Hi, thank you for joining today’s podcast episode. Today’s episode is 225, “How to deal with betrayal in relationship”, an interview with Dr. Debi Silber. If you would like access to today’s show notes, you can visit DrJessicaHiggins.com click on Podcast, which can be found in the top menu bar, and there you’ll find all the episodes. Again, today’s episode is 225, “How to deal with betrayal in relationship”, an interview with Dr. Debi Silber.
Before we get started, I wanna take a moment and just center into an intention. As I set the intention for the conversation on the Empowered Relationship Podcast, I wanna invite you to tune inwards, making contact with what’s alive, what’s real, what’s significant for you right now, and just creating some space and awareness for that.
The intention for the Empowered Relationship Podcast is to offer research, tips, tools, guidance and support to help you navigate intimate relationship more successfully. The long-term terrain of intimacy in relationship can challenge us at times, and there will be bumps in the road. And it’s how we deal with those challenges that ultimately create our experience in relationship. And when we recognize certain (perhaps) feelings or emotions arise in ourselves, and that perhaps point to certain past injuries or traumas or anything that’s challenging, that can be curriculum for our development. As we say yes to that, we grow ourselves. And as we grow ourselves, we grow the capacity of our relationship.
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For today’s episode, we’re talking with Dr. Debi Silber. She’s the founder of the Post Betrayal Transformation Institute and is a holistic psychologist, health, mindset, and personal development expert, the author of The Unshakable Woman: 4 Steps to Rebuilding Your Body, Mind, and Life After a Life Crisis and the forthcoming book: Trust Again. Her recent Ph.D. study on how we experience betrayal made 3 groundbreaking discoveries that change how long it takes to heal. Debi is an award-winning speaker, coach, and author dedicated to helping people move past their betrayals as well as any other blocks preventing them from the health, work, finances, relationships, confidence, and happiness they most want.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Debi, thank you so much for joining us today.
Dr. Debi Silber: Oh, thank you so much. I’m so looking forward to our conversation.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Me too, it’s such a tender, sensitive topic, but also so important when we look at the full spectrum of what we experience as humans in relationship and betrayal. It is often something — and I’m sure you’re gonna help us with your definition of betrayal, just so we have a better sense of what we’re referring to. But before we go there, I’m curious if you’re open to sharing, and also for listeners that aren’t familiar with you, what got you into studying this topic?
Dr. Debi Silber: It’s a great question, and you could imagine you don’t study something like betrayal unless you have to… And I’ve been in health, mindset, personal development for 20+ years, and then I had my own betrayal. First it was a horrible family betrayal… And you know how the universe works – when you don’t quite learn the lesson you were meant to learn, you get more opportunities, and that opportunity came, and this time it was my husband. Anybody who’s been through it – you just feel blindsided, devastated; it just makes no sense. And I needed to understand how the mind works, and why we do these things, and how I could heal… So maybe not what many people would do after a betrayal, but one of the first things I did was registered/enrolled in a Ph.D. program in transpersonal psychology, the psychology of transformation and human potential, just to understand the mind.
While I was there, I did a study, and I studied betrayal – what holds us back, and what helps us heal, and what happens to us physically, mentally and emotionally when the people closest to us lie, cheat and deceive… And that study led to three groundbreaking discoveries, which was so exciting. It changed my business, it changed my entire mission, it changed my marriage, my family and my life.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Well, juicy-juicy, and again, I believe that there’s so much you have to offer. Are you open to sharing any of those three breakthroughs, just so we get a sense?
Dr. Debi Silber: Sure. So the first one was that — you know, we think that time heals all wounds, and that’s not true. Not when it comes to betrayal. Because one of the things we discovered is there’s this collection of physical, mental and emotional symptoms so common to betrayal; it’s called post-betrayal syndrome. So interesting, because we have a post-betrayal syndrome quiz assessment on our site to see to what extent people are struggling, and there’s a question in there that reads “Is there anything else you’d like to share?” and people are writing things like “My betrayal happened 40 years ago. I can still feel the pain.” “My betrayal happened 35 years ago, and I still can’t trust”, and on and on it goes. So the post-betrayal syndrome was just one of the discoveries.
Another one was I felt like betrayal as a crisis was so different than other types of life crises. I had been through death of a loved one, disease, I was in ICU for 11 days – it felt so different for me. But I didn’t want to assume. So I brought it back out to my study participants and I said “If you’ve been through any other type of trauma besides betrayal, does it feel different for you?” Hands down unanimously they said it was different. And the biggest difference was – you know, with something like let’s say death of a loved one; you grieve, you mourn, you’re sad, you feel the loss tremendously, but you don’t necessarily question your sanity. You don’t question yourself. It doesn’t attack the self in the same way that betrayal does.
When someone betrays us, we experience – and you know this just from the amazing shows that you do, we’re dealing with this sense of rejection and abandonment, and trust and confidence and worthiness and belonging all have to be rebuilt. So this type of healing – because originally I was studying post-traumatic growth – needed its own name, which is now called post-betrayal transformation. So that was the second discovery. And if that wasn’t exciting enough, there was a third. And the third was – while we can stay stuck for years, decades, a lifetime (and many of us do), if we’re going to heal, we will move through five predictable stages. And what’s really exciting about that is now we also know what happens, physically, mentally and emotionally, at every stage… And we know what it takes to move someone from one stage to the next, so now healing is predictable.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Well, first of all, I love your passion, I love that you’ve also had your own personal experience and journey. I love being able to interview people who have done inner work, so I have the highest regard for what you’re doing individually, and also how you’re supporting people at large with navigating this very painful terrain… And you know, you’re speaking to – because when I was preparing for this show, I was thinking that grief is probably a big part of betrayal; I was also thinking there’s also trauma that’s involved… But you’re also distinguishing that there’s a unique experience about being betrayed, or feeling that betrayal, that is different than trauma and grief.
Dr. Debi Silber: Yes. And those are all a part of it. There’s a tremendous amount of grief. And in fact, when we don’t move through that grief, we get stuck in one particular stage. So we see this all the time, it’s a huge part of the healing. And what I see all the time is this – with something like betrayal, if we choose to heal, and we don’t often realize so often the extent of the healing that we can do, going from this place of post-betrayal syndrome to this place of post-betrayal transformation, we tend to get stuck, out of those five stages, in this stage three. And I’m happy to go through the stages too, if you want…
Dr. Jessica Higgins: No, no, please.
Dr. Debi Silber: Oh, okay. But what I see is the most common stage to get stuck is this stage three, and that stage is all about survival… And it’s as if we’ve learned to survive our experience, and then we feel it’s as good as it gets. So we sort of plant roots there, and we set up camp there. And it affects everything. It affects either that relationship, any future relationships, it affects our health, it affects our work, our financial success, it affects all of it.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: So helpful. I’d love to slow down, and just for people to connect with how your viewing betrayal, and what’s involved, and how you’re defining it, if you will.
Dr. Debi Silber: Sure. You know, I define it as the breaking of a spoken or unspoken rule. And every relationship has rules, and the way it works is the more we trusted and the more we’ve depended on that person, the deeper the betrayal. For example, a child, who’s completely dependent on that parent, and then the parent does something awful – that’s gonna have a bigger impact than let’s say your co-worker taking credit for your idea. But it’s still a betrayal, it still hurts, you’re still shocked, it’s still upsetting and frustrating and causes an amazing amount of emotional, mental or even physical symptoms, but not to the same extent. And you know which betrayals hurt the most? The ones that involve the greatest amount of trust, love, heart, dedication.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Yeah, and as you’re talking, I’m even thinking perhaps there’s a spectrum of severity, in that you’re speaking to small betrayals or even little things that we might be able to overlook, even in our most intimate relationships that are the most important to us; if it’s a slight something, or other “You said you were gonna do this and you didn’t” – that could feel like a break of whatever the explicit verbal or understood agreement… Where does this become problematic? Because the other thing I’m thinking too, Debi, as we’re talking, and I think this is something you really help people with, is the willingness to turn towards it, and recognizing the unresolved betrayal…
So many of us in our modern day culture are trying to, like you said, survive or keep moving forward… And there’s almost this denial of maybe some of the painful, difficult emotions, or even — I’ve had so many people reach out around “I’m still struggling, and my husband’s like “This again? I thought we went through this, I thought we repaired this.” You know, there’s like five questions there, but… If you could speak to the range of betrayal and intensity, and then also what you find around willingness to acknowledge, or what is involved when we start really waking up to the role of this and how it impacts?
Dr. Debi Silber: It’s such a great many questions that you asked… [laughter] First of all, you were talking about — we call it micro-betrayals, or death by a thousand cut betrayals. And it’s not that big, gigantic one, but they’re smaller and we can try to keep tolerating them. But here’s what happens – there’s this slow deterioration of our self-esteem, of our self-respect, of our belief in the other person, of our ability to trust… And the interesting thing is to really take note of why we’re tolerating it; if we just have this amazing faith and belief in this person and in humanity, we’re gonna give it our all and keep making excuses and keep trying to make sense and make reason out of it… And I know even personally, a man lived by the most simple rule – if it’s going to hurt someone, don’t do it. Period. And I assume everybody else lives that way, and it’s always a shock to me when that’s not the case. But when we’re justifying, rationalizing someone’s behavior in breaking a promise, in just doing something they said they wouldn’t do – whatever it is; it could be a small thing – we also wanna take a look at what’s going on on our end there, that we’re trying to make that okay.
And that really brings up – there were actually three groups in the study that didn’t heal, and this is gonna get to one of your other questions, too. One of the groups that didn’t heal – this was the group where the betrayer had no consequences. And whether it was for religious reasons, financial fear, not wanting to break up a family, whatever it was – and this was for the most part in the marital betrayal. Not only was this group by far, hands down, the most physically sick, but the only thing that came of this type of relationship was a further deterioration of the relationship… Because I have seen, and I’ve experienced personally where — I mean, not long ago my husband and I married each other again, because we’re two totally different people.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Right.
Dr. Debi Silber: And that’s not the case for everybody, and I completely acknowledge that. And like with my family betrayal, the only thing I could do was heal and move on. There was no option to rebuild. It just wasn’t going to be there, because everybody needs to be on board with that. But what happens is when you recognize — there’s got to be this complete and utter destruction, death of the old you, death of the old relationship, without any knowledge of what’s gonna show up, without any guarantee of what’s gonna show up. And it’s in that state that the person who’s been betrayed – they heal, physically, mentally, emotionally, psychologically, spiritually… And then from that place, the other person can say “Holy smokes, I’d better up my game. I’d better transform to meet the spirit of this person.” And if not, then they’ve simply outgrown each other.
But if the goal is “You know what – I just want this repaired at any cost”, usually it’s not the best-case scenario. And if you’ve ever seen those houses where you just keep patching it up, patching it up, patching it up… You know, at some point you’ve gotta level the house. Level the house, start over, and build a magnificent structure. Rebuilding is always up to us, whether we rebuild ourselves and move on, or if the opportunity lends itself, if we’re willing and if we want to, we rebuild something phenomenal with the person who hurt us, based on a whole different set of rules.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: And the courage that’s involved in that, of facing the fear of the uncertainty, and like you spoke to, of perhaps feeling abandoned, or all that gets evoked… And there’s a tremendous amount of pain. I’m listening to the book Untamed by Glennon Doyle. I hear her voice in my head, of like “Let it burn!” All the old ways that keep us really shackled in perhaps unhealthy patterns…
So yeah, I get that what you’re describing is we can’t hold on to something that is not healthy for us, or serving the relationship, and if we try to compromise – like you said, make excuses or justify, minimize, we’re basically entering into and being willing to participate in something that isn’t perhaps holding accountability or holding the bar to the level of agreement that is needed.
Dr. Debi Silber: You’re so right, and it feels bad on both ends. It really does. Because we don’t feel good if we’re making a decision from that place, and if we’re trying to rebuild from that place. And then the person who betrayed us, if there really aren’t any consequences, they don’t have that opportunity to change as well. So there’s very little good that I’ve seen it do, and how I’ve seen it play out… But you know, you mentioned something else, and this stuff is so — I’m convinced that betrayal is one of the most painful of the human experiences. I can only imagine losing a child is worse. And it’s because this is where we got our sense of safety, our sense of security. We’ve put our love, our trust, our faith into this person. This was the person who had our back; this was the person who we were giving our all to, and we thought they were playing by the same rules, and without our awareness or consent they chose not to. So it’s a conscious thing, and that’s what hurts so much. And it’s deliberate, and it’s just so incredibly painful. And most people – or many – choose to not deal with that pain.
I did two TEDx talks, and the first one was about how we sabotage ourselves, and we do that by numbing, avoiding anything that’s difficult to feel or face. So here’s where we use food, drugs, alcohol, work, TV, keeping busy, anything – so that we don’t have to face and feel this. But then again, we don’t have the opportunity to heal.
You know, when I was doing this study, I assumed – and as a researcher you’re not supposed to assume, but I was new at this… And I assumed that the participants who had the greatest/biggest betrayals would heal the least, because they had the most to overcome. I was dead wrong. That had nothing to do with it at all. It was the ones who were willing to – and I use this saying within my community all the time – face it, feel it, heal it. Those were the ones that healed, and those were the ones who slayed those dragons, faced their demons, moved right through these painful, painful emotions and feelings… But they healed, and they came out the strongest versions of themselves they ever thought possible.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: I love that, and that resonates with my understanding of just transformation and healing work in general… I wanna clarify a couple of things before we move on. When I’m listening to you about the agreement, so many things that I help couples work through, oftentimes agreements are not explicit. I mean, obviously, when we talk about infidelity or some very obvious huge betrayals, that’s clear… But then there’s a lot of other perhaps agreements that were assumed, or implied, or not discussed thoroughly – is that something that is a different thing, or do you find that that gets complicated?
Dr. Debi Silber: Sure. The biggest key with that one is what happens after that. If it’s the kind of thing where the other — let’s say just something about “You promised you’d be home at a certain time.” And then the other partner is totally late. So one person is offended, and they’re waiting for the partner to come home and say “Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry”, whatever it is. And you know, what happens after that? Is there acknowledgment, validation, apology? Or is there defensiveness, blame?
You know, I talk about something called the window of willingness, and it’s interesting, because it’s so clear how we’re willing to accept what someone did. And it’s really — if you imagine a window… I’ll go through it really quickly, if it’s okay…
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Yeah.
Dr. Debi Silber: If you imagine a window widest open – greatest opportunity to rebuild and forgive. And of course, forgiveness is always for us, but I’m saying more like reconcile. So the window is the widest open in this level one. And this would mean that someone says or does something that’s so totally hurtful, and the widest level one is apology, remorse, restitution, empathy. And it sort of sounds like this “I am so sorry for what I did. I can’t even imagine how much that hurt. What can I do to make it up to you?” Now, of course, with betrayal it’s gonna take a lot more than that, but that’s a great start. Someone takes full and complete responsibility.
You can feel the window closing a bit with level two. And level two involves the word “because”. And here’s the excuse: “I did it because”, “I said it because.” You may be willing to hear it, but it doesn’t feel merely as good as that level one, where the window was the widest open. It gets worse with level three. You could feel the window of rebuilding, closing even more with this third level… And this one is when — you know it’s coming when you hear the word “you”. And this one’s all about blame. “Well, I did it because YOU did this. I said it because YOU said that.” And this is crazy-making, and this is typical of the gaslighter, narcissist; absolutely cannot take responsibility, so it throws it on you like a bad game of hot potato. Very little to work with here.
And then you could feel the window sealed shut with level four, and this is absolutely no responsibility. And what so many people encounter in a betrayal situation is that level 3 and 4. Somehow it’s their issue what they did, and then there’s no responsibility on the other end. Very little to work with there. But if you’re working with that level one, for the most part, then that person had a huge wake-up call, just as you did. And you had the opportunity, if both of you were on board, to rebuild something completely different.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Beautiful. Well, I see how relational dynamics makes this so complicated, but since you’re offering such a gift and being able to share your research and understanding about betrayal, I’d love to stay focused on that in regards to – how do you help people recognize perhaps that the post-betrayal syndrome is impacting them, and they’re not even aware?
Dr. Debi Silber: This is one of those things where — it’s interesting, I have two types of people that come into our community; the first one – it’s obvious, they’ve been betrayed, they’re shocked, they’re blindsided… They had no idea there was even a way to truly heal from it, so that’s one group.
The second group is that group that’s stuck. They’re just so stuck, and they’re stuck in that stage three where they’ve figured how — they’re able to survive, but they’re so miserable in so many other areas of life, and they’re doing those things to numb/avoid/distract as they’re settling and resigning themselves to the idea of “This is as good as it’s getting.” So that’s where that post-betrayal syndrome quiz is so helpful. It’s a little bit jarring to take, because they’ll see the health issues they’re struggling with, that they may have attributed to “Oh, it’s just age”, let’s just say. No, it’s not; it’s because of your betrayal, or some mental/emotional challenge they’re going through. I could give you some statistics on what’s so common…
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Yes.
Dr. Debi Silber: Sure. So there is this collection of symptoms, but some of the bigger ones – 80%… As of now we have close to probably 8,000 people who’ve taken the quiz. 80% are hypervigilant. So just imagine walking around in that state where you are just — your nerves are on end; the minute you don’t know where your partner is, you’re checking their whatever you can check to try to catch them, you’re just so untrusting. 94% deal with painful triggers. And these triggers can be so debilitating, and so often we think PTSD is reserved for war vets; they hear a car backfire and they’re reminded of their time in war. It sounds like gunfire, let’s just say. But it’s not. It’s so common in betrayal… And cognitively, we know it didn’t just happen now, but our bodies are brought right back to that scenario. It’s so upsetting, physically. These are just some of the physical symptoms.
71% have low energy, 68% have sleep issues, 63% extreme fatigue. Weight changes at 47%, and digestive issues at 45%. I think that digestive issues – that’s so interesting, because when you think of what the digestive system does, it digests, it absorbs and it processes. When you think of a betrayal, isn’t that difficult to digest, absorb and process? Is it any wonder why our digestive system would be off? So just imagine walking around with that. Now you have some mental challenges, like 78% are overwhelmed, 70% disbelief, 68% are unable to focus, 64% are in shock, and 62% are unable to concentrate. So just mix, let’s say, digestive issues and an inability to focus and you’re overwhelmed.
Now [unintelligible 00:28:53.10] emotional. These are the emotional symptoms. 88% sadness, 83% anger. You just mix those and go back and forth for a couple hours and see what you come out with. 82% feel hurt, 80% anxiety, 79% stress… And this is what’s so interesting, these last few… 84% have an inability to trust. 82% find it hard to move forward, and 90% wanna move forward but they don’t know how.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Yeah, and I am listening to you and I’m appreciating all that you’re bringing, and I would love to start talking about the stages so we can talk about what the healing and the growth looks like, to give people some sense of hope… And I recognize that you’re bringing insights, but that doesn’t necessarily bring the experience of the transformation, just talking about it, so I’m grateful that you have ways for people to engage with you further.
So would you be willing to share, for people who are recognizing — because when I’m listening to all of these symptoms, it’s really seeming as though that fight, flight or freeze activated nervous system is really activated and engaged, and it’s hard to feel that safety or that security to relax and have the parasympathetic system working, and all of it… And like you said, some people are experiencing this to some degree for years. So what have you found in the way of healing?
Dr. Debi Silber: Yeah, so I can go through the stages; I could do that, or we could talk about healing… Whichever.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Oh, so the stages are not the healing.
Dr. Debi Silber: There are the five stages, and I could talk about what they are.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Yes, that’d be great.
Dr. Debi Silber: Yeah, sure. So the first stage is like a setup stage. And if you imagine four legs of a table, the four legs being physical, mental, emotional and spiritual. What I saw with every single study participant, me included – there’s this real heavy lean on the physical and the mental, and kind of neglecting the emotional and the spiritual. And what that means is we’re really good at thinking and doing, and kind of not paying as much attention to the feeling and being. But in the feeling and being – that’s where our intuition lies, and so often we turn down our intuition because we need to get stuff done, and we don’t have the luxury of feeling, because it takes too long. It’s a deeper process. But it’s not to say that if you’re thinking and doing, you’ll be betrayed; it’s just that I saw that so consistently. But if you look at that table with only two legs, easy to see that table topple over. That’s what I saw.
Stage two – this is the most terrifying stage, and this is the breakdown… This is the shock, and it’s the breakdown of the body, the mind, the worldview. So this is the discovery right here. You’re in the body now, exactly what you said. Now you’ve turned on the stress response, you’re headed for every single stress-related symptom, illness, condition, disease. The mind is in a complete state of overwhelm and shock. You cannot wrap your mind around what you just learned. Complete shock. And the world view has just been shattered… And our worldview is how we view the world. This person’s safe, these are the rules, this is how it works… And in an instant, everything you’ve ever believed has been shattered, and there’s no other — the ground is bottom-down on you, and there’s nothing else to stand on, so you don’t feel tethered. It’s terrifying.
One of my study participants said “Do you know what it feels like? It feels like any negative emotion you can experience, getting punched in the gut, and losing your child in a crowd. It feels like that.” It’s awful.
What happens though is – think about it; if you were walking down the street and the bottom were to bottom out on you, what would you do? You would grab hold of whatever you could to stay safe and stay alive, and that’s stage three. Survival instincts emerge. It’s the most practical stage. How do I survive this experience? Who can I trust? Who can I talk to? How will I live? What will I do?
And once we’ve gotten into this stage — this is what I was saying, this is the stage that we can stay stuck in, because once we’ve figured out how to survive, we start planting roots there. And then even worse, we get some benefits from being there. We get to be right, we get someone to blame. We get a very powerful story. We don’t have to do the hard work of trusting again. “Do I trust you? Ah, forget it. I won’t trust anybody.”
So we really justify being in that space, and this is full-on victim mode right here. And it is, and it’s awful, and it’s painful, but we stay. When we’re willing to give up all those benefits – and they feel like benefits – those benefits of staying stuck, willing to give those up. When we grieve, mourn and do a bunch of things to move through that and get past that stage, we move to stage four.
Stage four is finding and adjusting to a new normal. Your old normal doesn’t exist. You cannot rebuild it, you know it’s not an option anymore… So this is like if you’ve ever moved into a new house condo, office apartment, whatever; you don’t quite have all your stuff there, it’s not really cozy, but the intention is that you’re going to make this okay. This is your new space.
What I also found so interesting about these stages – we start to turn down the stress response here; so we’re not doing the same destruction that we were, but we’re also not doing a tremendous amount of rebuilding here… But what was so interesting about this stage too was – think about it; if you were moving, you wouldn’t necessarily bring everything from your old space to your new space. It’s a great time to clean. And there was such a huge change in friendships at this time.
If your friends weren’t there for you, if they don’t understand, if they just sort of had this low-level gossip, judgment, whatever it was – you’ve outgrown it here. You don’t wanna take it with you.
And so often in this stage people are wondering “What the heck is happening to me? I’ve been friends with my friends for 20 years, I just can’t take it.” Well, it’s because of this. That’s exactly what that’s for.
And when we’ve settled into this stage, we’ve made it sort of cozy, we’ve made it our own, we’re good with it, we can slowly morph into the fifth, most beautiful stage. This is healing, rebirth, and a new worldview. So not only is the stress response turned down, so the body heals, but we didn’t have the bandwidth to heal earlier on. We were surviving. Now we want to nurture ourselves. We’re much more interested in self-love and self-care, so the body heals. The mind’s healing. We’re forming new beliefs, creating new boundaries. We see things differently based on where we’ve been, and we have a new worldview based on what we’ve been through. And the four legs of that table in the beginning, where we were only focused on the physical and the mental – now we’re solidly grounded, because we’re focused on the emotional and the spiritual, too.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Thank you for the rundown of that. I love how experienced — and you really have this integrated. And where you were talking earlier about wiping/scraping the house and building a new house – is that in stage five?
Dr. Debi Silber: No, that’s before that, actually. That’s one of the biggest needle-movers, moving you from stage three to stage four. In the second TEDx I talk about it. I use this analogy of the house, and I say imagine — this is the difference between resilience and transformation. Resilience is restoring. And that’s a worthy goal. We need that for our every day. And that would be the equivalent of if your house needs a new boiler, and you get a boiler. That’s resilience. Or if it needs a new roof, you get that roof; that’s resilience. Transformations like this.
A tornado comes by and levels your house. A new boiler won’t fix it, and a new roof won’t fix it. And this is what either keeps us stuck or moves us forward. We have every right to stare at the lot where our house once stood and say “Oh my gosh, this is the most horrible, terrible, tragical, awful thing.” And you’d be right. And you can call all your friends over and say “Look at this. Isn’t this the most terrible thing you’ve ever seen?” and they’d all agree. And you have every right to mourn the loss of your house until your last breath. However, if you choose to rebuild it, why would you build the same one? Why not make it big, and beautiful, and give it everything the old house didn’t have? There’s nothing there. That’s transformation.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Yeah… Thank you for clarifying that, because I was wondering – as you were describing stage four, it seemed like this interim stage, and it might even be the learning curve; it’s not this 180 that we do, that we’re like “Okay, this is a paradigm shift and I’m starting anew, and I’m not gonna participate in these old ways. I’m gonna really up-level and really be clear, and all the things that are involved in that…”, but it doesn’t usually happen like a light switch. It’s this progressive process. Is that what you find?
Dr. Debi Silber: You know, it was interesting – with the stages there were themes, and the themes came at different times; they were a little more fluid… Like the interest in moving from let’s say religion towards spirituality was a really big thing. And it makes total sense. Or they weren’t spiritual at all, they became spiritual. But I saw that consistently, and it makes sense, because we don’t trust ourselves, we don’t trust our betrayer; we eventually can at least trust in God, the Universe, something bigger than us. But that didn’t always happen at a predictable time.
With the five stages – you couldn’t skip them, you couldn’t by-pass one (it didn’t work that way), but it seemed like it would always be that they would outgrow one stage for the next. It was more of like an outgrowing it. So it wasn’t a complete and hard stop as one stage ended and they moved to the next, it was like they would outgrow it.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Yes, thank you for that. And Debi, I’m curious – I know we have limited time, but I wanted to ask, as far as the person that was the betrayer… Because you were talking about your own experience of wiping the slate clean and rebuilding, and even remarrying your husband… And that there is a new relationship that’s built. Is there anything you can say about what the person who has betrayed, what that looks like? I know it could be a whole thing, but…
Dr. Debi Silber: Yeah, it’s such a great question. Just as the person who’s been betrayed is experiencing deep, profound pain, and so many other things that they have to deal with, the betrayer – a conscious betrayer – they’re experiencing shame, regret, remorse. So it’s taking those emotions and doing something with it. How do you heal shame? You bring light to it, and you bring honor to it. And you do good with it, and you understand that you learned the most profound lesson of your life, but you learned it at the expense of someone that you loved. So there’s a tremendous rebuilding process. But what many betrayers do is they feel so much shame that they keep running from it, instead of facing it; and you know, it’ll follow you like a shadow.
What the betrayer has to do is truly be willing to rebuild that trust that was broken. And trust can take a lifetime to build, and it’s torn down in seconds… And it’s not an easy rebuild. But that person has to be so willing to become trustworthy, even with the most microscopic things. I know so many people in my community – they were triggered by… Let’s say it was a marital betrayal, and then their husband said they would be home and they weren’t; well, of course, it’s a trigger for them, and they’re rattled, but meanwhile they were buying them a birthday gift. You know, something like that.
So every opportunity the betrayer has to show that they learned a tremendous lesson… There’s deep regret, there’s remorse, there’s empathy, and they’re willing to do whatever it takes to rebuild, and they’ve learned a profound lesson, then there’s tremendous hope there. But again, if the betrayer has no consequences, it’s hard, and I know so many people… And this was one of the themes, too – many people protect the betrayer, at their own expense. They don’t wanna hear it, they don’t want judgment, they don’t want pity… I know for the first year I didn’t tell anybody, because I knew everybody loved my husband. I didn’t wanna hear it. But that cost me — I mean, I was so sick… And then when I did share it with my friends, it was so healing. And my husband had a tremendous amount of his own work to do.
I think for him one of the biggest reasons why his transformation was so profound – you know, we have four kids, and they were four teenagers, and he was the one who told them… And I can only imagine, you have four teenagers looking at you like “You did what to our mom?!” Like, if anything’s gonna have you fall from grace and wake up, it’s that… And in taking that responsibility and then doing the work to heal – he’s a different person. And so am I.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: I love that, thank you for sharing. I wonder, Debi, if through the stages and the work that people do, that those four legs — one of the things I talk about when people are rebuilding trust is that we’re somewhat tuning forks, in that when we do have that connection with all four of those legs, we can sense when the quality of the dynamic is different… So we’re trusting, and it just feels so much more empowered and informed, and able to turn towards what is present… And I don’t know if you would agree.
Dr. Debi Silber: Oh, absolutely. It is interesting – my book that’s coming out in September/October is called “Trust Again”, and I actually teach a four-step rebuilding process, because trust is huge. That’s the very foundation that the relationship is built upon. So when that’s destroyed, it’s such a big undertaking to rebuild.
And I use this analogy – a real quick analogy – where it’s like a brick wall. That brick wall is built brick, by brick, by brick. There’s really no shortcut there. And in an instant, it can all come tumbling down. Well, what’s the only way to rebuild it? I don’t believe it can be repaired, but I believe it can be rebuilt. But the only way is brick, by brick, by brick. So the person who has been betrayed has to be willing to let the betrayer be a really good brick layer, and build that wall brick by brick by brick.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Thank you, Debi. Well, how do people get in touch with what you have to offer and what you’re up to?
Dr. Debi Silber: Thank you. We just have so much at the — we have this amazing membership community, they could take the quiz… It’s all at thepbtinstitute.com.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Wonderful, and it sounds like you have programs… Do you have other ways that people can? So it’s a membership, and — is it coaching, is it…?
Dr. Debi Silber: You name. It’s really based on what the close to 8,000 people said they needed, what my study proved we need, what helped me heal, what my clients have really benefitted from… So there’s coaching, there’s daily classes, we bring in curated experts, all my programs are in there, I’m teaching in there… 24/7 support, but not support to keep you stuck, support to lift and inspire. And it’s just an amazing space, just to go from what you thought you can never heal from, to just a version of you that would blow your mind.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Wonderful. Well, I’ll make sure to have those links on today’s show notes. Debi, thank you for sharing your wisdom with us today.
Dr. Debi Silber: Thank you so much. Thanks for the work you do.
I hope you have enjoyed today’s conversation, again, with Dr. Debi Silber, talking about how to deal with betrayal in relationship. Again, you can find today’s show notes and the links mentioned on DrJessicaHiggins.com, click on Podcast, which can be found in the top menu, and when you click on Podcast you’ll find access to all the show notes. Again, today’s episode is 225.
Until next time, I hope you take great care.
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