Why is it that when someone who’s not a stranger is the person who victimizes you, the damage hits like 10 times harder than if it is a perfect stranger? For this month of domestic violence awareness, we need to know why betrayal trauma is so damaging to survivors of gendered violence.
Today, we’re going to speak a little bit about how it relates to complex trauma and how to help people to heal and get the strength they need to get out of these relationships and recognize their awesomeness. Stay tuned.
Understanding Betrayal Trauma in Gendered Violence
So first, let’s just start with the Cornell 7 situation. Here’s the basic idea. There were seven young men who sexually assaulted or were involved in the sexual assault of a lady we will call Jane Doe.
The basic idea is that she did not consent to what it is that transpired. This occurs in a context that privileges individuals who identify as men and who the society gives certain advantages to. This also occurred in a frat house.
Studies do actually demonstrate that risks of unwanted touching and sexual assault can occur in both sororities and fraternities. So I think it’s just fair to say that we who identify as men, we need to do our part that if we see any men who are doing anything that’s a little sketchy, we gotta let them know, no, we’re not doing that. We can’t make it that men are allowed to do these terrible things and we stand by because then we contribute to this terrible culture that allows for the victimization of others.
The Cruelty Privilege in Our Society
There’s something about our society where people are privileged because of their cruelty. We have a tendency in our society to look at some people who might have antisocial personalities or even those who might resemble having some narcissistic personality traits and we reward them.
They can become managers. They can become promoted. They might even become rulers of different countries. So just know that we’ve got some issues in our society with how those who cause the most harm are usually protected.
So in the case when we talk about Jane Doe, we need to think about how there’s potentially an element of betrayal that takes place in the intimate context. But there’s also an element that is very common in sororities and fraternities of cultural betrayal and there’s also this element of institutional betrayal. Let’s break it down.
Evolutionary Attachment and Betrayal Blindness
Evolutionarily, we are wired to feel attached to other people. Okay, we need it for survival. Back in the day, if our ancestors were encountering saber-toothed tigers and encountering snakes, I mean, everything was dangerous.
If you think about what our ancestors actually survived, it’s a miracle we’re all here. So that’s why if we were able to connect with somebody else who was not trying to eat us for dinner, this would help you evolutionarily. This would help it to make it so that you could survive and so that you can reproduce.
But the thing is, you’re not expecting someone like that to then betray you just like the snake. You’re not expecting them to betray you just like the saber-toothed tiger. And so that leads to a disorganization.
It leads to disorientation because your attachment was meant to make it so it would increase your survival. Some of the most devastating experiences of trauma that my clients report to me is not by car accidents. It’s not by their phobias of sharks, their phobias of animals, squirrels.
Some of the most devastating experiences relate to betrayals in interpersonal relationships. In order to continue a relationship that’s based on betrayals, you need to have this thing called betrayal blindness. It means that you need to think, okay, even though this person’s hurting me, they may be paying for the roof over my head.
Even though this person is so harmful to me, they give me flowers. The person feels that the abuser is not an abuser in their eyes because the abuser says that they’re so important, or the abuser says no one can love you like how I would ever love you. These are all ways that the cycle of violence can continue itself.
In order for the betrayal to continue, there not only needs to be flowers or a gift on the side of the victim, there also needs to be betrayal blindness. But this denial of your experience, this hiding of the fact that the harm is taking place, this of course leads to a disorganization and a disorientation, and we see increases with dissociative symptoms.
Cultural and Institutional Betrayal Trauma
Cultural betrayal trauma theory was popularized by Dr. Jennifer Gomez. This theory is talking about how, let’s say in general, in sororities, let’s say it’s a Black sorority, okay? So you’re with your girls, you’re with your crew, and the shield is up just in case some white racist wants to try and violate, okay? So just in case, yo, we’re with our girls, everything is all good, right?
What happens if the abuser is another Black woman from the sorority? It leads to this disorganization, it leads to this disorientation, and we’ll see an increase in dissociative symptoms.
The theory of institutional betrayal is by Dr. Jennifer Freyd. It’s a little different, but a little similar. Let’s say that you have a white service member, and she’s in the military, everything’s all good.
She’s protected, she’s part of the lethal fighting force of her nation. But what happens if the sexual violence comes from another service member? Maybe another white, or doesn’t matter the race, but it could be another service member sexually assaults her.
She then goes to the reporting officer. She says, this is the thing that happens. The reporting officer turns around and then says, hey, what are you doing in the military? You’re not really strong like us, you know, what are you doing as a woman? You’re going to make us look bad. This isn’t very Christian of you, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Whatever it is that they might say, right?
For her, she’s in the institution that’s meant to protect her. And all of a sudden the institution’s hurting her. This leads to a disorganization, this leads to a disorientation, and we see an increase in dissociative symptoms.
Dr. Jennifer Freyd and Dr. Jennifer Gomez speak about betrayal trauma theory as being central and integral to why it is that we see these dissociative symptoms increase. We’re not expecting those who we are connected with to be the people who are going to cause harm to us.
But the problem is that you can’t really love an institution like you can, but an institution can’t love you back. An institution is going to prioritize its own survival because it’s actually a system with a whole lot of interlocking components.
The Intersection of Gender and Trauma
When we think about Jane Doe in the situation of the Cornell Seven, there were multiple failures of the system, whether it was the law enforcement, whether it was the universities, whether it was even the relationship that led it to be that she then thought one thing was going to happen. And then after there were seven people involved, it’s really just for us to think about how this unexpected, our predictions being betrayed, the prediction error involved. These are the things that form the complex trauma symptoms we see in survivors of gendered violence.
When we’re talking about domestic violence, similar kind of thing is that no one goes into a relationship expecting that there’s going to be financial abuse. No one goes into it expecting that they’re going to be cut off from all of their friends. And there’s the hope that maybe one day he may change his mind and the violence continues.
Of course, I spoke about gender as well. We just need to understand that while I’m speaking about he and she, and I’m using male-female language, we know that there’s something about our society that makes it so that those who are perceived as weaker usually get the brunt of violence, because it’s not just about the male-female dynamic. It’s more about power in the context of the identities of those involved.
The Importance of Intersectional Assessment
So we are not always asking clients who look like men about their experiences of gendered violence because we don’t see them as having a gender, meaning that with gay clients, they could have been sexually assaulted by men, even though they may identify as being men. Remember, there are some of my male clients who were sexually assaulted, whether it was by their mothers, whether it was by other women in positions of power.
And when they would say that gendered violence or this assault happened, therapists wouldn’t believe them. So this is why for me, when I do my racial trauma target history, and you’ve seen it in my other videos, even though I have a white client, I’m still going to ask about the same questions relating to race.
So even if I have a male client, I’m still going to ask the same questions relating to gender as if he experienced gendered violence, because it’s a social construct. It’s all about power, dominance, and betrayal.
Healing Betrayal Trauma with EMDR Therapy
So what do we do about these experiences when there’s this betrayal trauma? Let me give you an example from EMDR therapy. Just last week, I had a client of mine and they told me about the situation. So I hadn’t seen them in a year and they came back for a different problem.
But they told me why they hadn’t seen me in a year. So what took place is we were working on experiences of sexual violence that they survived. This is a woman who was in her thirties and in her twenties, she went through some terrible things that took place in her relationships, in her university.
And so there were multiple events. A year later, she comes back to meet with me and now it’s a completely different issue. She’s like, Oh, you know, I’m going to do this flight out to a different country. And you know, I have a phobia of planes. I never told you.
I’m like, Oh, okay. This sounds very different before you were talking about experiences relating to gendered violence and all of these things. So what is it that happened? How was that? She’s like, yeah, yeah, that’s all good. That’s all good. That’s why I didn’t call you. In fact, what I wanted to tell you is that I didn’t mention this to you because I didn’t know I could talk to you about dreams in the therapy.
The Generalization of Healing
And I didn’t think it was something that was really relevant. In addition to getting over those traumas, I no longer have this recurring nightmare that used to happen every single night. As a recurring nightmare, she would always think this person’s going to harm her. And then she’d wake up and feel a little panicked.
When we were able to heal that fourth target, even though we didn’t target that dream specifically, that dream was going to happen again. The guy was about to attack her and this time she was able to stop it. Not only is it that we were able to clear the trauma targets relating to the violence that took place, we were also able to make it that the dreams that she was having also changed.
With EMDR therapy, we are not only reducing the impact of negative beliefs, but we are installing positive beliefs. She might’ve had multiple negative beliefs from these traumatic experiences that were like, I’m not good enough. I’m worthless. I’m a bad woman, et cetera, et cetera.
When you heal those negative beliefs with EMDR and other trauma-focused approaches, the positive beliefs will be like, I am good enough. I’m a great person. I’m a good woman. Sometimes if we start to believe we are good people, that also checks the box of other traumatic memories.
And so we don’t have to clear those. Because of generalization, we did not even need to directly address the nightmares. It was an extra added benefit that took place.
A Call for Intersectional Anti-Racism and Healing
Why is it that she didn’t tell me about the nightmare specifically? She said that she didn’t know that she could talk about nightmares and dreams. And I needed to explain to her, we call it psychology because the original Latin is talking about the study of the spirit.
So it’s all things relating to your mind. It’s all things relating to your identity. It’s all things relating to the wholeness of your being.
The moral of the story is to know that yes, there’s a lot of experiences that we go through because of our social identities. Whether you see yourself as Black, you see yourself as woman, as trans, as gay, lesbian, queer, et cetera. It’s for us to know that even if there are multiple experiences, we can heal from them.
It doesn’t necessarily make it so that the aggressors and the abusers are going to stop it. For that, we need social change. For that, we need revolutionary change. For that, we need to change how we are all interacting with one another.
But what we need to do in the meantime is let people know that there’s hope to heal. Let’s make sure that there’s more awareness that is out there relating to gender violence, relating to domestic violence. If this video was helpful, please drop a comment, share it with somebody, like, share, subscribe.
But we all need to do our part to change our society for the better. And it starts with an intersectional anti-racism. We can heal from betrayals.
Alright, peace.
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