Blind to Betrayal: Why We Fool Ourselves We Aren't Being Fooled (26 page)

First, understand that betrayal blindness has served a purpose in your life. Particularly with family members or others you must coexist with, you may have been experiencing what we call “rotating betrayal blindness.” This occurs when you are aware of the betrayal at one moment but then later find that you speak, act, or feel as if you were not aware that there has been betrayal in the relationship. Removing betrayal blindness does not occur in one moment, once and for all. It is more likely that becoming fully aware takes time and that you will rotate in and out of blindness. During this time, you will need a support system, perhaps even outside professional help, particularly when the relationship has been lifelong or long-lasting, in order to help you endure the pain of fully acknowledging the relationship for what it is (laced with betrayal and good times, too), as opposed to what your betrayal blindness allowed you to believe.

Betrayal blindness has indeed served a purpose in your life. It has kept you safe at times when there was no safety. Although overcoming blindness is ultimately one of the most healing things you can do, it does have its costs. You may find yourself falling into that free fall we described earlier, not knowing what or whom to trust. Only you will know if this is the time to take on this challenge. Trust yourself, find others you can trust, and understand that you might not be ready yet.

If you do decide that the time is right to confront betrayal and betrayal blindness in your own life, and you are confident you are addressing your need for a healthy body, supportive relationships, and safe disclosure, be gentle with yourself. This will be hard work and will take time. Take as long as you need. During this period, do things that bring beauty and joy to you. Each person has his or her own delights. We find spending time in nature, playing or listening to music, and reading a good book to be among the ways we can find that rejuvenating beauty and joy.

For Friends and Supporters

William Schumacher, a beginning therapist, told us the following: “As I've seen clients in the clinic, I've been struck by how powerful disclosing trauma can be. Being an active and supportive listener goes a long way in helping trauma survivors heal.”

What does active and supportive listening look like? In chapter 10, we review research by Melissa Foynes and Jennifer Freyd on effective listening. That research included teaching people some basic listening skills. Here are some suggestions, based on the educational materials the researchers developed.

First, it is important to use attentive body language. This means demonstrating that you are interested through your facial expressions, posture, and eye contact. Second, use words that encourage the speaker to continue. For example, do not change the subject or ask questions that are off topic. This may seem like a way to decrease your anxiety or make the other person more comfortable, but it often has the opposite effect. It is okay to allow silence and to convey that you are listening by using encouraging sounds such as “hmmm” and “uh-huh” periodically. Try to reflect back the emotion being described. For instance, you might let your face convey the sadness you are feeling and express it by saying, “Wow, that is very tragic.” It might also help to imagine yourself in the speaker's place and to look at the situation from his or her perspective. It is okay to ask questions if you are confused. Finally, remember to focus on the experience of the person disclosing, rather than on your own. Give advice only when it is requested.

One important goal is for you, the listener, to comprehend the speaker's story and communicate your attention and understanding.

Third, remember to use words in a way that conveys support. At the same time, try to avoid reassuring the person in a manner that might minimize his or her experience. For example, it is not helpful to say, “That happened so long ago, maybe it would help to try move on,” or “It's not worth the energy to keep thinking about it,” or even, “Don't be scared.” Similarly, avoid expressing judgments or evaluations about the story you are hearing. What does help is validating the person's emotions in a genuine tone. For example, you might say, “If that happened to me, I can imagine I'd feel really overwhelmed, too.” It is also beneficial to point out the person's strengths. Comments such as “I'm amazed at how much courage that took” and “I really admire your strength” can be healing. Just as a good listener conveys attention and understanding, it is also essential to show caring and support.

True listening goes beyond such concrete suggestions. As we described earlier, stories of betrayal so often begin in fragmented and sometimes implausible ways.
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They evoke strong reactions in us, from compassion to outright rejection. They scare us, they anger us, and they never leave us untouched. It is easy to distance ourselves or become vicariously traumatized by these stories. Therefore, it is tempting to settle for a technique of listening that helps the teller of the narrative create a clearer and more factual narrative. Yet true listeners must be willing to go further, seeking emotional depth and truth, rather than merely focusing on surface particulars and facts. It is hard for listeners to reserve judgment and remain emotionally present as an individual struggles to express the emotional truth embedded in experiences of betrayal. However, you will find that doing so creates a true healing environment.

An effective listener must care enough to be involved and be affected by what is heard. It is often painful for the listener, as well as for the speaker. Douglas Steere gives us this warning: “For the listener who knows what he or she is about, there is a realization that there is no withdrawal halfway. There is every prospect that he or she will not return unscathed. . . . A friend of mine who has spent many years in listening admits that in the course of it, he has learned something of the ‘descent into Hell' and is quite frank in confessing that for him each act of listening that is not purely mechanical is a personal ordeal. Listening is never cheap.”
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True listening is never cheap, but it is powerful. It will help those who have been betrayed reconnect with themselves and with others so that they can form deep relationships.

Deep relationships offer the greatest potential for growth and healing, as well as for harm. Therapist Laure Kahn has identified the emotion of “love” as central to these most powerful relationships, whether they are the ones in which harm occurs or the ones in which healing occurs.
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The traumatizing of love occurs when a child's experience of love, caring, and affection collides with his or her experiences of abuse and betrayal. The union of love, trust, and safety becomes fractured, while notions of love and betrayal become linked in tragic partnership.

Kahn goes on to observe that healing relationships manifest the best qualities of love, such as care, commitment, trust, knowledge, responsibility, and respect. Love, commitment, respect, and support are important in our personal relationships. Conveying these qualities through good listening and active support can make all the difference. Good relationships are the matrix in which healing occurs.

For Institutions and Powerful Others

We have addressed what victims of betrayal and their supports can do. It is equally important for those in authority, institutions and individuals alike, to face their power to betray and its devastating consequences. Healthy individuals and healthy institutions create communities in which all members can thrive and grow. It is up to the institutions to assess their strengths and shortcomings in preventing betrayal and in facing the consequences when those betrayals do occur.

In chapter 4, we describe research by Carly Smith and Jennifer Freyd that looks at one particular kind of institutional betrayal: that of failing to prevent or responding poorly to reports of sexual assaults within the institutional environment. This is an issue that has profoundly troubled institutions ranging from churches to universities to the military. Smith and Freyd developed the Institutional Betrayal Questionnaire to measure the types of policies and behaviors that fail to prevent assaults or that support those who report being assaulted. As we explain in chapter 4, the researchers found that these institutional failures related to worse psychological distress for victims of sexual assault. Fortunately, these flaws are easily remedied. If you are a decision maker in an institution, you might ask yourself how well your institution is doing on the matter of sexual assault.
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If all institutions engaged in self-study using questions like these, a particularly harmful type of institutional betrayal could be prevented. With safeguards in place, victims would feel secure reporting their complaints. Both actual acts of betrayal and blindness toward those acts would be much less frequent.

Sexual harassment and violence are one kind of betrayal that institutions must face. Governments, communities, and institutions have the power to betray in many ways, from exploiting employees and denying basic civil rights to failing to protect whistleblowers. The institutions may have policies that directly betray individuals, or they may turn a blind eye when wrongdoings are reported. These failures harm individuals, while also eating away at the fabric of communities.

Institutions can take steps to prevent and respond to betrayal. First, institutions can establish explicit policies and procedures. This might include creating a specific position or committee that is responsible for assessing the potential for betrayal and taking appropriate steps to reduce the prevalence of betrayals and to respond to victims. Second, institutions can educate individuals about the effects of betrayal and betrayal blindness and what to do to prevent them. (Imagine a world in which this education was part of the standard curriculum.) Third, institutions can respond supportively to individuals who report being the victims of betrayal. This might begin by acknowledging that a betrayal has occurred. Individuals need this acknowledgment, because they are often unprepared for their psychological reactions to betrayal.

Fourth, and most crucially, institutions must protect the whistleblower. They must support and even cherish those who challenge authority by raising difficult truths. Beware an institution that labels these people “insubordinate”! The duty of an institution is much like that of a good friend or another supportive person: listen well. Listening well means being attentive, respectful, and supportive to both victims and whistleblowers. In this way, institutions can provide a safe environment for accounts of betrayal to be told and thus create the context for victims to heal and institutions to thrive.

Final Words

We began this book by asking you, the reader, about your experiences with betrayal. We hope that our examples and our research evidence have helped you understand those experiences of betrayal and your responses to them. We can heal from betrayal, as individuals and as a society, but we must first recognize the power of betrayal and how easy it is to be blind to it. We can move from relationships based on power and control to mutual relationships of trust and safety, if we are willing to be vulnerable, take risks, and listen to one another as we all tell our stories. We can all begin to be new people, creating a new society together.

Notes

1.
B. Liang, A. Tracy, C. A. Taylor, L. M. Williams, J. V. Jordan, and J. B. Miller, “The Relational Health Indices: A Study of Women's Relationships,”
Psychology of Women Quarterly 26
(2002): 25–35.

2.
P. J. Birrell and J. J. Freyd, “Betrayal Trauma: Relational Models of Harm and Healing,”
Journal of Trauma Practice 5
(1) (2006): 49–63.

3.
D. Steere,
On Listening to Another
(New York: Harper & Row, 1964).

4.
L. Kahn, “The Understanding and Treatment of Betrayal Trauma as a Traumatic Experience of Love,”
Journal of Trauma Practice 5
(3) (2006): 57–72.

5.
The questions are based on the IBQ developed by Smith and Freyd. C. P. Smith and J. J. Freyd, “Nowhere to Turn: Institutional Betrayal Exacerbates Traumatic Aftermath of Sexual Assault,” poster presented at the 27th Annual Meeting of the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies (ISTSS), Baltimore, Maryland, November 3–5, 2011.