Transcript of Edge Note: Can Betrayal Trauma Change Your Brain?

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Welcome to Notes from the Edge, where we have the conversations we should have been having all along. We talk about the things that we're not talking about. I'm your host, Lisa Lacey, writer, trauma educator, executive advisor, and author of the upcoming memoir Notes from a Certified Madwoman. Welcome to the Edge.

Welcome to another episode of Notes from the Edge. I am your host, Lisa Lacey, and this is the place we have the conversations we should have been having all along. Guess what? You ain't talking about it. So today we're gonna— and today we're talking about betrayal trauma and how betrayal trauma can actually create crazy-making behavior. It can actually biologically and physiologically change your brain and and body. What did you perform in order to survive? For some of us, we performed trust, we performed calm, we performed everything being okay while everything inside of us was screaming that something was terribly wrong. Welcome to the edge. Betrayal trauma can turn the question, can I trust this person, into something far more devastating: can I trust myself? I spent more than a decade in a relationship with somebody who had been clinically diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder. There was sex addiction. There was chronic infidelity, financial exploitation, spiritual abuse, substance abuse, and woven through all of that was the gaslighting, the kind of manipulation that makes you question what you saw, what you heard, what you remember, and eventually who you are. Let me be clear. A psychiatric diagnosis is not a character verdict.

An addiction does not automatically make someone abusive. I'm talking about the behaviors I lived with and the harm they caused. The labels were not what dismantled me, the repeated betrayal did. I became an investigator in my own life, looking for what didn't add up, replaying conversations, questioning every instinct, trying to make the facts and the explanations fit together even when they didn't and couldn't and I convinced myself that they did. That's what prolonged gaslighting can do and it doesn't always convince you of a particular lie, Sometimes it convinces you that your ability to recognize truth is broken. By the time I got out, I had almost no trust in myself— not my judgment, not my choices, not even my own emotional reactions— and I had become a hollow shell of the woman I remembered being. I didn't have to leave the relationship. I had to rebuild an identity from scratch. You are not crazy. You are not losing your mind simply because you're confused, scared, angry, or struggling to make sense of what happened. There are understandable psychological and physiological reasons you may feel this way. Psychologist Jennifer Freyd developed betrayal trauma theory to describe the harm of being violated by someone you trusted or depended on, someone you thought was your person.

The person who is supposed to be safe becomes the source of the biggest danger. Your attachment says stay close and the alarm system says get away. Where there is love, financial dependence, shared history, children, housing, or simply hope that things will change, leaving may not feel straightforward or safe, and sometimes your mind minimizes, explains away, or temporarily sets aside what it cannot afford to face. Researchers call one proposed pattern betrayal blindness. It's a theory about how dependence can shape awareness. Not a rule that applies to every survivor. This episode is sponsored by Vinted. You know, we talk a lot on this show about the things we hold on to long after they've stopped serving us, and apparently that applies to clothes too. I went through my closet recently and found things I haven't worn in forever, and I'm still thinking, well, maybe someday. Someday when? Who is this version of me I'm saving an entire wardrobe for? That's where Vinted comes in. Vinted is a secondhand marketplace app where you can sell clothes you no longer wear and make some extra money. And Vinted makes it simple. Listing is quick and easy, and when something sells, Vinted creates the prepaid shipping label for you.

Even better, Vinted has zero seller fees, so you keep everything you earn. Suddenly, letting go feels a lot more rewarding. So maybe that green shirt that's not even your color you keep moving around your closet is ready for someone else. Give your clothes a second life with Vinted. Download the Vinted app for free and start listing. With no seller fees, you keep every dollar you earn. A better question might be, what was I trying to survive and what resources did I actually have at the time? The amygdala is involved in detecting emotionally important information, including possible threats. Under sustained stress, your threat detection system, your lizard brain, can become highly reactive, and then the brain starts scanning for signs of trouble Everywhere. A change of tone of voice, a delayed text, an unexplained expense, a story that suddenly has different details. Then there's the prefrontal cortex involved in planning, attention, evaluating information, and regulating emotional responses. And when you're overwhelmed by stress, it is hard to think clearly, weigh options, and make decisions with confidence. It's not a loss of intelligence. It's what decision-making can feel like when your nervous system is bracing for danger or consequences.

The hippocampus helps organize memory and place experiences in context. Traumatic stress can affect how memory and attention work. You may remember a particular sentence with painful clarity but struggle to put months of events in order, or you feel foggy and second-guess details. Your stress response involves hormones and signaling chemicals including cortisol and adrenaline, and when stress becomes chronic, those symptoms can become dysregulated. You may feel wired and exhausted at the same time. Sleep changes. Your stomach tightens. Your shoulders live somewhere near your ears. You startle easily. Your heart races at an ordinary text or notification. You may have headaches, changes of appetite, trouble concentrating, or a profound Sense of fatigue. Now, not every physical symptom is caused by trauma, and persistent symptoms deserve medical attention, but the mind and body are not separate departments. Prolonged stress can affect both. You can check things you never used to check, ask the same question 10 different ways, cry, rage, plead, shut down, then go emotionally numb, or you may become suspicious of kindness or terrified of silence. You may react intensely to what looks like a minor event because to you, your body is attached to a much bigger history.

And then somebody points at the reaction and says, see, you're the problem, you're crazy. That is one of the cruelest parts of this dynamic. The injury becomes invisible while your responses to the injury become the entire conversation. So all the fingers are pointed at your reaction. Not the original behavior that caused the reaction. Now that doesn't mean that every reaction is healthy or that trauma gives us permission to hurt other people. We do remain responsible for our behavior, but responsibility and context exist together. You can own your responses without accepting blame for the betrayal that preceded it. And when I finally got out, I thought leaving would be the finish line. Huh, it wasn't. Leaving was the starting line. I had to learn what I actually liked, what I believed, what my boundaries were when I wasn't negotiating them to keep somebody else comfortable. So what does recovery look like when the person you stop trusting the most is yourself? If you're still in an unsafe relationship, your first job is not to become more enlightened, more forgiving, or better at communication. It is to protect yourself, get appropriate support. Sometimes that means making a quiet plan with a trusted Or an advocate rather than announcing your next move, and that can keep you safe.

Notice what happened. Notice what you feel. Separate what you know from fear. And if it helps, write things down privately in a safe place, not to build a courtroom case in your head for the rest of your life, but to give yourself a reference point when everything feels scrambled. Choose the meal, decline the invitation, say, I need to think about that. Notice when something doesn't feel right, then check it against the evidence rather than ignoring it or treating the fear as an absolute truth. Self-trust isn't believing you're always right. It's knowing you won't turn against yourself every time you're uncertain. Steady routines, rest, movement that feels manageable, connection with safe people, and simple grounding can help lower the volume of alarm. Feeling your feet against the ground, the real ground, the earth, looking around and naming where you are, exhaling slowly, reminding yourself that was then, this is now. Grounding cannot fix danger, but when you are safe, repeated experiences of calm can matter. And get qualified support if you need it. Trauma-informed therapy can help you process what happened Without making your identity about the people who hurt you, because if your finger is other-focused, you are not working on you.

There are so many treatments out there for PTSD. Yes, betrayal trauma can cause complex post-traumatic stress disorder, and treatments like cognitive processing therapy, prolonged exposure therapy, and EMDR have strong evidence behind them. And you deserve care that fits your actual needs. You can release a relationship without excusing it. You can understand somebody's struggles without volunteering to be harmed by them again. And neuroplasticity is real. That's the brain's ability to change through learning and experience. The same nervous system that learned to anticipate betrayal can learn new stuff— safety, support, treatment responses that once felt automatic can become less intense. Research even shows that effective PTSD treatment can be accompanied by measurable changes in brain circuit functioning. Now that does not mean there is a magical reset button. It doesn't mean every scar disappears and it doesn't mean healing moves in a straight line. I'm sorry. Sometimes progress is sleeping through the night or not checking the phone. Or recognizing a red flag without spiraling. Sometimes it's realizing that you were triggered, pausing, and choosing what to do next. I don't need to become somebody who trusts everyone. I need to become somebody who trusts myself to notice, question, choose, and leave when something repeatedly violates my values.

And there's a difference between discernment and living on high alert. Discernment makes room for evidence, boundaries, and calm. Hypervigilance keeps looking for a threat even when there is no threat present. Healing helps us tell those apart. If you're listening from inside the chaos, you may not— you may or may not recognize yourself in this today. Maybe you're ready, maybe you're not. Maybe you're ashamed of the things you tolerated. I felt so stupid for what I put up with. the things I said, the ways I reacted. And sometimes you wonder whether you'll ever feel like a whole person again. And you do not need the person who betrayed you to admit everything before you are allowed to heal. The closure may not never be— may never be a confession. It may be the moment you stop asking somebody else to certify your reality. I might be wrong sometimes. I might trust the wrong person again. I might miss a sign or need help or have a difficult day, but I will not make a permanent home out of self-abandonment Ever again. I like myself now. I enjoy my alone time. I ask for my meditative time.

I listen to myself. I check facts. I own my mistakes. I seek support when I need it, and I will never shrink to somebody else's deception easy again. Your brain can adapt. Your body can experience safety. Your voice comes back. And your identity can be built on something stronger than somebody else's willingness to tell the truth. Sometimes they won't ever. You will not abandon yourself to keep somebody else. What did you perform in order to survive, and what would it look like to finally put that performance down? When you find the answer to that— I am your host, Lisa Lacey. Welcome to The Edge. And if you want to take this conversation deeper inside The Edge, we have our first meeting Friday, October 31st. Join our membership on lisalacey.com. Membership. Get the right support and community underneath you as you try to mediate this. We will meet you inside the edge.