WTF Do I Do Now?

37. Coaching vs. Therapy for Betrayal Trauma

• Mandy | Betrayal, Break Up & Empowerment Life Coach • Episode 37

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 Hi everyone, and welcome back to another episode of What the Fuck Do I Do Now? A safe space where we talk about all things healing and empowerment after their cheating porn use and betrayal trauma to remind you it's not your fault in hearing is absolutely possible. I'm your host Mandy, a certified woman's empowerment life coach, trauma-informed relationship coach, meditation teacher, and trauma-informed breathwork teacher. 

All right. Welcome back to another episode. And before we start, I'm just gonna say my sound quality probably sucks today. I am dog sitting at a friend's house, so I don't have any my equipment, but bear with me. Alright

so today's episode is for the women who experience betrayal and like, uh, what the fuck my world in reality just shattered? Am I ever going to feel like myself again? What the fuck do I do now?

So that's where I come in. So before I dive into that, just wanna give a few reminders. First of all, if you're listening and you haven't subscribed or followed the podcast, if you could rate it, subscribe it, do whatever you need to do to it, that would be so helpful.

That's just what helps the algorithm actually pushes content out to other girls who are trying to heal from betrayal. And I don't want any woman to have to go through this alone 'cause it's fucking shitty.

Also, if you only follow me on TikTok, which most of you do, make sure you follow me on Instagram too, just in case the TikTok ban goes into effect. I have no idea what's going on. I don't really care to follow along with it anymore because what? What the fuck? Anyways, my Instagram handle is WTF, do I do not coaching.

So that will be there for you if the TikTok goes away.

Okay, so let's dive into the episode. So, like I said, today's episode is for the women who experience betrayal and are like, what the fuck? My world just in reality just shattered? What do I do? So that's where I come in. I. I am a trauma-informed betrayal and breakup coach. And you're probably like, um, okay.

But like, what does that actually mean? And what is coaching and how is it different from therapy? So I'm gonna dive all into that. So I don't just help women move on, leave or get over him. I help women take their fucking life back. I'm not here for some surface of a coaching, enabling unhealthy patterns, making up excuses for his behavior, or just telling you what you wanna hear, or just saying, he sucks.

Move on. No, no, no, no. I, I don't do any of that. I'm here to help you fucking transform. I'm here for women who want to learn how to love and respect themselves so much that they never tolerate disrespect or red flags ever again. 

So they don't get in another relationship with betrayal  and so they can understand abusive behavior and they stop ignoring these red flags. Because if we cannot identify the patterns that got us into it, then we're likely to repeat it again and date similar men who were wearing that same mask.

I see it time and time again in my DM where a girl gets  betrayed, she jumps back into another relationship and then years down the road she found out he was doing the same thing . And that's why it's so important to take that time to heal instead of just jumping into another relationship. So today we're gonna dive into how I exactly help women.

Whether you left the relationship or you're still in it, but you're considering leaving and why and why coaching with me is the missing piece to your healing journey  and how coaching differs from therapy. 'cause I get that question a lot. So be, so before I dive in, I just wanna rewind a bit and I'll give some background information to how I got here in the first place.

For anyone who's listening to this for the first time. So I'll just do my little cliff notes talk. I was in a relationship with a man I thought I was gonna marry. We lived together, we'd raised a dog together. I had my whole future planned around him, and I generally thought I had found my person who was my best friend, my soulmates.

All my friends and family loved him. He treated me amazing. Or so I thought he was kind, charismatic, outgoing, had a stable job, always planned on cute dates, made me laugh my fucking ass off, and was the best friend I've ever had. But now when I say that, I do wanna be clear that this is how I thought about him.

while in the relationship and recently after. But if you were to ask me now after healing what I thought about the relationship, it would be completely different. I'd be able to point out so many red flags, abusive behaviors, trauma bonds, and abuse cycles, which is why it's so important to actually heal and do this deep transformation work, which we'll get into later in the episode.

But anyways, I thought he was my prince charming until my entire life changed. And literally, in a matter of seconds. I discovered he had a secret porn and sex addiction. He was cheating on me with women in real life, getting a hotel room with a porn star. Not once, not twice, but our entire relationship. He was never honest.

So I moved out. I obviously fell apart. I was homeless and jobless for six weeks. I lost my job a month or so prior while working at a startup during their third round of mass layoffs. Right before this, then I was diagnosed with PTSD from Betrayal Trauma. I had daily panic attacks.

I with nightmares, hated myself. I. I couldn't look myself in the mirror and I compared myself to every woman. I wore baggy clothes to cover my body thinking it was my fault. I was constantly terrified. I'd run into him or his friends in public, and I was filled with so much rage and anger and just numbness, and yet I still missed him.

Ugh. I still fantasized about what we had. I missed our inside jokes. I missed talking to him all day, every day. I missed waking up next to him. I missed cuddling with him at night. I missed his hugs. I missed the life we created together, our friend group. I missed everything so much, and then I felt ashamed, like I should have seen it coming.

I never thought I was gonna have to be single again, and I hated being alone. I felt behind in life because all my friends were in long-term relationships, either living with their partners, engaged or married, and I felt extremely lonely around couples. I didn't have any single friends really. I didn't know how to rebuild and restart my life.

Like I, one day I woke up thinking I was going to marry this man, and the next day I was single. And I was like, what the fuck? I don't wanna go on dating apps. I don't wanna be alone. I just want to be. A relationship 

and I just hated the idea of having to start over with someone. But through all of that, I realized this man already took years from me. He's not taking my future too. So I decided I was going to heal and I didn't wanna just survive, but I wanted to fucking heal and I wanted to make this be the best thing to happen to me.

I wanted to look back at this trauma in the coming years and be like, damn, I'm thankful that happened. And two years later, that's exactly how I feel. I knew it was possible. I just didn't know how to do it because I didn't know anyone who has gone through it. When I went through it, I was the first person in my life who I ever heard this happen to.

So I thought it was just my fault or that I did something wrong. No, this is a classic case of emotional and psychological abusive behavior, and it's happening to a lot of women



So anyways, when I realized  I have to heal, I have to survive. This is literally life or death. I invested in weekly therapy. I joined a support group hoping that would be enough to heal me, but there was a lot of it that was lacking that I had to learn myself. Everyone would just say, oh, move on.

He turned out to be to be a piece of shit, but you can't think your way out of trauma. You can't just think your way out of those memories. You can't think your way out of grieving. You can't think your way out of PTSD. If it was that easy, then you already be healed. I bet you've been thinking about it nonstop for days, weeks, months, maybe even years.

You cannot think your way out of this. It lives in your body. You need to actively heal it through somatic practices, nervous system regulation, and energetic practices. And unfortunately, time doesn't heal all wounds  you need to be the one to save yourself and actively work towards it every damn day.

This situation is quite literally life or death. If you don't learn the tools to heal, the happy, peaceful, optimistic version of you is going to die, and you're going to turn into a person you never wanted to be. I started to feel like I was hitting a wall with therapy, and even my therapist reached a point where she said I didn't need her anymore.

Therapy gave me the self-awareness and understanding of emotional abuse cycles and trauma bonds, but I still felt stuck, like I didn't know how to actually overcome and create new life. I was still sad being single. I still felt behind in life compared to all my friends. I was still crying at nights. I was still missing him.

It wasn't helping me actually transform these emotions and overcome all of this, so I took matters into my own hands and started looking at healing at more than just therapy support groups, books, podcasts, and that basic bitch surface level of personal development help. I learned how trauma lives in our body  and why you need to

prioritize, nervous system regulations, somatic practices. I learned how to actually love and respect myself for the first time in my life. How to create a new identity, how to stop checking the social media or even caring what the fuck he's doing, how to push myself out of my comfort zone and create new friendships, create new hobbies, and get comfortable going to events alone. Now

two years later, I found the bravery and courage to travel alone domestically and then internationally, and then even move to Australia because I feel fucking unstoppable and confident. And after going through betrayal, I feel like I can  quite literally do anything now. I've been off dating apps for over a year and a half because I created a life that feels so fulfilling with like-minded friendships, family relationships.

I joined groups. I joined clubs. I create new hobbies, start new routines, and focus on a career that lights me up. So I don't crave male validation because I already have a full support system. I already created a life that lights me up. So if a man comes into my life, the value he has to provide is going to be so high because  I'm not craving that love from someone else because  I give it to myself and I receive it from f friends and family.

 And now two years later, I even created a business to help women heal because I know this transformation is fucking possible.

I know it's possible to change your mindset from, I wonder if he would've changed to, I'm so thankful I left and now I realize he never deserved me. There's so much more to life than him. I know  changing that mindset is 100% possible. 

So,  before I go any further, I wanna touch on something I get  asked all the time, which is, how is coaching different from therapy?

So first of all, I'm a huge  advocate for therapy. Therapy saved my life when I hit rock bottom.  If

you're in therapy right now and you're loving the results, amazing, stay with it. But therapy and coaching are not the same thing, and they're not meant to be. Here's how I see it. Therapy often helps you unpack the past. It's about understanding patterns  and getting diagnosed if needed. It's great to help you build self-awareness, and it's very focused on the past.

It's generally more clinical and sometimes more passive, where the therapist holds space and lets you lead the conversation. Coaching, on the other hand, is future focused. So therapy is past focused and coaching is more future focused. It's for the woman who's ready to take her healing to the next level.

You want action. You want tools. You want strategy, you want results. You wanna get from point A to point B. Every call in coaching has a very clear objective of what you're going to work on and what you're going to overcome in that specific call so you leave each call having worked through that specific problem, and you have homework to do each week to keep you moving forward.



Where therapy may be a bit more passive and therapist holds the space and lets you lead the conversation, coaching is different and it's very action oriented goals and results. It gets you from point A to point B.  So coaching is for the women who already knows I can't keep living like this, but I don't know how to move forward.

So if you're in therapy and it feels like it's not clicking,  or if you've been in therapy for months or years, but you still feel stuck, that's where coaching can completely shift the game. When I worked with my first coach, I was already doing therapy, but I felt like I just kept hitting a wall with therapy.

And so I kept hearing about coaching, so I wanted to try something else 'cause I've heard amazing things about it. But my coaching calls were help propel me moving forward to actually take action and change things. I eventually ended therapy and preferred coaching 'cause it was so eyeopening and it was so eyeopening that it made me become a coach and go through  two different trainings to become a coach focused on women and focused on trauma in relationships.

So I still work with a coach, not for betrayal, but just life development because I love the results I see with coaching and how it helps me propel forward and not feel stuck in life. So if I'm telling you to invest in yourself, then obviously I'm going to be doing the same with myself because I believe in it, because I've seen how transformative it is.

So as a coach, I'm here to walk with you side by side with a plan, structure and a trauma-informed approach that moves you toward the life you know you're meant to live. So this is for women who already left the relationship or women who are in it but are considering leaving. 

You can do therapy and coaching at the same time since they serve different purposes, or you can just do one or the other.

But I'm here for the woman who wants actions, tools, strategy, and noticeable results. So what do I actually do as a coach? So this is, again, this is for the women who already left the relationship or women who are in it, but are considering leaving better, held back by fear. So here's the breakdown of my three month one-on-one coaching container and why it works.

So the first month is all focused on nervous system regulation and grieving.

Talk to any trauma specialist and they'll say, we can't heal trauma long term without learning how to regulate nervous system. Your nervous system controls your thoughts, feelings, and emotions. So if you want to heal or change your thoughts and emotions, you need to work on nervous system regulation.

Nervous system dysregulation is the root cause of panic attacks. Obsessive thinking, inability to sleep, obsessing over the betrayal. Second guessing yourself not being able to make decisions, wanting to rot in bed, replaying the betrayal in your mind, picturing the details of what happened. Being afraid you're to run into in public, feeling like you're walking on eggshells, et cetera.

This is why you feel triggered when you see a sex scene on tv. It's your nervous system. So many women come to me who are in therapy joining support groups, reading books, listening to podcasts, but they still feel stuck and like a shell of who they were. And I always ask them, well, what are you doing to regulate your nervous system?

What are you doing on a daily basis? And they aren't doing it and that's why you're not healing. And that's what most healing modalities lack . That's why it's the core of what we do in the first month. And what makes my coaching so different? 

Month two is focused on recovery and mindset shifts. So for all three months we'll be doing nervous and regulation, grief, mindset work and future planning along with somatic and energetic practices.  And coaching can pivot based on what you need at the time, especially as you start to evolve and grow.

 After we start to uncover more information, but all of what I'm talking about is more of a general outline for month one, month two, month three. So month two is really when your brain will start to come back online and you'll start to view the betrayal for what it actually was  instead of viewing it as well.

He was the perfect partner to me. Besides the cheating. What if you would've changed? Maybe some of it was my fault. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Your brain starts to get out of that betrayal haze, and your  mindset starts to change to, oh, wow. Like  I recognize his deceit, controlling, manipulation, gaslighting, et cetera.

He wasn't who he said he was. That wasn't my person. I wasn't meant to be with him. I'm so glad I decided to leave. So essentially, you'll stop blaming yourself and thinking you weren't enough.

Then month three is all about focus on confidence, identity, and life rebuilding. So now that the brain fog starts to lift, we start to focus on your future. And again, we'll be doing a bit of all this  through all the three months because every woman's situation is different. But again, this is just a general outline.

But month three is essentially when that power starts to come back, and you truly want to build a beautiful life for yourself because you realize how worthy you are of it. You start to discover who you are outside of a relationship and outside of just being a partner, girlfriend, fiance, wife, mom, you start to expand and grow your world with new routines, hobbies, activities, friendships, support system interest, and love for yourself.

We shift your mindset from being, oh my God, my life was destroyed by betrayal. And we shift it to where you start to see the gift in betrayal and fall in love with yourself in a new chapter of life. So I'm not here to just coach you through the ending of a relationship. I'm here to walk with you through the beginning of your  life so that this pain doesn't hold you back from creating it.

Every ending is just a new beginning.  New beginnings happen when you stop abandoning yourself and betraying yourself. They start when you stop settling for crumbs and being impressed by the bare fucking minimum.

New beginnings start when you stop unhealthy patterns and take responsibility for your healing so it doesn't hold you back from your potential. They start when you stop hoping he'll change, and instead you just start choosing yourself. This isn't surface level coaching or advice.

This is a deep fucking transformation. So you look back at betrayal and become thankful it happened. You've outgrown your old life and you can try to stay in it as much as you want and as painful as it is, but it's just going to keep bringing you pain 'cause it no longer serves you. You've outgrown your own life, you've outgrown him, but you haven't quite created your new life yet.

So you're in this InBetween phase and this is where the magic really happens.  And if it feels too overwhelming, if you feel stuck, if you don't know how to get there, if you feel like you're lacking the tools,



If you're listening to this thinking, this is me, I could use help with this. I would love to chat with you more about my three month coaching package.

You get a 60 minute weekly zoom call with me. You also have access to me outside of our sessions so we can send voice notes, send text messages so you basically always have me in your pocket if something comes up.

So you don't have to wait until the next week for our session to bring something up. 'cause so much can change in a week, especially when you're healing in navigating betrayal. So feel free to reach out on me, to me on Instagram or TikTok. My handle is WTFDoIDoNowCoaching, or I also have an application in the show notes here for my three month coaching package and 

Just let me know why you're interested in coaching, and I'd love to chat with you about it.

I know it can be so scary to reach out to ask for help, but it can also be even more scary to stay in the same place. Reaching out and asking for help is scary, but I'm so proud of you for even doing that. Just know that my dms are always a safe space. It's judgment free. It's shame free.  I guarantee I have felt what you have felt at some point.

It may not feel like it because I have evolved and grown since then. But  still remember at the end of the day, I'm very much so woman who went through Betrayal, who's diagnosed with PTSD,  I understand all of the feelings and that's why now want to help women. My dms are a shame-free place.

If you just wanna reach out, share your story, let me know why you're interested in coaching. I'd love to chat with you. All right. That was all for today. Thanks so much for tuning in. And again, if you haven't rated or subscribed to the podcast, that would help heap heap heap heaps because that's the only way the algorithm will push us out to women who are healing from betrayal

all right. Thank you. I love you so much, and I'll see you next week. Bye-bye.