Insights from the Couch - Real Talk for Women at Midlife

Ep. 102: How to Recover From Betrayal Trauma with Dr. Debi Silber

• Colette Fehr, Laura Bowman • Season 9 • Episode 102

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Have you ever experienced a betrayal that completely shook your sense of self? In this powerful conversation, we sit down with betrayal recovery expert Dr. Debi Silber to unpack why betrayal cuts so deeply, how it impacts our mental, emotional, and physical health, and what it really takes to heal. If you've ever felt stuck replaying the past, struggling to trust again, or wondering why certain wounds seem impossible to move beyond, this episode is for you.

Together, we explore Dr. Debi’s groundbreaking research on post-betrayal transformation, the surprising symptoms of post-betrayal syndrome, and the five predictable stages of healing. Most importantly, we talk about what’s possible on the other side of heartbreak, loss, and disappointment—and why your greatest growth may still be ahead of you. 

Episode Highlights

[0:03] - We introduce Dr. Debi Silber and the life-changing topic of post-betrayal transformation.

[2:44] - Dr. Debi shares her personal story of family and marital betrayal that led her to study betrayal recovery.

[4:07] - The first major discovery from her research: why betrayal is different from other forms of trauma.

[6:01] - How betrayal destroys trust in others—and in ourselves—and why trust must be rebuilt, not repaired.

[10:45] - Signs of unhealed betrayal, including repeated relationship patterns, poor boundaries, and emotional self-protection.

[16:38] - The surprising symptoms of post-betrayal syndrome and how betrayal impacts physical, mental, and emotional health.

[19:28] - Dr. Debi reveals the five stages of healing from betrayal and why so many people get stuck in survival mode.

[24:31] - We discuss numbing, emotional eating, overworking, and other coping strategies that keep people trapped in stage three.

[29:03] - Four powerful questions to help identify where you're stuck and begin moving toward healing.

[32:24] - Why awareness, honesty, and self-reflection are essential for creating lasting transformation.

[35:40] - “Hard now, easy later. Easy now, hard later.” Dr. Debi shares a simple mantra for healing and growth.

[37:27] - The three groups of people who did not heal in Dr. Debi’s research—and the lessons we can learn from them.

[39:40] - What life looks like in stage five: healing, confidence, self-trust, and post-betrayal transformation.

[40:57] - How to connect with Dr. Debi and learn more about her work.

Links & Resources

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Colette Fehr:

welcome to Insights from the Couch, where real conversations meet real life at midlife, where Colette and Laura, two therapists and best friends, walking through the journey right alongside you. Whether you're feeling stuck, restless, or just unsure of what's next, this is a space for honest conversations, messy truths, and meaningful change. And our midlife master class is now open. If you're looking to level up, get into action, and make midlife the best season yet, go to Insights from the couch.org and join our wait list. Now, let's dive in. Hi guys, welcome back to Insights from the Couch. I am so excited for this topic today. We have Dr. Debbie Silver here, and we're going to be getting into post betrayal transformation. So many of us have been through this heartbreak, it rocks you to the core, but there is life after it, and it can be even better, so Dr. Debbie, welcome. Thanks for being here on Insights from the Couch.

Unknown:

Thank you so much. Looking forward to our conversation.

Colette Fehr:

Me too. I want to just take a minute to share your background, because it's really impressive, and you are a super expert in what we're about to talk about. So, Dr. Debbie Silber is the founder and CEO of the Post Betrayal Transformation Institute and National Forgiveness Day, which is celebrated annually on september 1. She's an award-winning speaker, a two-time number one international best-selling author, and her podcast, From Betrayal to breakthrough is also globally ranked within the top 1.5% of podcasts. Her PhD study on how we experience betrayal made three groundbreaking discoveries that change everything we've known about how to fully heal, which I can't wait to get into. She's the curator of the number one betrayal recovery certification program for life, business, health, and leadership coaches. Dr. Debbie certifies practitioners globally using her evidence-based framework. I mean, you've also done two TEDx talks, you're on TV, you're all over the place as a leader and an expert in this space. And again, we're so grateful to have you, and I want to just dive right in. Tell us a little bit, if you could. I want to talk about the study. I want to talk about post-betrayal syndrome, what it looks like, how to heal, all this good stuff that will help our listeners. But can you share a little bit about your story first, and what led you to this? Because I think it's super compelling.

Unknown:

You don't think someone just says, "Oh, I want to study betrayal. No, never. I

Colette Fehr:

wonder why.

Unknown:

Yeah, no, I'm in business 34 years, and it was health and mindset and personal development. And then I had a really painful betrayal from my family. I thought I did all I needed to do to heal from that. And then it happened a few years later. This time it was my husband. Anybody who's been through that, I mean, it's shocking, devastating. That was the deal breaker. So, I got him out of the house and looked at the two experiences, thinking, well, what's similar to these two, of course, me, but what else? And I realized, you know, it was always about everybody else. I never took my own needs seriously, and I'm one of those people that really believes if nothing changes, nothing changes. So, usually I study my way out of something, or I learn something, and there wasn't a book, a course, and anything I could find that could really help. So, I decided to study this at the PhD level, because this was so big, I needed to study it so big. And, and then it was time to do a study, so I studied betrayal, honestly, just so I could heal, so I could be better. For here I was four kids, six dogs at practice, like, and I couldn't afford to check out, like I had to heal. So, so I studied this just for me, for my clients, and that study led to three discoveries, which changed my health, my family, my work, my life.

Colette Fehr:

Oh my gosh. So, tell us about the discoveries.

Unknown:

Yes, so the first one was that originally I was studying betrayal and post-traumatic growth, because I like the upside of things, you know, and I look at post-traumatic growth as, as like the upside of trauma, how that trauma, no matter what it is, death of a loved one, disease, natural disaster, whatever, leaves you with a new awareness, insight, perspective you didn't have. But I had been through death of a loved one, I'd been through disease, and I was like, no, betrayal, it seems different. I didn't want to assume it was the same for everybody. So I asked my study participants, if you've been through other traumas, is betrayal different for you? Unanimously, they said it's so different, and here's why. Because it feels so intentional, we take it so personally, so the entire self gets shattered, rejection, abandonment, belonging, confidence. Worthiness, trust, they're all trashed and all have to be rebuilt, so that betrayal is a different type of trauma that needs a different way to heal. That was the first discovery.

Laura Bowman:

Wow, that doesn't surprise me to hear that. I mean, I mean, we see this all the time, that when somebody's been betrayed and really has the rug pulled out, it can, it can really shut them down for long, long periods of time in a way that other things that don't feel so jarring and rip at your identity don't like, that they can be gotten through so much quicker. So, it doesn't surprise me to hear you say that it really does take the whole person down.

Colette Fehr:

Yeah, and the identity, like you're saying, right? It robs you of your sense of self, because we can blame ourselves for something that is, of course, not our fault. And then that longing for connection, all of a sudden people are unsafe. If the person you trusted and loved the most can hurt you, who is safe? How do you ever feel safe letting down those walls again,

Unknown:

exactly, and you know the natural way it works with betrayal is the person you trusted the most proved untrustworthy, and then you look at yourself, you're like, how did I not see, how did I not know if I can't trust the person I trusted the most, and I can't trust myself, well, then how in the world can I trust in anyone else? So it's this gigantic ripple effect, and with trust, and I wrote the book Trust Again. I don't believe trust can be repaired. It can be rebuilt, though. Big job. But okay,

Laura Bowman:

what's the difference between repaired and rebuilt?

Unknown:

Trust is so massive, and so here I'm going to give you.. I'm gonna get.. I speak in analogies, so you'll.. I'm gonna paint a picture for you. You'll, this is so easy to see. I look at trust like a brick wall. The only way I know of building a brick wall is brick by brick by brick, right? Every opportunity someone has to show that they're trustworthy, that's one brick in that brick wall. So, it takes a long time to rebuild. Right now, let's say the person who built the brick wall comes along, demolishes the whole thing, right. The the person whose trust has been shattered can look at the rubble of bricks and say, I don't have the least bit of interest in watching that thing get rebuilt. Totally fine. Right, they can walk away. However, if they choose to watch that brick wall be rebuilt, that would be their job. The person who destroyed the brick wall has to be a really good brick layer, and it goes up the same way it went up the first time, you know, brick by brick by brick. So it takes a long time because it's been shattered. Here's what I see, though. I see the brick wall is there, the person shatters it. They don't really have much of an interest in building it back up, so the other person is like, fine, I'll do it. No, it's not their job. That's why they're hyper vigilant. That's why they don't feel safe. It wasn't theirs to rebuild.

Colette Fehr:

Wow,

Unknown:

that makes sense.

Colette Fehr:

True, it does. And I love the analogy. It's powerful. So, this is hard work, but the amazing thing is it can be done. And can you just share a little bit about the outcome for you personally of doing this work before we get into the other findings of your study, because you have an unusual betrayal trajectory, I think, somewhat,

Unknown:

you know, rebuilding is always a choice, whether you rebuild yourself and move along, and that's what I had to do with my family, it just wasn't an option to rebuild with them, and you'll see more of this in the third discovery, or if the situation lends itself, if you're willing, if you want to, you rebuild something from the ground up, new with the person who hurt you, and that's what I did with my husband, so not long ago, as to completely change, you know, transform people, we married each other again, new rings, new vows, new dress, and our four kids as our bridal party. You know, betrayal will show you who someone truly is. It also has the opportunity to wake them up to who they temporarily became. Not that you need to do anything with that, there's tremendous opportunity if you want,

Laura Bowman:

like, it has to be a second order change, like it can't be like you can't just reorganize the window dressing, it has to be like a fundamental rebuilding of that wall, yeah,

Unknown:

yeah, and then you really, you intentionally and deliberately recreate something new, yeah, and that's where that's where it's trauma well served, you know, because otherwise, what's the point? So many people, they don't do that full healing, they don't heal, it's more of the same, and then they just, they're struggling and suffering, and they have symptoms of post betrayal syndrome, which, happy to get into, that was the second discovery, and they're living this lifetime of kind of stuckness, because nothing really, really changed. There was no crash and burn of the old, and without the crash and burn of the old, you really can't rebuild the new.

Colette Fehr:

Yeah, so, and as we get into the post-betrayal syndrome, one thing I notice a lot in therapy, and as I've shared, and just shared on your podcast, I've been through betrayal. Multiple times, actually, unfortunately, and it's just absolutely devastating. But what you can do that I've also done that I don't recommend is if you haven't really healed and rebuilt the trust and rebuilt yourself and your sense of self, then this fear of being hurt again can turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy. You end up sabotaging yourself, either you're keeping the wall up to everyone, not just people who could hurt you, or you get in a relationship and you're so scared, you're so predictive that you start to behave as if a thing's happening already, and then you make the person pull away. I mean, it's just. it can be a disaster. So, this is so important, because we need our relationships.

Laura Bowman:

You're

Unknown:

mentioning classic signs of an unhealed betrayal. We'll see it in, in, in health work relationships, like, for example, in relationships. Here's how you can spot an unhealed betrayal. We'll see it in two ways. The first classic sign, it's unhealed, repeat betrayals. The face has changed, but it's the same thing. We go from friend to friend to friend, boss to boss to boss, partner to partner, partner. We say, is it me? Yes, it is. Not in that it's your fault, right? In that it's your opportunity. There's a profound lesson waiting to be learned. You know, maybe the lesson is just get already that you are lovable, worthy, and deserving. Understand that you need better boundaries in place, like whatever it is for you, until unless you get that you're going to have opportunities in the form of people to teach you who

Laura Bowman:

are opportunistic, right? Yeah, like you just keep attracting the same opportunistic person if you have no boundaries, exactly,

Colette Fehr:

or even I don't even always, I personally don't even think it's always fair to say you attract it, because I think there's a lot of that out there. I think the difference to me, you would, you know, men, let's just talk heteronormatively for a moment, since I'm heterosexual, and I dated a long time, and it was all men, you know, I couldn't believe my little golden retriever self would like trot up to be petted by these guys who seemed so safe and great until they weren't. I think a major distinction of the unhealed betrayal, and you tell me, Debbie, if you agree or not, is that when they start to reveal themselves, you know, maybe you don't put the boundary in, then there's too many chances, or that part of you that's like hoping it's going to be different because you're not healed. So I think you attract, I mean, so many people are screwed up out there, but if you're not healed, you're going to stay, you're going to tango with these people, where the boundaries should be there way sooner.

Unknown:

Oh yeah, that's what I'm talking about. So that's the unhealed part, where we keep attracting more of the same, and when we heal, which is that's the third discovery. You just don't, you're not attracting those people. You sniff that out from a mile away, and you like within within a few minutes of a conversation, your BS meter is so sharpened and so strong, it's just not an energetic match for someone like that.

Colette Fehr:

Yeah, you don't want any part of it, you don't want any,

Unknown:

you get it, you've been there, you've done that, you know the pain, you know the heartache, like you just want to save yourself all the misery, and you just bypass the whole thing, you're like, you know what, Thank you very much, no, thank you. So that's an unhealed betrayal. The second way we see it in relationships is the big wall goes up, and you mentioned this, and in fact, we had over 100,000 people take our post betrayal syndrome quiz to see to what extent they're struggling. 67% of them put the big wall up. Yes, you keep, you know, the bad ones out, but you keep the good ones out too. And we think, you know, that's coming from a place of strength. It's not. It's coming from fear. It's like my heart was so broken that I am unwilling to risk that level of vulnerability, which we talked about, you know, when you were on my podcast, to have my heart broken again. I would rather keep everyone, you know, at bay, but you know what, that's like, that's like, let's say you love cooking and you burn yourself on the stove, and you're like, nope, never cooking again, it's not fair to you, right?

Colette Fehr:

I'm never eating again, you know,

Laura Bowman:

I mean, I guess I see this too, like, but like, how do we begin to approach that for a person who's like, never again, like, I'm just gonna live with my cats and like hang out with my two friends, and I'm not going out into that world, and I'm not dating, I'm not putting myself out there

Unknown:

in my world, it's moving through the five stages of betrayal to break, which I'd love to share, because

Colette Fehr:

then

Unknown:

if you really move through all the stages, and then you're like, you know, I'm good, I don't want to be with people, you really, you've, you've made that decision from a place of strength and clarity, not scarcity and fear.

Laura Bowman:

Yeah, okay,

Unknown:

that's the whole difference there, because you may really just decide, hey, I just like nature and animals and babies, and like, and be good with it, and that's okay, but you want to get there because you're making that clear decision, never based on fear. So, just to close the loop on how you can spot an unhealed betrayal, so that's in relationships, in health, right? You could go to the most well-meaning doctors, coaches here. There's therapists, whatever, to manage a stress-related symptom, illness, condition, disease. Very often, at the root of it, it's an unhealed betrayal.

Colette Fehr:

Wow!

Unknown:

Oh yeah, and like 45% of everybody betrayed has a gut issue of some kind. You can go to the best gut doctors on the planet. I'm friends with a lot of them, but if you don't deal with that unhealed betrayal at the root of it, they'll give you a beautiful protocol, lots of supplements, all kinds of great things. It helps, but the betrayal is that the like. For example, we had a woman in our community in her mid 80s. She had a 70 plus year betrayal from her family. She was adopted. They didn't tell her it was like one of those things. 70 plus years, she had a gut issue. Two weeks, two weeks moving through the stages, and she healed from a 70 plus year digestive issue.

Colette Fehr:

That

Laura Bowman:

emotional release just needs to

Colette Fehr:

happen. It's so somatic, it's this stuff is so deep, it's embedded in the body. It will manifest in your health if you don't deal with it emotionally and psychologically.

Unknown:

And when you think of what the gut does, it absorb digest and processes food? I mean, isn't a betrayal difficult to absorb digest and process, right? No wonder the gut is acting up, you know. We see it at work too, like you want that razor promotion, but your confidence was shattered, so you don't have the confidence to ask, or you want to be a team player, collaborative partner, but the person you trusted the most proved untrustworthy. How do you trust that boss, that partner? So it shows up everywhere. One of the biggest things about betrayal is we hope that time will heal it. Well, I have the proof. Time won't heal it, even a new relationship won't heal it. Healing will heal it. And happy to share some of the stats of post betrayal syndrome.

Laura Bowman:

Yeah,

Unknown:

okay. So this was the second discovery, and what we learned was there's actually a collection of symptoms, physical, mental, and emotional, so common to betrayal, it's known as post-betrayal syndrome. You know, it's so interesting because this is, we've studied men, women, just about every country's represented, and here I'll share some stats, as much as you're going to hear the symptoms, hear these numbers. Ready, 78% constantly revisit their experience. 81% feel a loss of personal power. Like, think of the decisions you make when you don't have a sense of personal power. 94% deal with painful triggers. If you've ever had a trigger, you know, how painful they could be. The most common physical symptoms: 71% have low energy, 68% have sleep issues, 63% have extreme fatigue. Your adrenals have tanked. I mentioned the 45% have gut issues, 47% have weight changes. So, in the beginning, you can hold food down later on, you're emotionally eating, using food for comfort. Very common, most common mental symptoms. 78% are overwhelmed, 68% can't focus, 62% can't concentrate. So, imagine you can't concentrate, you're exhausted, you have to, you have a gut issue, you still have to work, you still have to raise your kids or do whatever you have to do, that's not even emotionally. Emotionally, 88% experience extreme sadness, 83% are very angry. You can bounce back and forth between those two all day long, right? I'll just read a few more. 79% are stressed. This one killed me. 84% have an inability to trust, right? 67% I mentioned this one before, prevent themselves from forming deep relationships because they're afraid of being hurt again. 82% find it hard to move forward. 90% want to move forward, but they don't know how. You know, it's crazy. The craziest part of this is these aren't necessarily from a recent betrayal be from the parent who did something awful when you were a kid, this could be from the partner who broke your heart in high school, so this person may not know, care, remember, they may not even be alive, and here we are decades later with these symptoms, because it was left unhealed. The good news is, you can heal from all of it, which was the third discovery,

Laura Bowman:

like that's not even the acute phase, as what in what you're reading in the stats, you're seeing that, like, once this is like landed in your body, you're dealing, you can be dealing with these symptoms in some form or fashion for a lifetime till you decide to like heal it and deal with, yeah, yeah, okay, now you've got to talk to us about how we begin to heal it, because

Colette Fehr:

and the third discovery, the third discovery, right? You were saying the third, the third discovery,

Unknown:

third, yeah, that was the most exciting, and what, when this showed up in like the geekiest way, I thought my head was gonna fly right off my body, and what we found was while we can stay stuck for years, decades, a lifetime, and most people do, if we're going to fully heal, and by fully heal, I mean those symptoms of post betrayal syndrome that I just shared to this completely rebuilt place called post betrayal transformation, where you rebuild your life and yourself, we will move through five. I've proven predictable stages, and what's even more exciting about that is we know what happens physically, mentally, and emotionally at every stage, and we know what we need to do in order to move from one stage to the next. Healing is entirely predictable. Happy to share the stages if you want

Colette Fehr:

to. We want to heal. Yeah,

Unknown:

yeah, and this is why you know we're the.. I was so excited to have this certification, and I mean, I'm honored with the number one for life, business, health, and leadership coaches, because when you know when you're a coach and all you want are results for your clients and patients, and then.. but you don't even know to look for this, and then you do, you're like, "Oh yeah, just have such deeper transformations. Anyway, so I'll give you like a boiled down version. So stage one, before it happens, and if you can imagine four legs of a table, the four legs being physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual. What I saw with everybody, me too, was this heavy lean on the physical and the mental thinking and doing right, we're so good at that, and kind of neglecting or ignoring the emotional and the spiritual feeling and being. If a table only has two legs, that table is going to top over pretty easily. That's us. Stage two: shock, trauma, D-Day, discovery day. Everybody remembers their D-Day, right? And this is the scariest of all of the stages, and it's the breakdown of the body, the mind, and the world view. So, right here, you've ignited the stress response. You are now headed for every single stress-related symptom, illness, condition, disease. Your mind is in a state of chaos and overwhelm. You cannot wrap your mind around what you just learned. This makes no sense, and your world view has just been shattered. That's your mental model, the rules that govern you, that prevent chaos. You could trust this person, don't go here, these are the rules, right? And in one earth-shattering moment, or a series of moments, every rule you've been following is now is no longer true. The bottom has bottomed out, and a new bottom hasn't been formed yet. So it's terrifying, but think about it. If the bottom were to bottom out on you, what would you do? You'd grab hold of anything or anyone, right, in order to stay safe and stay alive. That's stage three. Survival instincts emerge. This is the most practical out of all of the stages. If you can't help me, get out of my way. How do I survive this? Who can I trust? Where do I go? Here's the trap, though. Stage three, by far, hands down, is the most common place we get stuck.

Colette Fehr:

Yeah,

Laura Bowman:

surprise me.

Unknown:

You'll see all of your patients are coming to you in clients in stages two and three, once we figured out how to survive our experience, because it feels so much better than the shock and trauma we just came from, we think it's good, and because we don't know there's anywhere else to go, we don't know there's a stage four or stage five, we're like, all right, I better figure out a way to make this work, so we plant roots here. We're not supposed to, but we don't know that. And four things start to happen. The first thing is we start getting all those small self benefits, all that secondary gain. We get to be right, we get our story, we get right, and and we're so unhappy, we're not getting anything else, so this on some level feels good, so we take it and we plant deeper roots, and now because these, this is where we are now, we start thinking things like, you know, maybe it was me, maybe I'm not that great, maybe this, maybe that, so we plant deeper roots, and now because these are the thoughts we're thinking this is the energy we put out, like energy attracts like energy. So now we start drawing people and places and circumstances to us that confirm this is where we belong. And because it feels so bad, but we, it gets worse. I'll get you out here, because it feels so bad, but we don't know there's anywhere else to go. Right here, we start numbing, avoiding, distracting, so now we start using food, drugs, alcohol, work, TV, whatever, right, just to get us through our day. We do it for a day, a week, a month, now to have it a year, 10 years, 20 years. Honestly, I could see someone 20 years later and say that emotional eating you're doing, or that drinking. Do you think that has anything to do with your betrayal? They look at me like I'm crazy. They'd say it happened 20 years ago. Do you see what I'm saying? All they did was put themselves in stage three.

Laura Bowman:

Yeah, stage three is so familiar, and I'm like, even I'm thinking of myself. I'm thinking, thinking my dad after my parents' divorce, and like, he just. I think, he gained 100 pounds in, like, I don't know, five years,

Unknown:

yeah.

Laura Bowman:

Talk about getting stuck in stage three.

Colette Fehr:

Oh, and I relate to it so much too. I mean, after I went through a relationship that was maybe one of my most passionate and intense, there was a betrayal. It absolutely. Devastated me, I couldn't recover, and I'd been through other betrayals that I felt like I bounced back from better, and I definitely retreated into like having a couple of glasses of wine every night, ruminating over the scenarios, replaying it, replaying the moment where I would see him again and like, show him, and I got lost in it, and it became a light, the betrayal for me. I became, I was in a relationship with the betrayal, it started to transcend even the person and the thing, and whatever my feelings had been for him, and it just became this like egoic annihilation that I was lost in,

Unknown:

yeah, yeah, and

Colette Fehr:

I was up there for a couple years, oh

Unknown:

yeah, it's so common because you know everything we've known is shattered, we don't, this is the only thing we can hold on to, we know our story, we know what we have, we know what it gives us, and we don't know there's anything more than that, but what happens is we wind up just medicating and suppressing symptoms of post betrayal syndrome. Here's where we have repeat betrayals, because really nothing changed. We're not doing anything differently to have something different, and so we're living this stage three life, and it stinks.

Laura Bowman:

Okay, so how do we get? Yeah, get us

Unknown:

out. I feel like I kept here longer than okay. If you're willing, willingness is a big word, right here. Willing to give up the story, grieve, mourn the loss. Bunch of things you need to do, you move to stage four. Stage four is finding and adjusting to a new normal. So, here's where you acknowledge I can't undo what happened, but I control what I do with it, right? There in that decision, you're starting to turn down the stress response. Now, you're not healing just yet, but at least you stopped the massive damage that was going on in stages two and stage three. Stage four feels like, if you've ever moved, like if you've ever moved to a new house, condo, apartment, whatever, your stuff's not there, it's not cozy up, but you like it's this sort of hopeful excitement. It feels like that, but think about it. If you were to move, you don't take everything with you, you don't take the things that represent who you're now ready to become. And what I found was there's this one spot, as people leave stage three and enter into stage four, if their friends weren't there for them, they're not coming along, or those like that lame support group, where everybody's just commiserating, they're done, and people ask me all the time, is it me? Yes, it is. You're undergoing a transformation, and if they don't come, they don't rise, they don't come along. So it's not necessarily a lonely space, but very personal space. Here's where, like, the the caterpillar goes into the cocoon, right?

Colette Fehr:

Yeah,

Unknown:

anyway, when you settle into this space, you make it cozy mentally at home, you move into the fifth most beautiful stage, and this is healing, rebirth, and a new worldview. Your body starts to heal, self love, self care, eating well, exercise. You didn't have the bandwidth for that earlier, you were surviving your, um, your mind, you're making new rules, boundaries, all that stuff, and you have a whole new worldview based on everything you see so clearly now. And the four legs of the table, in the beginning, it was just all about the physical and mental. By this point, we're solidly grounded because we're focused on the emotional and the spiritual too. Those are the five stages. That's

Colette Fehr:

beautiful.

Laura Bowman:

It's really beautiful.

Colette Fehr:

So, so you, in terms of let's say somebody is in stage three, because, like, we've identified a lot of people are stuck there, like I said, a couple years. Some people, you can be stuck there for decades.

Unknown:

Oh yeah,

Colette Fehr:

maybe this is relatively new for you, for somebody who's listening. I know some of our listeners have got to be identifying with this, because the human experience means most of us at some point are going to experience this in a relationship in some domain of life. So, how what things, if any, help someone shift? I want to get out of stage three, but I'm stuck, I'm stuck, I'm stuck. How do I get myself to stage four?

Unknown:

Well, I think one of the first things is just awareness, like hearing this, where someone says, oh my gosh, I've been in stage three for 30 years, and that's okay, and people usually get angry right about now, but then you know this could be the day, at least it's not 31 years, 32 years, right? So that's a good thing, but I think one thing that's helpful is if you're numbing, avoiding, distracting yourself, you will keep yourself stuck, and there were three groups in the study who didn't heal, but what's helpful is I have these four questions that I invite everybody to write down, that's my way of saying write these down, and this will show you, like if you're numbing, avoiding, distracting, ready,

the first question:

Am I numbing, avoiding distracting? If so, how? Like, call yourself on

Colette Fehr:

it. Are you eating

Unknown:

when you're not the least bit hungry? Do you put the TV on just to drown out the sound of your own thoughts? Call yourself on it. The second question: What am I pretending not to? See, be honest, right? Am I pretending not to see my relationship is in trouble? Am I pretending not to see that health issue that needs my attention? My pretending not to see, I hate my job. Whatever, what am I pretending not to see? The third question, what's life gonna look like in five to 10 years if I keep this going, right? Like, play it out. How does it look? Keep ignoring that relationship issue, the health issue, the job, whatever you're doing or not doing over the course of five to 10 years, doing exactly what you're doing now. What's that going to look like? And the fourth question, how can life look in five to 10 years, if I change now, I mean, I'm not saying change is easy, but transformation begins when you tell yourself the truth.

Colette Fehr:

Yeah, that's what I was just gonna say. We've got to get honest with ourselves, and I love these questions. Where Laura and I are both big fans in therapy of that intrapsychic work of asking, talking to yourself directly, it is amazing. No matter what model you do, you can do this on your own. Close your eyes for a second and go inward and really ask. You will get an answer when you do it that way, versus trying to figure it out, think it through, like really talking to yourself. And as you said this, I even asked myself these questions, you know, when I heard some answers, just about things not even necessarily betrayal related, like what I'm doing, so getting honest with ourselves is essential to creating change,

Unknown:

it's so true, and you know, when it, as it relates to betrayal, you've been through the worst of it already, like your prize is not landing in stage three. What's that? It's like you owe it to yourself to just live that stage five life, where you've rebuilt your health and your relationships. If I tell you how many people in stage five new relationships, you know, you didn't have the the access to that earlier. Now you do with the person who were you, or with someone totally new, new passion projects, new businesses, new levels of health. So that's what's waiting for you. Like, why in the world would you, would you sit there with a stage three life, when you know about stages four and five, because,

Laura Bowman:

like, known pain can be very powerful, and like that story, and being the victim of the story

Colette Fehr:

can

Laura Bowman:

be a big hook that people revolve around for a long time, and I mean, I think there, it does take a little bit of awareness to begin to shift out of it, or maybe a lot of awareness, and so Colette's point, I think that intrapsychic work is huge, and and one of the places we always toggle back to is the inner child, but I think even toggling forward to the 80 year old version of yourself, and like, what does she want, and what would she like, would she be unhappy if you stayed stuck in stage three, and I do a lot of work talking to my 80 year old,

Unknown:

yeah,

Laura Bowman:

you know, I

Unknown:

love that, and it's so true. It's because, you know, and it's interesting because whenever I'm working with anybody, I see them in stage five, and it's like it's almost like, what do we have to get rid of to to access and reveal that piece. You know, here's.. I'll give you another analogy. This is how I see everybody, too. It's almost like, imagine two best friends, and they're both 30 pounds overweight. They're both fine. They really are. They put themselves together. They look great. They have energy to do what they want to do. They.. it's not stopping them from anything. But one day, one friend says, 'You know what? I'm so done with the 30 pounds, I'm just done, and she's gonna eat well and exercise and do all the things, and she loses the weight, and she says to the other friend, she's like, this feels so good, let me help you, and the other one's like, no, no, I'm fine, and the truth is, she is, but if she knew, she knew what it felt like, you know, to lose the 30 pounds, like she would have that understanding, that's what happens in stages three, where we're like, that I'm okay, because you can be, yeah, but it's, we don't know, we don't know what it, what that stage four and five feels like, until, until, and unless we're willing to move towards

Colette Fehr:

it, and I hope everyone listening, you know, if you relate to any of this, just let yourself imagine that 510 years from now, even right, if things keep going the way they're going, and then maybe let yourself imagine what could it look like if it was different, and you're right, sometimes you don't know till you know, but doing the work and getting to the other side, I mean, this is one of the hardest conundrums in life. Whatever we, whatever we apply it to, whether it's betrayal or not, is the short-term comfort that comes from numbing out today, right? From watching, you know, what did I watch? 10 hours of Love is Blind versus whatever I didn't feel like dealing with that day. Right, right, right, and listen, some distraction has its place. I'm being funny to a point, but the short-term comfort of that is the long-term cost is so great versus short term, a little bit of initial discomfort as you're willing to confront these patterns, get honest about what isn't serving you and break through the long term reward, it's the lottery, it's huge,

Unknown:

it's so, it's so huge. There's a.. you just reminded me of a saying, I've been saying this for my 34 years in business. I don't.. I haven't found a topic it doesn't apply to. It's a mantra, and I invite everybody to write this down. You know what that means by now? Write this down. Write

Colette Fehr:

it down. Yes,

Unknown:

hard now, easy later.

Laura Bowman:

Oh, totally. Love,

Unknown:

easy now, hard later. Take your pick. It's going to be one of those two. When it

Colette Fehr:

comes, yeah, it's so simple and so spot on.

Unknown:

That's it. When it comes to betrayal, it is all about hard now, easy later. But we think, we think, well, you know, but, but nothing's really changing, but it's really hard, the life I'm living. Yeah, but until and unless you're willing to change those beliefs, change what you're, the way you're moving through your relationships, change all of that, it's going to be, you know, it's going to be the same, but hard now. When I say hard now, I mean a thought comes into your head, and you question with the old, how would the old me have responded to this? Do I still like it? If so, keep it. If not, it's not coming along. That's a great

Colette Fehr:

look at it. It's a great way to look at it. Yeah, yeah, just really asking yourself in the here and now, that's such a powerful way to create change, because it really does start with responding to situations differently, you know. Maybe I'm sitting with some uncomfortable feelings that are in there, and I want to drink wine, or stay in a crappy relationship, or watch too much TV, or emotionally eat, and maybe that day you don't, and you sit with the feelings, and maybe you cry a little, and sure, it's a little uncomfortable, but you also release, and you're beginning to get honest with yourself, and you're beginning to heal. It's in the small everyday choices to do something different. So, this is so powerful, and this is so actionable, but I cannot let you go until you tell us the three groups that didn't

Laura Bowman:

heal

Colette Fehr:

in the study. We have to hear this.

Unknown:

Yeah, okay. Cautionary tale. The first group, they were numbing, avoiding, distracting. They went to the doctor, who put them on a mood stabilizer, anti-anxiety med. They were, you know, they were emotionally eating whatever it exactly what you said, it may have made the day a bit easier to get through. Not without a price, they didn't heal.

Colette Fehr:

Huge price. The

Unknown:

second group, this was the group they had their story, they were sticking with it, they were betrayed, they were taking that story and keeping it, and they were deeply, deeply rooted in stage three. The third group, this was the group where the betrayer had very little consequences, whether it was out of religious reasons, financial fear, not wanting to break up a family, whatever. I saw two things with this group, like they just tried to turn the other cheek, look the other way.

I saw two things:

number one, a further deterioration of the relationship, and two, this group, by far, was the most physically sick. The broken heart couldn't handle it right, because they weren't being honest with themselves. They were, you know, they, they're like nothing was changing, and they were just trying to live with something so painful and so heartbreaking, and that's deep. They're deep in stage, not even just deeply in stage three, going back to two all the time with more shock and trauma, because that's the place they're living. Yeah,

Colette Fehr:

okay, so none of us is ending up there, not the three of us, not anyone listening today, right? This is the call to action for whatever you've been through, whoever's hurt you really taking power over your life, because you're not responsible. It's not your fault that someone has hurt you or betrayed you, but what you do with it after that is on you. It is your responsibility. It is your life. No one else is going to fix it for you. No one else is going to heal you. No amount of numbing, distracting, avoiding, hiding from the world is going to make it better. You got it, you've got to confront it. And then what's on the other side is this growth and this new life and this new self that's even better than you can imagine right now. So this is so motivating and powerful.

Laura Bowman:

Debbie, do you do a lot of this work in a group, like, do you do women's groups that are doing this work together?

Unknown:

My favorite thing ever is to speak with a bunch of women who think they're just stuck like this, and then realize, oh my gosh, there's a proven way out of it, and to see the light bulb moments go off, oh. Oh, that's the best.

Colette Fehr:

Oh, I love it. And, honestly, as somebody who has been through this and gotten to the other side, you know, I think we all want this for everyone listening. And this is not about, like, shaming ourselves in any way, or even blaming, like, it is what it is, but, like, let's do what we can to live our best lives and move forward.

Unknown:

I mean, if you knew the version of you that's waiting in stage five, she is so strong, so powerful, so confident, so healthy, healed, bold, beautiful. You owe it to yourself.

Colette Fehr:

Amen to that mic drop. Oh my gosh, Debbie, thank you so much for being here today. You've shared such wisdom with our audience. I know they're going to get so much out of this. So, before you go, tell everybody how they can find you, work with you, all that good stuff.

Unknown:

Thank you. Everything is at the PBT, as in Post Betrayal Transformation, the PBT institute.com

Colette Fehr:

Wonderful. Oh my god, I cannot wait for everyone to hear this episode. Thank you again.

Unknown:

Thank you.

Colette Fehr:

Oh, we hope you got some valuable insights from our couch today, and we'll see you all next week. Bye, guys.

Unknown:

Bye.