If someone has betrayed your trust, it can feel like having your world shattered. Like the world is falling apart around you.
There’s the anger and the frustration. “How could this have happened? How could somebody do this to you?”
There’s the grief of everything that you knew suddenly doesn’t seem to be true anymore. It can feel like it was all a lie.
There’s the stress from the shock of the experience. Your world is one way, one moment, and all of a sudden it feels completely different.
A lot of people also experience feeling guilty. “Have they done something to create this experience? The shame, the embarrassment of what will people think if they find out somehow?”
It’s a lot like that feeling of almost free-falling through the air.
You no longer have solid ground beneath you. You no longer have those walls around you keeping you comfortable and safe in that familiar space because everything that was before now feels untrue. And everything coming up is one big question mark. It’s uncertain. You don’t know where it’s going to take you, not at that moment.
Feeling Like *You* Are Shattered
But not only do these experiences shatter your perception of your world. It can also feel as though it shatters you as your inner stability gets shaken up. Self-esteem takes a hit and confidence takes a hit. Your sense of self-value takes a hit.
Some of the common questions that people wonder about when they have this experience are:
“Why are they so unlovable? What have they done to create this experience? Have they done something to push that person away, that would encourage them to do something like that? Are they not enough?”
Biggest Obstacle After Trust-Loss
The trust you lose in the other person- that’s one thing, but one of the things that make recovering from a betrayal so difficult is the trust that you lose in yourself.
How do you go forward and make good decisions if that gets brought into question?
Especially if the person who betrayed you was lying to you a lot and caused you to doubt or blame yourself on a regular basis.
If you don’t trust yourself, it becomes much more difficult to feel safe with anyone until that trust in yourself is rebuilt.
That’s what makes betrayal so painful.
If you are disconnected from yourself, it’s going to be challenging to open yourself to love- to recognize what real love is.
And from that place of disconnection, that’s where some people turn to addictions. Could be alcohol, food, or corn. You guys know what I’m talking about.
It becomes this broken record that’s filled with more and more pain until you rebuild what shattered.
Don’t Crumble, Do This Instead
The analogy of natural disasters:
For example, tsunamis, earthquakes, tornadoes, and hurricanes, because depending on how severe those storms were, they can leave entire cities in crumbles. There’s always a choice that comes after the trauma and the shock of such an experience: to leave it or rebuild it.
So if you find yourself internally shattered, there’s the shock and the trauma that has to be dealt with, but then there’s the choice.
You can abandon what crumbled inside you. Or you can rebuild it.
In rebuilding it, you have an opportunity to make it stronger, safer, more comfortable, and even more luxurious. It’s up to you.