good enough and it actually being the one that caused the person to, to go elsewhere, to seek elsewhere.

And so she was able to come out of that experience and say, oh my God, I have lived. 35 years with this understanding that I'm not good enough and this is all my fault and it's not. And she was able to change the understanding of that situation with her father. She was able to comfort her five-year-old self in a way that she didn't get when she was five.

She was able to go in and hold her and be with her and tell her that it wasn't her fault, and, and comfort, that fear that the little girl had of being dismissed and discarded. And from being with that part of her, she was better able to understand the pain that the 30 5-year-old self was feeling.

So what I want you to really understand here [00:08:00] from this story is how powerful it is to be with our feelings and how being with our feelings will help you actually process through your experience in ways that intaking information is not going to do for you. The self-help book is going to give you a lot of information, which is beautiful.

You processing your, your own experience in a safe place with somebody who can witness you. That is where the movement starts to happen. So for my client, she's now familiar with this five-year-old part of her, she's now familiar with this, this story that she has, right? That she's not good enough. And so when this appears in other places in her life, she knows what that is Now.

And so this is how the, he doing the deeper work really translates into, into our current life.

Because when you're on autopilot and you're not aware that your five-year-old self has been activated, then you're just acting. You're acting from that five year-old self's fear. But [00:09:00] if you are able to say, okay, the situation is activating my five-year-old inner self who believes she's not good enough and I know how to comfort her, I know how to be there for her and remind her that we are good enough.

Remind her that we're no longer five years old. Remind her that I'm here for her now. That's how you can change your behavior in the, in the here and now. So for this client, she now can show up at work differently. She used to get really bad anxiety going into reviews, thinking that she was gonna be told all of the things that she was doing wrong,

and now she's able to enter into a review and be present in a review without totally dissociating because she automatically doesn't feel good enough with her friends, she's able to not be invited somewhere. And not get sucked into this spiral of, I'm not good enough.

Why didn't they invite me? Nobody likes me. And then pushing her friends away. As a result, she's able to see that the decisions that her friends are [00:10:00] making are not about her specifically,

and detach from that. And in her family relationships, she is now able to allow others' behavior to be about them and not take on the responsibility of, oh, they're, they're doing this thing because of me, because I'm not good enough, because I'm pushing them away.

It has been life changing and she's not yet in the place of being in a new romantic relationship. But because she has this awareness around this story that she has been holding for so long because of this very real pain that happened to her when she was five.

She will be able to enter into a relationship with that same awareness, which is gonna lead her into being able to communicate her feelings, which is gonna lead her to be able to continue to regulate her nervous system and not put that all on her future partner to take care of her, and it's gonna really foster this interdependence within that relationship.[00:11:00]

She is able to be the primary caregiver to herself and her activated parts, which allows her to show up as her adult self in the relationship and not get so overtaken by the triggers. I get really passionate about talking about what's possible.

When we can actually be with our feelings, because I've also experienced this firsthand. I also was living in that same false understanding that if I just learned about the narcissist or learned about the betrayal, that I could just move on from it.

And unfortunately, that is just not the way it works. So the reason that I hold space, the reason that I've created my coaching programs, the way that I have really, really organized the whole experience for my clients is based on also what I needed and based on what I finally was able to do to move through the pain so that you are not getting stuck.

I had another client recently say like she was so pissed off that her ex gets to [00:12:00] just get off scot-free from this, and she's left carrying around this trauma forever. And what I reminded her was, you may have experienced this trauma. This trauma is very real from this relationship, but it can be something that is just a part of your story

and not something that continues to drive your

experience now and in future relationships. So that's the beautiful part about actually doing this deeper processing work is we get to heal those really painful places so that they don't continue to make our future painful. For all the clients that I've gotten to work with, I feel so honored that they have chosen me to hold that space,

and that is something that is so deeply fulfilling for my soul to be able to do.

So if you're in the pain, if you're in the in, just trying to intake information, just sit with this idea of what could it be like to be in a safe enough space to actually let myself go there? And maybe you don't know where, where their quote unquote is for you yet, but to [00:13:00] do the exploration,

to find the curiosity and the compassion because you can absolutely do it. I have, I have been there, I have done it, and I have helped so many women do the exact same thing.

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to end this episode, let's pull an Oracle card and this card, I'm just going to ask the energies, ask the universe what is the message that needs to come through for the listeners today? And I'm shuffling the cards. The card that is for you today is silt, and this is a picture of a heart with like dirt or silt covering it.

So I'm gonna find the message in the book and I will read to you what SILT has to say. Silt is the mark of the soul's deep remembrance, the fine dust of relationship and experience that infiltrates the cells, coats the heart, the ash of love and pain and tenderness. The silky soft remnants of experiences that have touched, changed, and moved the physical and spiritual [00:14:00] body.

The fine bits of love we acquire the ones that stay. After digestion, absorption, elimination, silt is left behind all we take in consciously or unconsciously. Silt calls you to remember what matters, the memories that existed even before you came into this world. Honor your past. Remember what you have chosen and what has chosen you.

Silt calls you to accept all parts of your past relationships, the pain, the love, the lessons, knowing that you can scrub away what doesn't serve you anymore. That is more perfect than I could have even predicted. Remember that moving through betrayal is on every level a bitch, okay? It is layered in so many ways, and I hope that the story from today, the lessons from what my client learned really can give you a glimmer of hope.

If you feel like you are dead center in the middle of a dark tunnel and can't. Yet find that that light at the end of the tunnel, there is [00:15:00] hope for you too.

And because these points are so, so important, let's recap on what we touched on. So from this episode, you have discovered the real reason that you're still crying even months later after the betrayal, you now understand what needs to be your primary focus when healing your heart, and how maybe that hasn't been your primary focus in the past, and you have heard one woman's super powerful story of how she did move on from betrayal trauma and actually stopped taking responsibility with everyone else's problems in her life.

Two, she had a dramatic change in dropping that narrative that had been holding her hostage for so many years.

So if you're listening to this episode and you're letting it resonate and you're starting to think that, yeah, I need to start doing some of this deeper work, I would love, love, love to meet you.

I have a link to an interest form in the show notes that you can use as a first step to reach out. From there, we will schedule a free session where we will just get to know each other and talk about if I'm the right person to walk with you on this [00:16:00] part of your journey. I can't wait to meet you, and I want you to remember that you are not alone. I am here for you. This podcast is here for you and I'll see you in the next episode.