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11

The Healing Power of Knowing

Betrayal is part of the human condition. It is ubiquitous and unavoidable. We all encounter betrayal in our lives—we are betrayer and betrayed. As we've described throughout this book, there are all kinds of betrayal and many ways that we remain blind to it. We are most likely to be blind to betrayal if we are vulnerable and don't have the power to name our own experience, tell our own story, or claim our own identity. When we are blind to it, we know that something is wrong in our lives but are not able to name it. We lose our power and identity. We become less trusting overall or too likely to trust the wrong people.

We become more and more ashamed of ourselves, for betrayal is also a statement—we are not worth caring about—and we come to believe it ourselves. We retreat into silence and isolation. We may have social interactions but cannot risk intimacy. We must shield our shame.

Betrayal and our blindness to it have societal implications as well. A society where betrayal and betrayal blindness are rampant is a society that cannot trust. When we can't trust our institutions, we become insulated and paranoid interest groups. Something fundamental is missing—the web of relations that holds us together. When healthy, that web holds societies together, and it holds individuals together. When the web is torn, we retreat into isolation, not even trusting ourselves. We find ourselves increasingly unable to have intimate and loving relationships with one another. We come undone.

In chapter 10, we discussed the risks of knowing and telling about betrayal. In this chapter and the next, we examine why knowing and telling about betrayal are so important, not only for our own personal healing and empowerment, but also for the healing of our culture and our world.

Power, Trust, and Betrayal

You will recall Beth from a prior chapter. She was finally able to leave the therapist who would not or could not be with her as she struggled to find words for her betrayal.

Remember what she said: “And then one summer day, as I sat with the blanket over my head, I heard her tell me that I just needed to shrink it all down. I felt my body respond in a way I've never felt before. It started with a little spark in my belly that grew stronger as it traveled up through me and out my mouth. My voice was as strong as I have ever heard it before.

“‘I can't do this anymore.' The blanket was shed, and I got up and walked out into the sunshine and never looked back.”

Beth had invested a lot in her therapist and the mental health system. She trusted her therapist to help her and to have her best interests at heart. In doing so, she gave her therapist the power to help her and, unfortunately, also the power to harm her. In shedding the blanket that blinded her, however, Beth found a kind of personal power.

Many people do not have this kind of personal power—the power of identity and story and meaning. Abused children do not have this power. Many women who have suffered betrayal trauma do not have this power. This power develops from close and trusting relationships with parents and others. Those who have been betrayed have their power taken away. They cannot tell their own stories, are not solid in their identity, and are increasingly isolated as they move into shame.

Robert did not have the power to name his story when he was an only child in an extremely stressed family. His father was an alcoholic and his mother chronically depressed. When Robert was in grade school, he was called home one day because his mother had attempted suicide. His father left Robert with her, not wanting to embarrass the family by calling in a doctor. Robert sat for hours, not knowing whether she would live or die. She did survive that time but succeeded in taking her own life when Robert was in high school. Robert had nowhere to turn. His father blamed him for his mother's death, and Robert grew up believing he was worthless, stupid, and trouble for everyone around him. His parents, who were supposed to care for him and nurture him, had betrayed and abandoned him.

It was not until years later, when Robert had descended into drug abuse and made a serious suicide attempt himself, that he began to open up to his minister. He expected scorn and derision and further blaming, and if his disclosures of guilt and worthlessness had been met that way, it surely would have been his undoing. Shame would have piled on shame, perhaps silencing him forever. Fortunately for Robert, his minister was able to hear his story without judgment or scorn. In telling his story, Robert gradually was able to understand his life in a different way. He began to see himself not as a worthless child who had driven his mother to suicide and let his father down, but as a child who had never had parental support and had had to find his way in the world the best way he could.

He found that he could begin to trust not only his minister, but himself as well. He began to see that what had looked “crazy” in his life, including his suicide attempt and drug abuse, had been attempts to avoid the awareness and pain of the betrayals in his life. As he became more and more able to face them, with the support of, first, his minister and then a growing circle of friends, Robert's life changed dramatically. When he began to trust himself, he found he could also begin to trust others. Or was it the other way around? Perhaps trusting others helped Robert trust himself. He would never know. He only knew that telling his story gave him the power and trust to begin to live for the first time.

In this newfound trust of himself and others, Robert was able to claim his own power—to tell his story, to claim his own emotions and reactions to what had been done to him, and to free himself from the corrosive bonds of shame. He found this power only through the healing power of disclosure.

Disclosure Can Be Effective in Healing

Jacques Sandulescu, the Romanian survivor of Russian work camps discussed in chapter 3, longed to have his story told.
^1.
He wrote his compelling description of survival and hope as a means to help himself and the world. His wife recounted how their return to Donbas years later and meeting others who had survived helped heal his trauma. Yet the true miracle happened on their return from Donbas, when Jacques got an e-mail from a thirteen-year-old boy named Josh Overton in Springfield, Oregon—a town that had recently been traumatized by a school shooting. Josh was asking for a fresh copy of Jacques's book
Donbas
for his teacher, Steve Hess, who was about to retire. It turned out that Steve Hess had read
Donbas
to his classes for twenty-eight years, and his copy was falling apart. Josh had been so gripped by the story of survival that he had been transformed from a marginal student with failing grades into a student not only earning A's, but also caring about school.

Jacques's wife, Annie Gottleib, reported that getting in touch with Josh and his teacher transformed Jacques's life as much as returning to Donbas had. In her interview in
Oprah Magazine
, Annie reported, “Finally he knew he had been heard. ‘This is the most popular book I've ever read to kids,' Steve Hess told him. I realized something new about Jacques: His story, more than his genes, is who he is and what he needs to pass on. He'd longed for children, but not of his body—children of his story.”
^2.
He had not only had his story heard, but also seen its ability to change the lives of others, a truly healing experience.

The power of telling the story as a healing experience can also be seen with Cathy, Beth, and Rebecca. They, too, describe telling their stories and having them received and, in doing so, explain how this disclosure and its respectful reception is so healing. For speaking truth to be healing, it must be heard. As James Carse said:

Whatever else we may be saying each time we address another, we are beseeching them, ‘Listen to me. Please, listen.' Our very lives depend on that listening. This plea is not merely one of the things we utter in our speech, it is what we utter with the whole of our speech. We never speak except to be heard. When we are not heard we have not truly spoken. And when we cannot speak we have increasingly less to say, therefore less to ask for, and the lights of our being steadily darken.
^3.

Let's go back to Beth's story: “It took close to twelve years to undo all the damage that three years with my old therapist and the ‘system' had done to me. Fortunately, for me, I had found a bit of an unconventional therapist who was not a fan of medication or dogma therapy. She did not react out of fear. In fact, quite the opposite. The one time I cut myself fairly early on in therapy with her, her sympathetic reaction when she saw the cut on my face was, ‘Oww, that looks like it really hurt.' And as I looked into her eyes and touched my own face, I thought, ‘Yeah, it really did.' I never cut again.

“She was my rock and my sounding board. She was outraged at some of the things that my previous therapist had done—and that was so very healing and validating for me. She created a safe space for me to explore, vent, and ultimately release. She was there for me in ways that only now I can fully appreciate. The first few years were hard. There was much to undo—and I wasn't trusting at all—but through her patience and rock-steady presence, I was able to fully trust that she was going to be there for me, no matter what. And she was. She did it through building a relationship with me—not by slapping labels on me, not by recommending medication or hospitalization—she did it through her very presence, her willingness to let me lead and to trust that I knew where I was going and, when I did veer off, to hold space for me to come back on my own accord.

“At the end of nearly twelve years with this woman, it hit me one day how very much I had taken her for granted in my life. She helped me grow up and was there with me every step of the way in her steadfast way. And even though I don't see her anymore, I feel her presence, patience, and quiet love rooted deep within me, giving me strength and courage as I continue on my journey with the knowledge that I am whole.”

Beth's disclosure of her betrayals and learning to trust again has led to profound healing, and Beth is thriving in her knowledge of her wholeness. It took a relationship where she could begin to trust again and her courage to take the risk of knowing and telling her story. It took a place where she could “explore, vent, and ultimately release” the emotions and the betrayals. She was then able to claim her power back, to resent the way she had been treated: “It took years and years to heal from this whole experience. In all honesty, as I look back, I don't think I was as ‘sick' or ‘crazy' as my first therapist and the system made me out to be. . . . I think the cutting was a product of not being heard and not being able to speak about it. I had come to her to try to understand the flashbacks. I knew deep within myself that I needed to get it out and not keep it inside anymore. . . . When people are told over and over again how sick they are—how dangerous they are to themselves—and are medicated at high doses so that their brains can't function and then are also isolated from their support systems, they do start acting crazy. I did lose myself for a while.”

Betrayal can cause us to lose ourselves in the maelstrom of the opinions and treatment of others. Like Beth, we can find our way back to trust ourselves and others. In previous chapters, we met Rebecca, who described her difficulty trusting others. You may remember her comments about how it used to be: “I try people out; I semitrust a couple of people. Actually, three, besides my most recent therapist, whom I do trust. But yeah, I've just been let down so deeply, from infancy, that it's really hard to trust myself. And now that I have a peaceful life where I have myself, for the first time in my life, I don't like people messing that up. I feel like I have to have some control because most of my life I really didn't have any control. Or I didn't feel like I had any control.”

Here is the difference that disclosure made to Beth: “Being able to tell my story and not having someone tell me what to do and how to do it, but just listening, just being there for me. And being believed, 'cause I felt like I haven't been believed most of my life. . . . That's the main thing. At this point, having gotten my emotional wounds relatively healed, I now hope to regain as much use as possible of my body and have a life. I have made enormous strides in gaining a good life for myself. After more than sixty years of pain, I now look forward to thirty years or so of joy and peace and creativity.”

Cathy's Story: The Importance of Safety and Hope

Now in her forties, Cathy was finally able to speak her truth. Her story continues from chapter 9, where she spoke of the profound dissociation that she learned to use during her horrific childhood. She spoke now about safety, trust, and hope. For her, it was first necessary to establish a sense of safety, which she found in her therapist's office (whom we'll call Carol): “It was all just trying to find a safe place. And I didn't find that safe place until after I had my second child, and after I came and met Carol. Her office was the first safe place. She was my first safe experience.”

We asked, “What made it safe?”