Episode #120

Betrayal & CBT

Personal or professional betrayal usually catches us off-guard, and can be extremely shocking.

How should you react to a perceived betrayal?

How can you process betrayal, whether it affects you, someone else, or both?

Join me, Dr Julie Osborn, as I share with you how to use your CBT tools to process betrayal.

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Full Episode Transcript

Hi, this is Dr. Julie. Welcome to My CBT Podcast. I'm a Doctor of Psychology and a licensed clinical social worker specializing in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. I'm here to help you bring the power of CBT into your own life.

So thanks for being with me. I'm going to start off with a review I got on Apple Podcast. That's a place you guys can share your thoughts and ways that the podcast has helped you for others to listen and get the word out. So I always appreciate that. So this review is from Tammy Hyland, who's a colleague and a friend of mine.

So she says,

“Indispensible tool. As a fellow therapist, I am thrilled to express my immense appreciation for the invaluable resource to Dr. Julie Osborn's, My CPT Podcast has proven to be. Not only has it been an enlightening platform for personal growth and professional development, but it also become an indispensable tool in my therapeutic practice. Dr. Osborn's podcast episodes are meticulously crafted, offering a comprehensive dive into the realm of cognitive behavioral therapy. Each episode is a treasure trove of insights, strategies, and real-world examples that transcend theoretical concepts. Listening to her articulate explanations and reliable scenarios feels like engaging in a thoughtful conversation with the mentor.

“I must emphasize how invaluable her resource has been for my referrals. Recommending specific episodes to clients is not only deep in their comprehension of their therapeutic journey, but has also accelerated their progress. The clarity with which Dr. Osborn presents complex concepts has contributed significantly to my client's ability to internalize and implement strategies in their daily lives. In the field of that thrives on continuous learning, Dr. Osborne's podcast stands as a beacon of excellence. Five stars are simply not enough to reflect the profound impact this resource had on my professional journey. Hats off to Dr. Osborn for her dedication to advancing the field and empowering therapists worldwide.”

That was a good one! Thanks, Tammy! I appreciate it, and I have heard from a lot of professionals that have found it really helpful in using it with their clients as well. So that makes me happy. And again, it's about getting the word out and teaching the tools and helping all of us live happier, better lives. So today, I'm going to talk about Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Betrayal. I picked this because I just went through something in my professional life where betrayal happened based on somebody that I followed through a Facebook trend and some conferences I went to, and it's a really interesting story because I was shocked.

I'm sure most of you that have been betrayed are usually shocked, whether it's professionally or personally, through relationship or friendship, family members. So betrayal is tough because it comes when, not when, but usually when we don't expect it, or it's shocking, somebody you think that you trust, you don't have to even worry about trusting that person. There's been some consistency, things look good, and you haven't heard around from other people that there's an issue, which was my experience. So to find out, I've known this person since 2019, and I wasn't heavily... I was... I was seriously close with this particular person, but again, it was somebody in my community that I followed. And it turns out that other people that were feckly directed in many ways by this person didn't share until recently because he was so popular and so loved by so many that they didn't think they'd get the support that they needed in our community because so many people saw him differently. Luckily, one person started to share, and that really opened the door for other people to start sharing their stories and seeing they have more in common than they like to have in common.

And it's been good for the rest of us to know that we need to end that relationship and put distance and create a new community for us. We work as therapists to support each other and just be honest what's going on. So it's been really hard and it's been shocking, but I thought it'd be a good topic to talk about because a lot of people feel betrayed on many different levels for many different people in their lives in many different ways. So sometimes you really feel comfortable in a relationship or even at a work environment, you think, Oh, everything's okay. And then the rug gets pulled out from under you. And there is that feeling of betrayal on like, Wow, I thought this is an environment or a person I could trust and I couldn't. And then people start to blame themselves or say, Why didn't I see this? Or, Why was I so naive? But it's not about blaming yourself because there's a lot of people that are really good on making us believe that they do have our backs or they're authentic or they're really there for us. We really don't know what's going on in other people's lives.

So it's not about blaming yourself, right? I'm sure there are situations you can go back and say, Oh, I saw this happening, but I gave them the benefit of the doubt. I can tell you, at least in my community as a therapist, I think even more so we give people the benefit of the doubt because we're therapists, right? We're like, Oh, he's going through this. Oh, this just happened. This just happened. Yeah, I understand. And then there has to come a point where we're like, Okay, they keep bringing up these excuses and things aren't changing. So now I need to look at the bigger picture. And this is when I need to start to reach out and ask other people if you've gone through the same thing, because most likely it doesn't happen just like a one-on-one relationship. Other people have had these experiences. I even tell clients that are getting out into the dating world, I say if you meet somebody and they've had past relationships or they're divorced, ask them why. Why did you get divorced? A lot of people were like, Oh, shouldn't I add in that too soon to ask? And I'm like, Well, no.

It shouldn't be a secret. And you want to know what was the circumstances of somebody you want to get involved with. So ask questions if you're meeting new people. And don't worry that you're not going to offend anybody. You have the right to know who you're getting into a relationship with, into a business with. If it works to talk to other people like, Hey, have you worked at this environment, at this workplace? I know that there's websites you can look up and see other people's experiences. So do your homework and listen to your gut if you're having a feeling of like, I just want more information, or I'm not getting a really good feel from this person. It's not that I don't want you to trust others or go into the world on a defensive mode all the time, but I do want you to listen to yourself and your own intuition. How your CBT can help you with betrayal, it really starts off, as always, is by us recognizing any negative thought patterns that are maybe related to being betrayed. Like, if it's happened to me in the past, am I carrying that into my future relationship so it's getting in the way?

Or do I need to listen to myself? So this is a lot of shades of gray, right? It's not black and white, right? And the feelings that may come that are creating the feelings that are created by your thoughts, or if you're feeling distrust, self-blame, as I was mentioning a minute ago, or catastrophic thoughts about the future as well, like I'm never going to find someone I can trust or everybody's distrustful, or I can never really share how I really feel in this particular situation. So just being mindful of like, Okay, if I've had betrayal in the past, have I worked through and healed that? Because if not, I'm going to take that into the rest of my life, and that's not going to be beneficial. Because I think most people in our lives are not going to betray us, but when one person does, it can have a huge effect, right? Even if it happened just that one time. So once you can identify that, Yeah, I have been betrayed, and it's still affecting me negatively about how I interact with others or or maybe risk taking or opportunities that I don't want to take, we want to identify those thoughts.

So for example, if someone believes I can't trust anyone anymore, you want to look at the evidence that doesn't necessarily support that by looking at all the people you have added in your life, or good jobs you have had, or good bosses you've had, or healthy relationships. But even if they didn't work out, it was for mutual reasons maybe, or people move on in their lives, all the situations that may come up. But it really can turn into this core belief when you're betrayed, right? That core belief that I just mentioned was that I can't trust anyone anymore. That's pretty absolute, and that's going to put you in a really tough spot. That's going to affect you being able to have healthy and healthy relationships going forward. So you also want to explore your emotional responses, right? So with CBT, I want you to explore and acknowledge all your emotions surrounding being betrayed and being with a therapist or a good friend, being in a place where you feel safe and supported, allowing you to just share your feelings without being judged. And luckily, I have that with this community I'm talking about, the rest of us have moved into a new group, and we're talking about what's going on and healing and supporting each other.

And nobody's blaming each other for what happened because all of us were betrayed by this one person and really blindsided. So I think we're all processing it, but to know that I have a supportive environment where I can talk about this and share my feelings is very safe and healing for me. It makes me feel really comfortable and really grateful that everybody is there for each other. We always want to have good coping strategies to deal with the apt amount of betrayal. So this might be practicing some relaxation exercises, some mindfulness, doing some activities you enjoy, connecting with people you do feel safe with, and be able to feel relaxed and not have that guard up. And you always want to have realistic expectations when you're going through your healing process after this has happened. So again, you want to rebuild trusting relationships. If you're not having good boundaries, you want to start having healthy boundaries and start setting them in your relationships and being more clear about maybe what do I want going forward? A really common betrayal, of course, is when people get cheated on in relationships. That is very profound. I've met people that have been cheated on decades ago, and it still haunts them today.

They still question the person they're with even when there's no reason to. It's always like, It could happen. It could happen because it happened to me. When we experience betrayal, it really makes it real. It's not like, Oh, I'm worried about this happening. It actually did happen. So you don't want to let it take everything over so that you're always looking for it. Again, you want to be mindful and there's some red flags. You want to ask questions. I'm uncomfortable. I wasn't really sure where you went. You're dismissed my questions. That's good, healthy, open communication. Sharing with the new person you're going out with at some point that this happened to me. Sometimes I can be a little sensitive. I'm working on that, but I hope you can be sensitive, that I can be sensitive sometimes, and we can at least talk it through, but that I can own it. I'm not going to project this onto you, do, but sometimes I just need to share that maybe it triggered something from my past when I was betrayed. So having good boundaries, but also really having good communication skills with other people in your life, especially in intimate relationships, can really help you heal from the past and putting things in perspective of, This person cheated on me, I felt betrayed, but this is somebody new in my life, and I don't want to put my old baggage on this relationship, and then it's never going to give me the opportunity to have a healthy relationship.

If I'm going through the world not trusting the world, others in any situation, I'm never going to be fully vulnerable and fully myself, which is not going to allow me to be the happiest that I can be. A lot of times with CBT, where we do behavioral experiments I talk about, actually going out, it's like we can change our thoughts and have more balanced thoughts, but then we actually have to go practice. So implementing some behavioral changes to create more of that emotional healing, again, that could be just being more assertive with people, again, just being more communicative with people and being honest about how you're feeling. If there are certain situations where you need to forgive the person, not that they need to know about it, but for yourself so you can move on, that can be really healing also. And you need to build some emotional resiliency. We're always going to have difficult situations in our lives, and we're always going to have stress that we need to manage, but we need to have some resilience that this was painful. I'm going to allow myself to grieve and hurt, but I'm also going to reach out and share and get the support I need and have the resiliency that this happened to me.

But I'm not going to let this bring me down and control the rest of my life because I deserve more than that. I'm not going to let this one person take away my ability to trust other people in my life and to be able to be close. And things happen. Bad things happen to good people. That's just the way it is. It's not about being fair or should or what it could have. It's just things are going to happen. Can I be resilient and still go forward with my life and just be more mindful? That's what resiliency is all about. It's such an important tool for all of us to have. Also, you want to do an inventory regarding your own self-esteem, your self-worth, when we're betrayed, can significantly impact our own self-esteem and self-worth. That's where we want to really challenge and reframe our negative self-perceptions and having more of that self-image. That goes back to if you're doing any self-blame, right? That I don't have... I'm not blaming myself for being betrayed by this person. This is all on him. There is no reason, no way for me to see it coming. I'm just grateful other people shared so I know better going forward, but it's something to happen.

I feel sad, and I'm just going to make different choices going forward. I still feel like I can trust most of my community, and I see this person as just an individual and see that these are choices he made and that it's not about everybody else. I don't have to feel bad about myself because somebody chose to betray this community that I'm in. So again, it still is a form of loss, though. I'm not saying not to give yourself that time to feel because I want you to do that also, but understanding that any loss is connected with grief. I thought this, I thought that. I had these opportunities. I was looking forward to doing this with this group, and now I don't have that. Where am I going to recreate that for myself? Or how am I going to find a new partner? Or how am I going to find a new friend? Maybe a best friend betrayed you and you're having to move on from that. So allowing yourself to go through that grief and loss, but getting to a point where it's time to move on and understanding that there's a lot of people out there in the world that I can trust.

And of course, as always, self-care, self-care, self-care, whatever that includes, your physical, emotional, spiritual, your mental wellbeing. What do I need to do for myself right now to feel okay based on everything that I'm going through? The process of healing from betrayal is really an individual process, although you want to have the support in your life. And using your CBT tools as well as the self-care, going through grief and loss, and finding those specific needs you need for yourself as an individual can really help you get through that. If you're feeling stuck, seek out some professional help if you don't already have a therapist to find a therapist and get you unstuck and to be able to work through it. But the most important place to start, I would say, is just acknowledging. I do feel betrayed. I do feel really hurt. And I need to give myself time to grieve this loss and that I didn't necessarily cause this. And maybe now that my eyes are open, I can look back and say, Oh, that was a red flag. That was a red flag. But I didn't think it was that big of an issue.

Maybe next time I'll look at it differently. Talk to other people and share how you're feeling, get that support, and then really using your thought records to identify what are my thoughts? Am I now thinking I can't trust anybody? Or I'm never going to trust anybody again? Or I'm never going to share? Am I ever going to go find a new community that was important to me? I don't need to have relationships. I'm just going to stick with friends now or whatever. What are your thoughts? We had 80, 90,000 thoughts a day, so we know we all have hot thoughts going on, and betrayal can be really deep and really hurtful. So give yourself time to process that, figure out what are your thoughts, writing them down and then really start challenging them. And then the behavioral experiment is about creating new relationships and saying, Oh, this feels good. I am going to listen to Mike up more, or I'm going to see these are some signs when someone really isn't being honest with me that I'm going to pick up a lot easier. And that makes me feel a little more secure. I'm going in with more open eyes, I guess I would say.

And know that from time to time, these feelings might come up again, or you might see something that reminds you of that past relationship, right? That you'd be like, Yeah, that does. I still feel sad about that, but I have these other people in my life I can trust now and that I'm going to be okay. It might be yourself, it might be other people in your life that betrayal has just derailed their entire lives, which is really sad, especially when it comes from, I think, relationships, say, with parents, people that you hope that you don't have to even think about trusting or not. And then a lot of times that core belief is that I'm not going to trust others. If I can't trust my own mom and dad, or say, even sister or brother or whoever might be in your life, if I can't trust them, then I can't trust anybody. That's your ha thought. Because those relationships we put maybe on a pedestal or it's normal to think like, I shouldn't have to worry about trusting these people in my life, and then things happen and you can't trust them. That's really hard because those are those relationships you hold dear and you hope that you don't have to even think about it.

That's what's so wonderful about good relationships is I don't have to even think about that person betraying me so I can be myself and I can be vulnerable and I can share. So if you're struggling in your life today with relationships or maybe even with work, you want to really take some time and say, Where is this coming from? Was it from that betrayal I did feel years ago or even recently that I'm allowing to still get in the way of my current life? And don't I deserve better? I deserve to be happy and healthy and carefree and to have relationships that I can trust. You don't have to have 10,000 relationships with people you trust. You can have a very small circle of real intimate relationships. This is like my core of people I really do trust. The rest of the people I trust, but I'm going to be mindful. And again, it can even happen with work. I've had that with my work back in the day. I don't know if I've talked about, but I used to work at university. I was there for 10 years. Didn't worry about a thing. I thought I'll stay here, probably retired.

I have my private practice on the side. And then out of the blue, they decided to let go of the therapist and rearrange things. I was like, Wow, I didn't plan for this. And then it's a long story, but because of circumstances, they ended up not giving me my severance pay due to some technicalities. I felt very betrayed at that point. And my circumstance was set up that I was able to go into private practice full-time because I said, I don't really want to work for anybody if I don't have to right now because I felt like I couldn't trust like they weren't communicating with me enough that I didn't know what was going to happen, and I didn't want to be surprised like that again. I know not everybody works for themselves, and that's not always an option, but that's how I dealt with it. And I was again set up well enough that since I started my private practice, I could go full-time. But I remembered that. When they offered for me to come back, I said, I can't really trust you now because you weren't honest with me in the first place, so that's not a good environment for me.

And I moved on. I was scared, but that's what was best for me. It's scary to move on from work environments, relationships that have been in your life for a long time. It's easier when you know how things are than to jump into something new. But you got to, again, but my mantra is you want to make decisions based on what's best for you, not how you feel. I felt scared, but what was best for me was me to move on so I could create some trust and stability in my life regarding my career and not have to worry about whoever I'm working for saying, Oh, we're going to let you go now. And it's hard. Most people work for companies, right? So I'm not saying to go leave your job. And it is true that people can get laid off at any time and people are always replaceable. I felt fortunate I could go work for myself, but that was a betrayal. And it was so bad that people talked about that one for years. I would go back and teach a little bit. And people I never even met heard about my story because people couldn't believe how poorly I was treated.

So you never know. So I don't hold any resentment. Now, I'm grateful they did me a favor by moving on and having my practice and being able to expand my reach to people and be able to do my podcast with you guys. So luckily, things worked out for me. It doesn't work that way for everybody, and I understand. So it's really hard. So if you've gone through that and then you went and worked somewhere else, is that betrayal getting in the way? Are you fully engaged in your job? Are you working with your manager the way you want to, or are you holding back because you're afraid of what might happen? So that you don't want to do, right? If you're in a situation, you want to be fully engaged and get the most out of it for yourself as well. Holding back isn't going to change how other people treat you. Holding back isn't going to change things that might happen, but it's about being mindful in the situation. When things come up, don't just dismiss them. When people's behaviors change, take a moment and look. Say, I need to explore this a little more.

I'm going to go ask some questions. You deserve to feel comfortable and safe in any situation you're in. It doesn't mean we're not going to get betrayed by someone again in our lives, but we want to be able to know how to handle it. We want to be mindful of bringing up things that don't seem okay and know that I did the best to figure things out, and I moved on when I needed to. And I have that resilience and that strength within me, and I have those tools. I got my CBT tools that I'm going to rely on, right? I know that my negative feelings I'm having to reframe that is because that's how much I care about others. I feel sad for others that have been betrayed in situations I've been involved in. We all need to be there for each other. My negative feelings really show all the awesome things about me that it's okay to feel sad because it was really an important relationship, and I feel sad that it's gone. I feel sad the community was affected. I was frustrated with my old job because that meant a lot to me, and I have a lot of friends there, and I was sad that I had to leave.

All of your negative feelings, we're not here to alleviate them. We're just here to decrease them so they don't run your life and manage your life. So I would take some time and say, Have I been betrayed? And if I have, is it still affecting me today? Let me start off with just doing a thought record and identifying what my how thoughts are. Let me see if I really have any core beliefs about trusting others and how is that affecting my life going forward. And if it's still there and there's some residual effects, I'm going to work on those so that I can let that go and be fully present in my life, in my relationships, in my career, as a parent, whatever it is that I'm doing, I don't want that to affect me today because you deserve better. And again, you don't want somebody else's behaviors to get in the way of you living your life fully. So as always, you want to have some self-compassion, give yourself some grace, get away from the self-blame, if that's what you're doing, if you've been through betrayal and been betrayed by somebody, and start taking better care of yourself and identify what's going on.

I hope you got to start thinking. Sometimes I have lots of clients that are like, No, I'm not sure why I keep repeating this pattern. I'm not sure what the problem is. I just start asking lots of questions as I do, and we can usually get to it. A lot of times, I'm like, Wow. I didn't even know that was still affecting me. I just wanted to think I was past that. But yeah, let's delve into that a little bit, and let's clean it up. And that's all we need to do sometimes. Just identify it, and then we can work on it. Everything's easier said than done. I'm not trying to make it sound like it's easy, but it's maybe a place to get started if you're feeling stuck. And again, as always, find that support so you can have other people support you, especially at the beginning when you've first been betrayed and just dealing with all of the difficult feelings that come along with that and being able to identify your thoughts. So please pass this along to anyone that might find it helpful. As always, I appreciate you being here with me.

You guys know how to find me. My website's at mycognitivebehavioraltherapy.com.

You can find me on Instagram at My CBT Podcast.

Dr. Julie on Facebook.

Please keep sharing your thoughts, your concerns, your questions. I love hearing your feedback.

If you listen on Apple Podcasts, I would really appreciate a review. Again, just trying to reach as many people as we can out there.

And as always, make decisions based on what's best for you, not how you feel.