WTF Do I Do Now?

28. You Can't Think Your Way Out of Betrayal Trauma (It Lives In Your Body, Too!)

• Mandy | Betrayal & Empowerment Life Coach • Episode 28

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In this episode, we dive into why we can't think our way out of betrayal trauma (i.e. read books, listen to podcasts, research, try to diagnose him, etc.) and why it lives in our body too!

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 Hey, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of what the fuck do I do now with your host, Mandy women's empowerment, life coach, a trauma informed life coach, a meditation teacher and trauma informed breathwork facilitator. And we will talk all things, betrayal, trauma, cheating, healing from porn use women's empowerment. 

And most importantly, how his behavior is not a reflection of your worth. And it's not because of you, your body, you look to your parents or anything like that. And I'm so glad to hear today. We're going to dive. Have into something that I believe. Every woman needs to understand, and it is how betrayal trauma doesn't just affect your thoughts. It's something you feel in store in your body? And I want to talk about this. 

Cause I see so many women trying to think their way out of trauma, like wondering why they still feel stuck after doing all the journaling, the therapy, reading books, listening to podcasts, researching or mindset work. And I want to tell you, it's not because you're failing or doing a bad job at healing. It's because betrayal trauma impacts your whole being, especially your nervous system and intuition in ways that traditional approaches often overlook. So in this episode, we're going to talk about how betrayal trauma lives in your body and why it can leave you feeling stuck even long after the portrayal itself.  While your intuition is so powerful, but often gets dismissed by your brain and how that's deeply connected to your healing and rebuilding self-trust. And most importantly, what you can do to start healing in a way that honors your wholesale, including your mind, body, and soul, not just thinking about,  traditional approaches. Therapy, reading books, listening podcasts, as helpful as those are. 

It's also missing a huge component of getting back into our body where a lot of the trauma lives. So a few announcements before we dive into this episode. First and foremost, , if you can subscribe to the podcast and give it a rating at the top this is just one of the only ways for the podcast to grow and to be pushed up to more girls who are feeling alone in their betrayal journey and correctly blaming themselves for the betrayal. 

And I just want to get this in the hands as many girls as possible, so they know they're alone and they can start to find the healing that they deserve



At another announcement, if you only follow me on Tik TOK, but you find my content helpful and you're enjoying it, make sure you go follow me on Instagram too. Knowing that this Tik TOK ban is likely going to go into effect next month, which is January, which is just so crazy to even think that. We're not going to have access to tick-tock anymore.  But yeah, if you find my content helpful, make sure you go follow me. 

My handle is at WTF. Do I do now coaching? It's the same. Ontech talking Instagram and I also have a link for it in the show notes as well. 

that being said, thanks for your patience. Let's dive into the episode.  So we're going to talk about how trauma lives in your body. And so we're going to start with the science of what's happening when you experienced betrayal. So betrayal trauma is obviously such a unique form of trauma because it's not just the lost of trust in yourself and someone else. 

It's a total shock to nervous system. If you feel like you're ever overreacting about your betrayal, here's a stat that I'm about to say, and it just blows my mind. So according to Jennifer, J Fred, Bridget, Klaus, and Caroline all are  and I'm sorry if I mispronounce any of those names wrong. 

But in the journal of trauma and association, they say research has shown that betrayal trauma is associated with more physical illness, anxiety, this association and depression than traumas, low and betrayal, such as a natural disaster, sudden death of a loved one and went to seen violence, military combat, et cetera. 

And I'm not trying to say this to say one trauma is worse or better than the other. Of course, every trauma is horrible. And in. Impacts you in different ways and no one deserves any of that trauma. But on top of that with betrayal trauma, since it's so relational, it can also cause even more symptoms if you stay in the relationship because you're essentially exposing yourself to potentially being betrayed again and experiencing that pain and that trauma again and again.  So that's just a stat that I wanted to talk about. 

If anyone ever thinks like they're overreacting,  there's research that shows betrayal trauma is associated with more physical illness, anxiety, this association and depression and traumas, low and betrayal. So just keep that in mind and be patient with yourself and just  be very gentle and give yourself all the love and care that you need. 

So there's this book called . The body keeps the score by Dr. Bessel van der Kolk. And again, apologize if I pronounce that last name incorrectly. But I started reading this about a month or two before my betrayal happened. And it is such an incredible book that I definitely recommend to anyone who is interested in learning about how trauma lives in your body. And so in this book, he explains how trauma isn't just stored as a memory in your brain. 

It actually becomes embedded in your body like your muscles, your nervous system, even your posture. So when you're betrayed your body takes a snapshot of that moment to help protect you in the future. This is why you might find yourself having physical reactions, like tightness in your chest or racing heart nausea, a bad gut feeling whenever something reminds you of the trail. 

So this is your body trying to warn you by saying Hey, remember this paint be careful because it could happen again. But here's the problem with that is your body doesn't know when the danger has passed. So your nervous system can get stuck in survival mode, constantly scanning for threats. Even when you're safe. So that's why. So many women feel like they can't fully relax or trust anyone  again, after betrayal. 

So this could even look like if you're still in the relationship and you're out in public with your partner, and you're constantly scanning to check to see  if his eyes are checking out another girl, when she walks by that's another system of your body, constantly scanning for threats, even though you're physically safe in that moment, or if you see a  sex scene on TV and you see your heart starts to rate you feel a little anxious.  And you just feel uncomfortable. 

That's another sign that your body is scanning for threats being like, Hey, you remember like last time this happened, this isn't safe.

So this showed up for me a lot  and a lot of my triggers where my body was scanning for threats was it seems like when I would be driving past hotels because. And the text messages I saw with my partner, he was talking about getting a hotel room. So in my mind, I was like, oh, I wonder if that's a hotel you went to, I wonder if that's a hotel he went to. 

So every time I drive past them and the first time I went into a hotel  when my mom came to help me after it, which was like maybe a week after, I completely broke down into a panic attack in the hotel room, just picturing him, checking into the hotel with other girls. So that's my body scanning for threats because I nervous unregulated or anytime I would drive past the old street that I lived on with my ex my heart. It would start to raise. 

I would start to feel very hot. Anytime I would hear the word threesomes because he was talking about that and his text messages, or when I'd watch a movie and there was an affair or cheating scene, I would experience my body, start to have these moments of feeling hot. And my  heartbeat started to go. 

Or even like, when I remember I went to target for the first time after the betrayal and I walked past the laundry section and I just, I started feeling so panicky because I was picturing all the images of the porn star I saw on his phone who was wearing lingerie. So there are so many like little instances, that where, of course you're physically safe in those situations. 

I was physically safe. I was away from my partner. I left the relationship, but your body, like I was saying, it takes a snapshot of the danger in that moment.  And every time we have scenes that remind us of the betrayal, our body starts to go into this fight or flight mode being like, Hey, wait, like last time this happened, something bad happened. 

We have to protect ourself right now. And our body does this automatically. Like we don't even realize half the time. It's happening until after the fact.

If you left your relationship and you still live in the same city as your partner, maybe this is something you can relate to. But I remember after my betrayal, every time I leave the house and I still lived in the same. Neighborhood of LA as my ex partner, like every time I left the house, my body would feel unsafe. 

I was terrified. I'd run into him. I was terrified. I'd run into his friend. So I changed my entire routine. I stopped going to certain restaurants. I went to different grocery stores. I  started taking different routes. Like I would do whatever I could to avoid the potential threat or danger of him being around. 

And over time, the more I learned how to regulate my nervous system and get more in touch with my body, because that's where the trauma lives. The more these triggers and fears went away to the point where I started to fully feel confident. And I didn't fucking care if I ran into him or his friends, because I'm not the one who should be afraid. 

Like I'm not the one who cheated. And my nervous system finally started to feel safe and where I felt empowered and I could go about living. And my life again, without the fear of constantly running into him. And this could also relate to you , if you're still with your partner and he cheated on you in real life, and that person lives in your town. 

And now you're afraid of running into this girl, I guess the same situation. That's your body scanning for threats because your nervous system doesn't feel safe. So that's why it's so important that we focus on healing, the body healing, the trauma in our body.  So here's something really fascinating that I, this just blows my mind. Your body often knows before your brain does. 

So some specialists will say, our body can make a decision within the first 10 seconds, if something is right for us or not. But then after those first 10 seconds, our mind comes in and fills it with doubt, fear and overthinking. So think about if there's ever a time, where have you ever had a gut, a bad gut feeling about something? 

There was like a little voice inside saying, eh, you know what? Something's not really right here. That's your intuition speaking. Or has there ever been a time where you had a gut feeling that someone or something wasn't right. And you ignored your gut feeling and talked and thought yourself out of it. 

And then maybe days, weeks, or months later, your gut feeling turned out to be right. And you're like, oh shit, I should've listened to my gut feeling. So that is what our intuition is it's such a small little voice inside our head just being like we're inside our bodies. Oh, I don't know. Like maybe we should hold off on this. 

Maybe that's not a good idea. Maybe he's not being fully honest, maybe this mark to the story. And I think a lot of times women, when they hear the word intuition, they think that. It's like this big, loud voice where you're like, Hey, don't do this. And it's such a crystal clear sign. But our intuition often shows up in these like these very small whispers and it's really easy for us to think or talk ourselves out of it. 

But that's why it's so important to start to get in touch with our body where we can.  Figure out the certain sensations within our body to know if our intuition is telling us that something is good or bad.  So Dr. Vander, Koch and other trauma expert, explain that this isn't just some like woo. Made up spiritual hippie shit. 

It's actually proven by biology. Your body is incredibly intelligent and it's constantly picking up on signals and patterns that your conscious mind might miss. But here's the catch while all of this, our brains obviously love to rationalize, overthink and Phyllis without, especially for women, because we've been taught to second, guess ourselves, you might think, oh, I'm just overreacting or, oh, I'm being too emotional or, oh this can't happen or it must be me. 

I must be the issue. So in that moment, when you are second guessing yourself, when you're over, when you're telling yourself you're overacting or you're telling yourself you're being too emotional, And that moment you're overriding the very system that's designed to keep you safe as a woman, which is our intuition. 

It is called a wound's intuition for a reason and not men's intuition.  So this disconnect between your body and your brain is one of the biggest challenges in healing, betrayal, trauma. There's also research that shows that people who are able to connect to their body the most after trauma are the ones who actually healed the most after trauma because the trauma lives in our body. 

It's not just in our mind. In those moments when you're like, oh, maybe I'm overreacting or, oh, I'm being too emotional and you're overriding your intuition. Your intuition might be screaming. Hey, I need space to process this or Hey, something doesn't feel right or, Hey, I don't think he's being honest, but then your brain is trying to push you into the fix it mode and trying to convince you to ignore your feelings or to act out of fear. So our brain is often the one with risk with all due respect to our brain that fucks us up the most. 

If we learn to listen to the wisdom of our body, and again, this isn't just some hippie shit, like it's proven by biology. If we learn to listen to the wisdom of our body, our strength in our intuition and our self-trust becomes so strong. And I'm such a huge. Advocate for this because it is the number one thing that has . Help me heal. And I hear from so many women who say, how can I ever trust him again? 

How can I trust myself again? How do I know if he's being honest? How can I trust another man? And I fucking feel you, this was my, one of my biggest fears coming out in my betrayal. And I wanted to make it my mission to learn how to trust myself instead, and by learning how to strengthen and develop my intuition by learning how to connect to the wisdom of my body, by learning how to regulate my nervous system. 

And now I feel so confident and so reassured in myself in my self-trust where I don't even question if I can trust someone else, because I know if I can trust me, then that will be okay. I feel like I have such a. Quick radar now for intuition, like when I meet someone or when I would try to date. 

And so a guy just gave me  a weird icky feeling. Like I would listen to that sometimes I would override it into oh no, like this probably is just a trauma response of anxiety or fear. I'm going to override this. And then.  Days later, my intuition about that man turned out to be true. So I was like, damn, my intuition is so strong. 

And that's what I want every woman to be able to feel, because that is how women should be able to feel. Again, it's called woman's intuition for a reason.

So I've talked about this before, but I ignored my gut intuition to go through his phone, my ex partner's phone for over a year. But I ignored it because he promised me, oh, I'd never cheat you, obviously we live together. So like, why would someone cheat if we lived together? He would always show me off to his friends and family. 

He would always put me all over his social media.  We were having so much fun together. We were best friends.  He was always showing to me how much he loved me, which I now realize he was actually just love bombing me. But long story short, he was  my prince charming, but something just didn't feel right. 

I could never figure it out. And I was like, you know what? I'm probably, I would override my intuition, but make, oh, maybe I'm just bringing in past stuff from a previous relationship, a previous unhealthy relationship,  how other guys have heard me. So I just assume he's going to do the same. And so I would override my intuition, but that whole time, my gut intuition was talking to me. 

And I've talked about this before, but I literally wound up in the hospital in an emergency room for having ovarian cyst rupture from the stress of my body and brain being so against one another. And eventually after a year I went through his phone and as I found out everything that I did. 

And now looking back, I can connect the dots and see, oh my gosh, all those little moments, all those little signs where my intuition actually tell me something was wrong. But my brain kept overriding and being like we lived together, he would never cheat on you. He loves you. He would never cheat on you or you're being too emotional. 

You're bringing stuff in from past previous relationships. And in those moments, I didn't have the wisdom and the experience that I do now to realize that it was my intuition. And when I first found out about the cheating. I felt so blindsided. I was like, what the fuck? I can't believe he'd do this. 

I never thought he would have person to do this. But now when I look back, since I have had time to process the relationship. I'm able to see  those moments to connect the dots.  So I want to pause here and really talk more about women's intuition, because this is such an important part of healing from betrayal. 

Women's intuition is one of the most powerful tools we have. It's like a sixth sense that comes from our ability to turn into subtle cues. Things like noticing someone's tone of voice, noticing their body language and noticing their energy shifts. Noticing how someone maybe took a moment to respond. Noticing when someone's  pitching their voice change. There's such small, subtle cues. That woman or so. Powerful at being able to touch on these and this isn't just a mystical, like woo. 

Spiritual idea. Again, this is rooted in biology studies show that women have more active connections between the left and right hemispheres of their brain, which allows us to process emotional and physical cues faster than men. So that's why you might have picked up on your betrayals on your partner's betrayal long before you had any concrete evidence or after the fact you're able to notice others. Like  connect the dots on a situation like, oh, maybe he wasn't being honest there and you know what, maybe I did feel a little bit of a gut intuition about that. But I also want to say if your intuition never went off, that is not saying that you're a bad person or you have a bad judge of character. 

I want to make that fucking crystal clear. That does not mean you have a bad judge of character or you're a bad person. That's just saying here, a partner was extremely good at hiding it and lying. And please don't beat yourself up for not seeing the signs. I didn't start to realize my intuition was onto something until months after I left the relationship. 

Okay. It literally took me months to leave the relationship. To be away from him to look back and big. Oh, all those moments. That was my intuition. I had no idea.



So I just want to reiterate that if your intuition was not going off, that does not mean you have a bad judge of character. That's just seeing your ex or your current partner was extremely good at hiding it and lying. 

And don't beat yourself up for that because you should have never been in that situation to begin with. That is not your fault. You were just doing what you thought you should be doing was loving and trusting him because he was telling you he was a loving and trusting person.  So going back. So here's the thing about intuition, as we've talked about, it gets silenced. And why do we silence it? 

Because fear, logic or social conditioning takes over. So after betrayal, you might find yourself thinking I should've seen this coming. If I just act perfectly, maybe I can fix this. I'm overreacting, this isn't that big of a deal. Most guys do this too. I should put up with it. You had it by childhoods. 

So that's why he acts like he stays. These are all thoughts that might be having after betrayal. And what's happening here is your brain.  Oh, sorry, just pick it up. Pick up.  Your brain is trying to rationalize the situation either to avoid pain or make sense of the chaos.  But this can lead you to ignore the wisdom of your body and intuition, which is quietly telling you what you really need, which is you need space, you need safety and you need healing. 

So you're able to process everything. What does this mean for your healing? It means that to truly recover, you have to learn how to reconnect with your body and trust your intuition again. And that's another huge piece of where nervous system regulation comes in. 



When I discovered everything about my ax, , I thought I'd never trust myself again. 

I was like, how the fuck did I miss all these signs? What the actual fuck, but it's so important to not blame yourself. Because you should have never been put in that situation to begin with. It's not your fault. He was just a master liar and manipulator, and that is not your fault. You did what you thought you should, which was trust and love this person, because they told you that they were a loving and trusting person. You have a pier beautiful, innocent heart, and you would never do what they did to you, which is why you never expected them to do that. And if you can't rationalize the behavior of what they did. Good. That means you can't rationalize it because you are not that type of person who would ever do it.

So we've talked about this before, and I'm going to talk about it again and again and again, because I cannot emphasize how  important. Nervous system regulation is from I'm a trauma informed code. And so from a trauma informed lens. Nervous system regulation is illiterate. What helps you have long-term healing? 

It is the foundation. Of all healing. So it is literally the bridge between your body and your brain. So when you nervous system was stuck in survival mode, which is the fight flight freeze or fawn modes. You can't access that calm, grounded state of thinking and seeing clearly that you truly need for longterm healing. 

So this is why breath work, meditation movement, embodiment and somatic practices are so powerful. They're not just about calming down in the moment they brought rewriting your body to feel safe again.  So that you can see and think clearly again, imagine nervous system regulation is like a snow globe. 

So imagine you shake the snow globe and the snow. Is all EV is everywhere and you can't really see . That's when your nervous system is dysregulated. You're not thinking straight. You're not feeling straight. You're not seeing straights. And then when we learn to regulate our nervous system, the snow and the snow globe calms down, and now we can see the picture clear again. So you can read all the books, listen to all the podcasts research, spend time trying to diagnose your current past partner. 

At the end of the day, you are not going to retain any of that information because your body is going to keep going in and out of survival mode. You might not even realize your body's going in and out of survival mode, but if you're having overwhelming emotions, if you're feeling stressed, if you're feeling anxious, if you are constantly scanning for threats, if you're hypervigilant, if you don't feel connected to your body, that is literally your body going in and out or survival mode. 

So nervous and regulation creates that stable foundation for healing because without it, nothing else is really going to help.

And here's some other signs that your nervous system is.  It's dysregulated. You might feel trapped in a cycle of fear, doubt, or anxiety. You might have fear that you'll never trust yourself or anyone again. You might have fear that you'll never feel like the old happy version of yourself before the betrayal, you might fear that his betrayal has changed you in ways that you can't recover from. 

You might have fear that you'll never find a healthy relationship.

Those are all common fears that we experience when our nervous system is dysregulated.

So nervous system regulation is the bare foundation. There's so much more to life than the, after that. 

And I want to help create a life where women can heal, regulate their nervous system. Process all the emotions that they need to in order to heal from this betrayal, but also wake up without that seeking feeling in your chest. I want you to feel confident in holding no matter what anyone else does. Once you learn how to trust yourself again, knowing that you'll never ignore your intuition or settle for less than you deserve. 

And I also want to help you create a life bigger than this pain grow professionally, financially, or with friends or hobbies, or build a new support system with people who truly care about you. I want you to be able to spend your mental energy doing hobbies and activities. Up and becoming the best version of yourself. Without having to spend all your mental energy focusing on the betrayal and the fears and anxieties and the doubts that come with it all on this healing journey. So that's a huge reason why I designed it, my upcoming course with these exact fears and desires in mind, because one I've been there and I've seen countless women walk through this, and it's not just about putting a band-aid over your pain or simply learning to cope. 

It's all about transformation. So I'm going to dive a bit, a little bit into my course to see if this resonates with you, but , when I was making my course, I really created this with this in mind. I want to have women to have freedom from the fear and anxiety. I want them to imagine finally, feeling at ease in your own body, have,  type constant tightness in your chest racing, thoughts or second guessing yourself and learn the tools to regulate your nervous system. So you can step into each day with calm and confidence. I want to help women reconnect to themselves and the relationship they have with themselves. 

Because obviously after betrayal, it's so easy to lose yourself. You might not even recognize the woman in the mirror anymore. And so this course really helps you rebuild that relationship with yourself, your intuition, your power, your self love, and your worth. Elsa want to help win, find clarity and confidence and their decision. 

So you have no more endless back and forth overthinking or doubting your choices. I want women to learn how to trust their inner wisdom and make decisions that align with the life that you generally want to create in a life that excites you. I also want to just create a course that helps long-term healing that actually lasts there's so many. Approaches of the trail trauma that focused on short-term relief, but this course is different. 

I want to address both your mind and body so that you can create the foundation for lifelong healing and growth. So all of this, like I just don't, I don't want women to be in survival mode. I want them to go and live their life and fucking thrive. So if this resonates with you, I would love to invite you to join my free rubber NAR. 

It's called why you're struggling to heal from his betrayal and what actually works.

So in this webinar, I'll share more about the body's role in healing and how this course can guide you towards the transformation that you deserve. And again, it's completely free. I'll be launching it in January and you can sign up in the link in my show notes. I was really trying to have this launch in December. 

So there is a bit of a timing update there. I. Oh, I'm Ash last week was such an emotional world. Rand. When I found out that I wasn't going to be able to launch it in December and I literally broke into tears, I was so sad. I overlook the small minor detail that turned out to be a much larger, bigger detail. 

And I'm not going to be able to launch the course in time, which I'm heartbroken about, but I'm just going to trust the universe that the timing is right.   So you can sign up for it in the link, in the show notes, and you'll just need to provide your email address. 

And then it'll add you to that list here. The updates of when the webinar. Um, in course, or launching in January. And again, the webinar's completely free. I think it will be so helpful to help people understand how powerful our body really is when it comes to healing from betrayal trauma.

And I really hope that  this episode has helped you start to think differently about trauma. And see how that we store it in our body and it isn't just holding on to the pain and betrayal in our mind. 

And that's why it's so important to do daily activities like breath, work, meditation, somatic practices, embodiment practice. Moving your body, even just like going for walks, going for runs. If you feel like you have a lot of anger, like screaming, punching pillows, it's so important to just move our body and getting massages. 

If that's something that you're able to do or doing acupressure mats, or there are so many ways and ideas for us to connect back to our body and just grounding during the 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 grounding technique  and doing breathing exercise of just low. Long, deep breath. Anytime you feel overwhelmed by setting a timer on your phone for two to five minutes to just help your body calm down. 

And again, if you want a free nervous system regulation guide, I have one in the show notes for that too. You'll actually receive it when you sign up for the webinar or to learn more information on the course too. 



And before we head off, I just want to remind you how  powerful your intuition is. 

It's there to guide you, protect you and bring you back to yourself. And when you pair that intuitive wisdom with tools like nervous system regulation, you can start to create such a strong foundation for true. Lasting transformation and shoot long-term healing. Instead of just doing these small mindset, reframes and mindset shifts, that probably won't stay long term because your nervous system is going in your notice. Survival mode. So that's all I had today. 

Thank you so much for listening again. If you can. Subscribe and rate the podcast that would help heaps so that this can actually get in the hands of girls who are navigating this alone and are looking for community. And again, I always have my  support group that you can join. There's a link for that in the show notes. 

 And just before we go, a general reminder that this is not your fault, it doesn't have to do with your body. Your looks, your appearance, how you showed up in relationship has nothing to do with you, 



this was not your fault. You did not cause this. And you also will not be able to be the one to fix this focus on healing, focus on your self love, focus on prioritizing yourself and everyone else should come. Second. You need to be the number one priority and you need to get so  selfish about your healing in order to heal from it. 

Set boundaries, start using your voice. This. It's everything. That'll go into my course too, but. Just know that healing is possible and I'm here to support you every step of the way. I love you. And thank you so much for listening. I hope you have an all right day.