Happily Even After Betrayal with Life Coach Jen

196: Why We Resist Help After Betrayal

• Jennifer Townsend • Season 5 • Episode 196

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When betrayal blows up your world, silence can feel safer than speaking—and yet that silence keeps the pain in charge. We open up about why so many of us resist help after an affair or divorce, how generational scripts shaped our instincts, and what it takes to shift from survival to healing. If you grew up believing privacy equals strength and emotions make you weak, this conversation will give you permission to ask for support without shame.

Together we unpack the real physiology of betrayal trauma—hypervigilance, insomnia, flashbacks, and brain fog—and why your nervous system needs regulation before big decisions. We draw a clear line between neutral support and well-meaning but biased advice, and we talk through how to find a coach or therapist who resonates with your body’s yes. You’ll hear practical steps for nervous system care, simple tools to reduce rumination, and the power of naming patterns like gaslighting to restore clarity. You don’t have to retell every detail to heal; you need safety, language, and consistent practice.

We also explore how modeling resilience changes the story for your kids, why time alone doesn’t heal, and how asking for help actually increases your sense of control. If you’ve been carrying a weighted vest of grief and panic, consider this your cue to start taking the plates off. You survived the betrayal—now let’s make healing lighter, faster, and yours by choice.

If this resonated, share it with someone who needs a steadier breath. Subscribe for more honest conversations, and leave a review to tell us what you want next. When you’re ready for real support, connect with me at lifecoachgen.com—your happily even after starts today.

Please follow me on instagram and facebook @happilyevenaftercoach and if you want to see what coaching is all about I offer a free 45 min. clarity call via zoom.

Email me: hello@lifecoachjen.com for any comments or questions.

Thanks for listening, please like and review as well as share with your family and friends.

My website is www.lifecoachjen.com take the Free Quiz to find out how- How healed you are?



SPEAKER_00:

Welcome to Happily Even After Betrayal with Life Coach Jen, the podcast where we don't sugarcoat betrayal, we transform it. If your heart is shattered, your nervous system is buzzing, and your future feels uncertain, you're in the right place. Here we rebuild identity, confidence, and peace. One brave episode at a time. Hey friends, welcome to today's podcast. Today's podcast was my daughter's idea. And so if you have an idea of what you want me to talk about, please share because I love to talk about what other people want to hear. Anyways, but she was like, why don't people get help? And I think it's such a great topic. And I think it's generational. Like there's lots of reasons. So I'm going to talk about some of them. And I think, especially after betrayal, people really resist help. And it's very fascinating because it's like they don't realize they're choosing, like, let me stay stuck and miserable, as opposed to like healed and free. But I know our brain doesn't work. It feels safer not to say anything. But one of the most common things I see after betrayal or divorce isn't weakness, it's resistance to help. And I think oftentimes when we're betrayed or getting divorced, like our nervous system gets overwhelmed. And it's really hard to make a decision from that position. So it makes sense. Like it's hard to even know what we want. And so to think, oh, I've now got to talk to someone about this or share my feelings, especially for men, that feels very scary and hard. And I think sometimes we just lie to ourselves and say things like, oh, I've got this, I'll figure it out. I don't want to burden anyone, right? Have you ever said any of those things? And I think we resist the help. It's not that we don't need it, but because needing help feels unsafe. Like we're, it's a weakness. And I think a lot of this like generational, right? So the boomer generation, which is my parents, they had a mindset that's different, right? They have a survival mindset and they push through things. They don't talk about it. They privacy matters, right? Like we don't talk about privacy or private things to people. I mean, back in the day, you didn't tell someone you were pregnant. Even if you were married and pregnant, like you didn't, you just didn't talk about it. Like that was, those were things that were unspoken for sure didn't talk about sex. And you definitely didn't talk about if someone had an affair. And so I think that's where that mindset comes. And those, those people raised us, right? I think mental health, if you had any mental health issues, that was a weakness. Like something was wrong with you. And for sure, divorce, first of all, people didn't get divorced. And if they did, you did not talk about it. And you kept it hidden. And for sure, affairs, right? Like you did not talk about that either. Especially in a lot of I mean, maybe if you lived in New York or California, but not in Utah, not in Idaho, not in the Midwest, not in the South, right? You didn't talk about this. The boomers did not talk about this. Now, Gen X, which is me, I think our parents were amazing, but they weren't really raising us emotionally with a lot of emotional skills, right? They didn't hadn't really tapped into their emotions. And so they weren't really passing that on to us. I feel like people were raised in fear, right? Fear more than faith or love, right? Like it wasn't intentional, but it was more fear-based. And I think we learned like we don't want to rock the boat. We don't want to need too much, right? We don't want to be needy. If I don't handle this myself, I'm failing. So a lot of these really deep beliefs were taught to us, and we then felt like were true. Now, millennials and Gen Zers, right? My kids are in the Gen Z category, but I think eventually, as we get through this generation, more therapy friendly, right? More emotional language, less stigma around help. I mean, my kids in high school were like, oh, I gotta go to therapy, or oh, hey, we got to stop by the house and take my pills. I'm like, I would have never, I would have been mortified in high school to tell someone I was in therapy. Now I didn't go to therapy, but if I had mortified, right? I would not have said that. I would have been like, wait, what? None of my friends went to therapy that I knew of. If they did, they weren't telling me. And I think there's just less stigma around it, which I think is a beautiful thing. And they still have struggles, but there's less shame around asking for help. And we weren't taught how to ask for help. We were taught how to survive. And I think that's true. So many of my clients are Gen Xers like me. And I think, you know, we're learning. We're learning. I think our generation are chain breakers. That's what I like to call us, that we're breaking those chains and love my parents. My parents are amazing. They're 80 this year. And I love them so much. They just didn't have the tools that we do. And I can even see my parents, since I've become a coach and gone through a lot of hard. My kids have gone through a lot of hard. My siblings have gone through a lot of hard that they're at least opening up and recognizing, like, okay, it's it's a good thing to get help. It's okay to get help. And so I do believe people change and don't have to fit into this mold necessarily. And of course, they don't, right? Everyone's different. And you might have had a boomer parent that was, I don't know, a hippie or just more like open to things. So, of course, not everyone fits into this category, but I think it's just good to note and point out different things. I think it's helpful. And I think it was helpful for my daughter when I was talking to her about Nana and Papa and like different generations for her to understand like it makes sense, right? That's how the society was. And they just knew people from their town. They didn't know people from all around the world through the internet, right? There's so much access now, and which is good and bad. But I think if you search for good, there is a lot of good out in the world, which I'm really grateful for. So why we resist help, right? People avoid getting help after betrayal due to traumas, shock, shame, fear. They feel like they're gonna fall apart. They don't trust anyone, right? And they feel like it's too late if they didn't get it, like, you know, when it first happened. But the thing is, healing, your body doesn't know if the trauma happened 10 years ago or today, if it hasn't healed yet. And so there is no time line, like you can heal from something from 10 years ago. So that's important to note, I think. And so if you weren't ready 10 years ago, maybe you're ready now. And that's a beautiful thing about healing. I love to use the example of why it's important to get help, is if you have ever worn a weighted vest, but just imagine a hundred-pound weighted vest and you're just carrying that around 24-7. That's exhausting. But that's what your body is doing with all that emotional pain and all that hurt. And that's why healing is important. That's why it's important to get out help so you can let go of that vest, all the weight that you're carrying in that vest. So often people have well, it's betrayal trauma, and it's akin to PTSD. If you're familiar with that, it is you feel constant panic, a brain fog, and a lot of flashbacks, insomnia, hypervigilance. So it's very traumatic. So it feels like almost impossible. You feel very stuck. And I've totally had this thought before. It's like, okay, if I get help for my pain, what if there's something worse that I'm gonna uncover? Right? What if I find something else that I didn't remember? And I think that prevents a lot of people from getting help, is because they don't want to know. But honestly, for me, I tell clients, like, you can go do a deep dive in your past if you want. That's for a therapist, that may be for some other modalities of therapy. But for coaching's purposes, I think we can just learn to accept our past. And then how are we going to move on from today into our future? And that's what I really like to help people focus on because you don't need to necessarily explore every detail of your past to heal. You just have to accept it and know, okay, that's what happened. Now what do I want to do? And when you've experienced betrayal, it's your reality, right? Your reality is completely disrupted. And so it you feel crazy, you feel obsessed, you're struggling to process what just happened. And the world as you know it has ended. And so that is very disorienting. And you're exhausted. Like it healing or betrayal is exhausting, right? And then you think, oh my gosh, then I have to talk about it, then I have to feel my feelings. That feels even more exhausting. But actually, it does the opposite. It like lifts this weight and burden off of you. So our brain likes to think like, oh, it's gonna be so much harder. No, it's the complete opposite. It's gonna be so much better. Oftentimes, shame is a huge deterrent in getting help, right? Because we we don't want to believe anything's wrong with me. And if we have that narrative that something's wrong with me, then it's gonna be really resistant to getting help. And betrayal triggers any shame, any deep shame that we have. And especially if our spouse is telling us it's also our fault. They had an affair because of us, and we don't want to feel foolish or embarrassed. And so then it might prevent us from getting help. We don't want to have judgment, right? I have people email me sometimes and say, I don't want you to judge me. And I always just think, like, believe me, I've heard it all. I'm not going to judge you. And that's the last place you need to be. Like, you of course, you want to find someone that is gonna hold space for you and not judge you. But guess who's gonna probably judge you? Maybe is your best friend or your sister or your brother. So that's why it's good to go to a neutral person to talk to. So if you are afraid of judgment, that could feel safer for you. When you think the thought, like, I don't want someone to tell me what to do, right? That's why you need to find a coach or a therapist because they're not gonna tell you what to do. Your neighbor, well, probably not your neighbor, but your sister or your brother, they're gonna tell you what to do. They're gonna be like, leave them immediately, or you should really stay for your kids, right? Like, so it causes problems for talking to people that are closer to you. And I mean, I have a reel going around about your spouse's family, like not talking to you or not acknowledging the affair. And that happens and that sucks, and it's really hard to even imagine that when you go to your spouse's family and they're like, oh, they would never do that, or get over it, or it's okay, right? All men do that, or all women, most they're gonna say all men do that, but it's not true. It isn't true, and that's very hurtful and it's a lie, and it's not your fault. It feels like you're gonna let go of control if you tell someone if you ask for help, because that means you need some help. It's actually the opposite, right? It's so much more empowering to get help than to not get help. And so I promise you, asking for help equals admitting you don't have all the answers, and no one has all the answers. Remember, you're human, you're not a robot. And so, of course, you're gonna need help. You're gonna need new tools that you don't have yet because you've never gone to the school or the class of betrayal, right? You didn't know you needed that class. And now you're in the class and you don't know what the heck you're doing. So, of course, you need help. Oftentimes we go into protection mode, right? And so we think, well, we've got to protect everyone from finding out or discovering. And I saw this doing this with my kids. I don't want them to know. I don't want them to find out. And I think we need to have more faith in our kids, that our kids can figure this out. They are gonna make their own decisions regardless of what we tell them to or not. And so it's okay that our kids see us fall apart sometimes. They need to know their parents are human and that we have emotions and that we're sad. We don't always have to put on a perfect face. That's actually more hurtful and harmful to our kids than to be sad or mad or irritated or disappointed or embarrassed because those are human emotions and you're human. Another thing that prevents people from getting help is they have a lot of trust issues, which is very understandable, right? Betrayal destroys trust. And so it's like, I don't know who I can trust. And I just think that comes from just listening to your gut, paying attention. Do I resonate with this person or not? I'm always fascinated because most people find me on social media that get on a call with me and they're like, I just something about you I liked or I trusted or I resonated with. And we all do that with people. Like, I follow certain people just because I like them or, you know, so really listen to yourself. If something I'm saying, you're like, oh yeah, that resonates with me. Okay, I want to get on a call. Awesome. But if I don't resonate with you, that's gonna be a harder thing for you to trust me, right? And so I think pay attention to what your body's telling you when you're listening to a podcast. If it's resonating with you, if it sounds like that sounds like true to me, then those are the people you want to surround yourself with. Those are the people you want to reach out for help. And I think resisting help keeps you stuck. And if you want to stay stuck in misery, go for it. But I promise you'll be able to live such a better life getting help and moving through the betrayal and the pain. It's gonna, I what I always tell people, what you resist persists. And so it's not that your grief will eventually go away. No, it's just gonna stay with you. Even till you're 80, if you never deal with it, it will stay with you and just keep on bothering you and keep on holding you back. And the rumination, I think people tell me like they think about the affair every single day. If that is you, that is completely unnecessary. And you do not have to think about it every day. There are tips and tricks and tools. And as you heal, the thing is, do I every now and again, of course, when I'm recording the podcast, thinking about my spouse cheating on me? Yes. But does it affect me anymore? Absolutely not. It can come in as a thought, it goes in one ear and out the other, and it causes me little, little feelings, right? Because of my healing. And so don't think like, oh, this is just what happens when someone cheats on you, that you have to think about it 20 times a day for the rest of your life. That's miserable. It means that your nervous system is stuck in fight or flight, that you're just trying to function, but you're exhausted all the time, right? You're still functioning, but you're tired. I was totally stuck in this. Like, I'm like, I think I was functioning as a mom and a wife, but I was exhausted. I remember feeling exhausted all the time. And now I sleep great. Whether I have five hours or 10 hours, I'm always full-rested. I'm like, so great, because I don't have this constant weight of betrayal stuck on me. Some physical consequences if you choose not to heal are you're gonna have sleep issues, anxiety, depression, chronic tension, and illness. So many autoimmune diseases come from dysregulated nervous system, which betrayal for sure will impact. And so it's important to learn how to regulate your nervous system. A lot of relational consequences, like you might become isolated. Your kids, you're teaching your kids like we don't talk about hard things, right? You're modeling suppression instead of resilience. Resisting help doesn't make you strong, it just makes you lonely, which is so true. And when it's your children who resist help, I think you've taught them this, right? They don't want to upset you. And I've heard this from my kids like, mom, we just don't want you to make me feel bad. And I'm like, no, make me feel bad. I don't care. Like I can handle it. They don't have language to what they feel because you haven't taught them. And when they sense your stress, they want to protect you. And so when a child is refusing help, they're not being difficult, they're being loyal to you, they're trying to protect you. So I think reframing that, realizing like, wow, my child's so difficult, they don't want any help. No, they just are scared that they're gonna hurt your feelings. And I think being honest with your kid. It's you can totally hurt my feelings. And I'm gonna be okay because I'm an adult here. And I think it's important. So when I think people think like, okay, when I'm gonna get help, I have to then just tell my story to everyone. No. Now I'm more vocal about my story. So I probably do tell it to a lot of people, but in general, you don't need to tell it to everyone. You need to tell it to a few safe people, and that is enough to help you heal. And people think like, oh, someone's just gonna tell me what to do, right? No, if you go to someone that is telling you like leave your marriage immediately, they're the wrong person for you because you need to come up with that on your own. You have to make that decision. You can't let other people control or manage your life. That's a you decision, but you need someone to help guide you to get to your decision. You need help figuring it out. And you're not broken. You don't need to be fixed. You just need to heal. You're wounded, is what I like to call it. But when you do get help, you're gonna have more nervous system regulation. You're gonna feel more aligned with yourself, more in tune with what you need. You're gonna have more perspective, you're gonna have more tools, you're gonna create more safety within yourself, and you're gonna give language to what you're feeling. I remember hearing the word gaslight, and it was like a whole light bulb went off on in my brain. I was like, oh my gosh, I've been gaslit my entire marriage and I had no idea. And so it was really empowering. It felt empowering, right? And so sometimes words that you'll learn, it's like that makes so much sense. And so that can be very helpful. Healing happens faster than what you think it does if you're intentional, if you're really paying attention daily and you're practicing the things you're learning, you're not gonna feel crazy anymore. And I think the most important thing is you regain your agency, you regain your choice, you're choosing this, right? So often you feel like a victim in betrayal and divorce, and that can feel very alarming and very disorienting. But reality is, no, you do have choice. And think of what it teaches your kids, right? You model for them emotional health, and it's okay to get help. You're not weak if you get help, and you stop carrying it alone, right? You don't have to have that heavy backpack, the heavy weighted vest on. You can have someone helping you take some of the sand out or whatever they put in those bags, release some of it to let it go. And you're having someone else on your team, which I think is really powerful. Remember, time doesn't heal. Time alone does not fix or heal things. You have to be intentional. You have to do the work, you have to be actively pursuing help, therapy, coaching, you're gonna get tools from that. You need that outside source for getting help from other people from podcasts. That's why I do my podcast, is so I can offer people little chunks and bite-sized pieces of help. Okay, so to get their brain working and deciding, like, oh, that resonates with me. Remember, we don't want to keep the elephant in the room. We're trying to get rid of the elephant. And so healing, getting help will remove the elephant from the room. Healing doesn't mean you're weak, it means you're willing. So just pay attention, right? All these false stories that you've told yourself about healing. Let's reframe those. So if you're resisting help, ask yourself what you're afraid of. What would happen if you received help? You don't have to commit forever, right? Like people are like, oh, do I have to go to therapy the rest of my life? The thing is, I've known people to go to therapy for a very long time and they haven't changed a bit. So you have to intentionally be working on it, right? Like I think it's not a day process, not a week process. It's a constant practice and you're learning and growing and evolving as you're healing. And so I think it's important. You need to find the right help, right? If you've experienced betrayal, I think having a betrayal coach is ideal because they've experienced what you've experienced and they know how you're feeling and they know how to get out of it. So you're not stuck anymore. And finding a good therapist, um, finding a group to go to, finding a friend, right? Learning all these tools is important. So just know you survived betrayal. You don't have to survive healing to. You can get help for that. And I would recommend it highly. Have a beautiful day. I hope you enjoyed this podcast, and I will talk to you next week. Thanks for listening. If this episode helped you breathe deeper or see your next step more clearly, share it with someone who needs it. And when you're ready for real support in your healing, you know where to find me. At lifecoachgen.com. That's Jen with one N. Your happily even after is possible. And it starts today.