 ready Vakni? Steady? Go go go! And so I've received this small mountain reach of emails and comments so on and so forth telling me how wrong I am to rant and complain in my videos because while I'm admired and appreciated as a scholar it devalues me it makes me look I'm quoting like a warm not a man I'm serious and this is a topic of today's video we are going to discuss an undervalued much neglected and overlooked theory called betrayal trauma theory and we're going to discuss concepts like betrayal trauma betrayal bloodness a blindness institutional betrayal trauma and so on and so forth it is wrong this advice you should take it on the chin even if you have a glass chin you should have a stiff upper lip you should like you should go through life stoically you should accept suffering as an inevitable an important part of life a teaching lesson that's a tuition tuition for your pain these are wrong these these are seriously bad advice this is seriously bad advice it invalidates your suffering invalidates your pain minimizes contests the experience you have gone through and when you are traumatized when you're hurting when you don't know when where to turn when you're depleted your inner resources are depleted you should reach out you should complain you should share your pain you should rant and rave absolutely in Japan they have just opened crying classes where they teach people to cry because in some cultures like the United Kingdom and Japan people are not allowed to cry the sign of weakness embarrassing weakness it's shameful to show your vulnerabilities what people don't understand is that being honest about your deformities disabilities vulnerabilities it's not a sign of weakness it's a sign of supreme strength it's a sign of total self confidence and another thing they don't understand you can't induce healing you can't cure you can't help even if you invalidate the other person's experience and suffering someone comes to you and says I'm in pain I'm hurting and you tell him it's nothing come on everyone is going through this everyone had experienced it what are you doing you are rendering that person a statistic you're telling that person that the unique idiosyncratic experience that she had gone through is irrelevant it's meaningless it's insignificant she's overreacting she's she's disproportionately dysregulated and labile you're in a way pathologizing by refusing to countenance and to accept other people's expressions of discomfort of hurt of of helplessness of hopelessness the first step in depression in the treatment of depression the first step in all therapies which we apply to major depressive episodes is the first step is to say I know I know that you're in a bad place I understand your pain and suffering and hurt please share them with me please complain please cry and this is the topic of of today's video when pain is silence pain endures when pain endures trauma results when trauma results dysfunction ensues when dysfunction ensues it's this short step to disintegration decompensation acting out and in some cases psychosis so we need to break this cycle at its inception by embracing the suffering of others not recoiling not feeling ashamed for them not feeling embarrassed the suppression of the expression of emotions the suppression of affect is a pathology you who had written to me that you were embarrassed to watch me complaining something's wrong with you you need help you need help because you're not in touch with your emotions you consider that that uncomfortable negative emotionality is a disgraceful thing to be hidden concealed under the carpet you sweep things under the carpet they fester they ferment horrible things come out of it okay that was the serious beat now as comic relief I posted a video a few hours ago courtesy the inimitable docas williams so I posted a video it's called the vaknin strikes again comic relief in 24 hours I'm going to move it to the playlist so hurry up and watch it there's a link in the description there's a link to yet another earlier video also by docas williams who else and that video is titled watch some vaknis genius bloopers and show stoppers co-startling mini the mug watch these two videos they will brighten up your day you will feel suddenly revived refreshed and ready to take on any challenge whatsoever as for me enough with a narcissism racket greater narcissists took over the field and now they dominate the youtube scene narcissists and psychopaths I am not enough of a narcissist to compete with these coaches and ex self-styled experts and so on I'm a failure even as a narcissist it's heartbreaking so my second career or shall we say ninth career I think my next career is going to be a stand-up comedian or in my case a sit-down comedian I can outdrew robin williams and that's perhaps because robin williams was not a Jew regrettably you know what I can outbrew it anyone of course with a notable exception of Richard granan needless to say still I think I have a pretty good sense of humor a proposed sense of humor leads it leads me to the previous video where I said that other people other people are hell and I attributed the same to Eugene Eugene O'Neill and of course this triggered a tsunami of responses vacuuming you are wrong again we caught you there was such such glee and jubilation such joy and cheer among the ranks and the file of these people it was not Eugene O'Neill who said it it was Jean-Paul Sartre yes true he was the first to say he said it in a play called no exit but Eugene O'Neill and Samuel Beckett repeated the same and I chose Eugene O'Neill on purpose and here's an intellectual challenge for you and I'll give you a few hints so that you feel good with yourself when you had solved the challenge the previous video had had contained a rant about coaches and and experts self-styled experts and so on plagiarizing my my ideas idea rising idea plagiarizing stealing my content to be more bunches so Eugene O'Neill has something to do with it I chose him on purpose because he somehow connected to plagiarism to idea reason he said some things that are somehow connected and I challenge you to find them in the meantime let me read one of his most famous quotes Eugene O'Neill to hell with the truth yes he did say that and he said it first to hell with the truth as the history of the world proves the truth has no bearing on anything it's irrelevant and immaterial as the lawyers say the lie of a pipe dream is what gives life to the whole misbegotten mad lot of us drunk or sober sounds like a good description of a shared fantasy people a proportioned fantasy people people said to me can you your videos are very abstract very wordy very difficult sometimes to get through not for the masses can you give us a metaphor an allegory a picture of this cycle of the relationship with analysis and I decided to describe how I experienced my life I experienced my life this way I am on a cat boat do you know what a cat boat is cat boat is a sailboat usually with a single sail sometimes with two but usually with a single sail and it's small it's like four two three people so I'm on a cat boat and I'm sailing I'm sailing in an ocean whose name I know not it's been forever forever and a while I don't know where whence I came I don't know where I came from and I definitely don't know where I'm going if I'm going anywhere and around the boat as I sail and the weather is patchy sometimes it's good sometimes it's bad the round boat the people drowning they surround my boat the they're flailing they they extend waterlogged hands towards me they want me to grab their hands and and they're clearly suffocating and and going up you know underwater above water the bobbing bobbing up and down and so I extend my hand and I entice them into my boat because it can get really lonely and monotonous and this is the love bombing and grooming stage where I reach out to drowning people and I entice them to the safety and the dryness and everything I have on my boat the food the shelter protection from the weather elements and this is the love bombing and grooming phase and so they climb onto my boat and they spend some time on it and that's the shared fantasy and then they vanish or they make demands and vanish that's the bargaining phase and I see them on someone else's boat and I wave goodbye and I wave hello and I wave farewell to all the good times and all the ghosted memories and all the broken dreams and I just sail on I know that sooner or later another drowning person will be drawn into my sailboat and I don't allow myself to get attached I don't bond I don't experience emotions because I know that if I do it's gonna end badly for me I'm gonna hurt to an extent that might prove dangerous intolerable as it is so I just observe I'm on my boat I share everything I share everything on the boat with this drowning person that had climbed on climbed over but I'm I'm kind of detached I'm a spectator it's a movie and yes I allow myself to dissociate and to dream and to fantasize and to hope and we have memories we create memories together and we generate an intimacy and a togetherness but I know I know it's only an illusion I know it's going to end sooner or later and I know I'm going to see her on someone else's boat and it's going to break my heart and so I just sail on and I know that I will never make it to any shore I know that I have no destination I just love the dolphins and the whales and the wind on my windswept face and in my hair and I love the salt in my wrinkles and I'm waiting I'm waiting because I know that sooner or later I will likely die this way on this boat and maybe there will be someone there to hold my corpse over the rail and onto the waves and maybe not and that's my life and that's my death and this is the story of my voyages and I hope through this allegory you capture the inner experience of the narcissist's existence a solipsistic flying Dutchman a ghost in his own body sailing a ghost ship a ghost ship which picks up drowning broken damaged people and then there's a brief moment of meeting of the souls of togetherness of hoping of dreaming and yet it is doomed and both parties know it is doomed and it is this impending imminent doom that paints everything with a tragic brush because the narcissist's life is a waste a wasteland a graveyard a misery and above all a Greek tragedy because everything is for foreordained and foretold and there is no escape character is destiny okay modeling interlude over we can move on to betrayal trauma the basic assumption of betrayal trauma is the trauma is independent of the reaction to trauma betrayal trauma was was coined and described by Jennifer Fried F R E Y D I hope I'm pronouncing her name correctly Jennifer Fried maybe she introduced the terms betrayal trauma and betrayal trauma theory long ago in 1991 she made a presentation at the Langley Porter psychiatric institute it is absolutely to the discredit of the profession that betrayal trauma theory is not much more dominant than possibly the dominant theory of trauma it's it definitely guides me in my studies and so Fred made this presentation it was titled memory repression dissociative states and other cognitive control processes involved in adult sequelae of childhood trauma and it was August 1991 and I want to quote from this talk that she gave she said I proposed that the core issue is betrayal a betrayal of trust that produces conflict between external reality and a necessary system of social dependence of course a particular event may be simultaneously a betrayal trauma and life-threatening rape is such an event perhaps most childhood traumas are such events betrayal trauma theory she says involved the psychic pain involved in detecting betrayal as in detecting a cheater is it's an evolved adaptive motivator for changing social alliances in general it is not to our survival or reproductive advantage to go back for further interaction to those who have betrayed us however if the person who has betrayed us is someone we need to continue interacting with despite the betrayal then it is not to our advantage to respond to the betrayal in the normal way what she's saying is we must distinguish two situations if we depend on the person if we can't go no contact if we have to continue to be in touch with someone because we need him then we deny the trauma we deny the betrayal because it's not to our advantage to confront him we may lose him so for example a child with mother a child betrayed by an abusive distant dead emotionally unavailable selfish narcissistic instrumentalizing parentifying objectifying mother such a child cannot confront that mother he cannot get rid of that mother he cannot go no contact with that mother he cannot even think bad things about love because he needs mother for survival and that's a perfect example of denying the trauma denying the betrayal trauma and then if you are not dependent on the person you can just say goodbye you can just walk away but many people don't have this option okay instead she says we if we are dependent on the person if we can't go no contact if we can't just walk away instead we essentially need to ignore the betrayal if the betrayed person is a child and the betrayer is a parent it is especially essential that the child does not stop behaving in such a way that he will inspire attachment for the child to withdraw from a caregiver he is dependent on would further threaten the child's life both physically and mentally thus the trauma of child abuse by the very nature of it requires that information about the abuse be blocked from mental mechanisms that control attachment and attachment behavior one does not need to posit any particular avoidance of psychic pain per se here instead what is of functional significance is the control of social behavior brilliant brilliant on multiple levels first of all she contextualized trauma within the realm of social interactions even Freud himself hinted hinted to this when he said that the super ego has relational mechanisms mechanisms related to other people and of course in object relations theory this already blossomed and flourished into a full-fledged tenant and foundational concept but what she did she recourse trauma as a social interaction and her second major contribution is to say that we cannot not it's not always we can't always acknowledge the trauma the betrayal and confront our tormentor and our abuser because there are circumstances where what we need to do in order to survive is to deny the trauma to block the trauma so as to allow us to continue the attachment and the interaction with the abuser and so there's this concept of betrayal blindness betrayal blindness is the unawareness not knowing you remember from one of my previous videos the unthought known unthought known bolas came up with this concept so betrayal blindness is the unawareness the not knowing the forgetting exhibited by people when they're betrayed it's in a way one of the ways betrayal blindness comes into being is dissociation and so again fread introduced the concept of betrayal blindness in 1996 and expanded on it in 1999 and then together with birel b i r r e l l in 2013 they developed betrayal trauma theory which i'm going to discuss in a few minutes and incorporated it in there now such blindness we can we see it for example in adultery very often the spouse or the intimate partner they have all the proof all the evidence everything they need to realize that they're being cheated on and it's very very traumatic and yet they suppress they repress they deny they dissociate they forget they ignore they like to themselves they reframe they confabulate just not to confront the trauma same in the workplace where you can't afford to lose your job and same in society victims perpetrators witnesses they all display betrayal blindness in order to preserve relationships or institutions or social systems because they depend on on these there was a very important and interesting essay by aileen zebrigan why why do they have these have these names i think they ended up in psychology because they have these names it's very traumatizing zebrigan zebrigan whatever so she wrote an essay betrayal trauma in the 2004 election and she used the the theory to give a demonstration of something called institutional betrayal institutional betrayal is when the wrongdoing the abuse is perpetrated by an institution and it's perpetrated on individuals that depend on the institution so failure to prevent a catastrophe like a pandemic a response that supports wrongdoing suppression of rights abuse infringement encroachment coercion rings a bell in today's circumstances or for example in sexual assault where the system actually pathologizes and retraumatizes revictimizes the rape victim not the rapist so these are all institutional forms of institutional betrayal and again institutional betrayal is a part of betrayal trauma theory and i refer you to platt barton and frayed 2009 smith and frayed 2011 several papers medrano martin and frayed 2011 and the core book is blind to betrayal blind to betrayal highly recommended frayed and birel 2030 i want to quote a sentence from frayed she wrote in 2008 betrayal trauma occurs when the people or institutions on which a person depends for survival significantly violate that person's trust or well-being childhood physical emotional or sexual abuse perpetrated by a caregiver are examples of betrayal trauma and then we come to betrayal trauma theory and the most the earliest paper that had dealt with this the best of my knowledge is a paper by cybers schuller and frayed uh from 2002 and there they wrote that betrayal trauma theory is a theory that predicts that the degree to which a negative event represents a betrayal by a trusted needed other will influence the way in which that event is processed and remembered now that sounds simple but it's absolutely one of the most revolutionary approaches to trauma and to the consequences of sequelae of trauma i'll read it again most slowly this time pay attention betrayal trauma theory is a theory that predicts that the degree to which a negative event represents a betrayal by a trusted needed other that degree will influence the way in which that event is processed and remembered the more you depend on someone the more you uh you you need someone financially for survival uh to raise the kids together whatever you you could be rented homeless you could be rented destitute you could lose your children you could use your job the more dependent you are on someone the less you will perceive the dead person is abusing you tormenting you taunting you violating your boundaries and throughout the 1990s and in a seminal article published in 1994 and in the book in 1996 frayed together with others like the prince glives expounded on that and so she gradually refined the concept of betrayal trauma it's in she said it is trauma perpetrated by someone with whom the victim is close to and reliant upon for support and survival and so betrayal trauma theory the first appearance of this phrase was in 1994 by of course jennifer fray its situations when people or institutions on which you rely you rely for protection you trust for resources and survival these people violate your trust well-being break your boundaries and sometimes statistically and egregiously betrayal is a core antecedent of many many mental health manifestations for example when you use betrayal theory you have perfect explanation for dissociation you know because dissociation is intended to preserve their relationship with a caregiver when you can't go no contact and the child dependent on the caregiver for support will have a higher need to dissociate traumatic experience from conscious awareness in other words you can begin to regard the false self that the child creates as a form of dissociation it's like a repository it's like the child says okay i'm exposed to abuse i'm exposed to trauma by for example mother but i can't i can't be conscious of it because if i if i become conscious of the abuse and the trauma if i develop negative emotions if i get hurt then i won't be able to attach to mommy i won't be able to bond with mommy and i won't be able to receive from mommy what i need in order to survive that's a dangerous path so exactly as melanic line suggested the child splits but in a pathological dysfunctional family environment where the mother is a dead mother the child doesn't split the mother into good and bad because there's no good there's only bed so the child cannot split the mother instead the child splits himself healthy normal children split mommy into bad mother good mother bad breast good breast that's melanic line children when they develop when they grow between the ages of six months and two years their mommy sometimes is good sometimes is frustrating sometimes is there sometimes is absent so the child learns to separate these aspects into a good mother and a bad mother and but with and and later on by the way the child annexes appropriates the bad aspects so that he can idealize mother but it's always it's always clear that there is a unitary a unitary child and a kind of disjointed mother the need to split mother is critical in development then the child who later develops into a narcissist made a wrong turn in split instead of splitting the bed and good aspects of mother he splits his own his personality fractures and fragments in a dissociative process and that gives rise to the false self he cannot split mother into good and bad because there's no good in mother so he splits himself betrayal trauma theory also integrates evolutionary processes mental moduli social cognitions developmental needs and even ethics because there's a violation of trust it's highly unethical there's a question of foundations of morality we know and it's common and accepted and orthodox thinking that empathy underlies morality it's not possible to be a moral being on an ethical being without empathy so in such situations ethics the development of morality is is challenged all people from a very early age react to injustice we have two years old reacting to injustice in numerous studies so we realize when there's a violation of the social contract we realize when our trust is betrayed we realize when our boundaries are breached there are cheat detectors and so they in the context of abusive relationships you want to escape that's your first your first urge your reflex is to run away you know flight fight etc you touch you touch a hot plate you withdraw your hand withdraw avoidance the flight response is fundamental second most fundamental is the fight response then there is the freeze response and finally the form response but in in abuse and trauma initially in healthy situations it's flight but what do you do if if escape is not a viable option if your cheater detecting mechanism leads you to to one to avoid and one to escape and one to flee from a person upon whom your your survival depends you can't you can't leave you can't go away you will die so what you do you suppress your cheater detecting mechanism for the higher goal of survival it's psychogenic amnesia it's designed to to perpetuate attachment by blocking painful experiences and we have this in in romantic betrayal early literature pre-freed you know everyone was talking about betrayal of an unspoken agreement like betrayal of trust there was an unspoken uh agreement and it was breached and this is the source of the of the pain but betrayal trauma theory suggests that all these manifest all these behaviors like domestic violence cheating and so on they involve a betrayal of of trust but when the victim has no viable exit strategy or option when the victim remains or returns to the abuser does not report the abuse underreports the severity of the abuse experiences shame and anxiety which are also mechanisms mental mechanisms intended to downplay what's happening or to repress to deny what's happening all these this is an attachment injury and it's a component that is critical in betrayal trauma theory it's not only an a betrayal of trust like in the classic literature it's a betrayal of trust in a time of need and dependence this combination is what is what destroys erodes and corrodes the victim that the the victim had been betrayed at its most vulnerable moment at her most vulnerable moment she depended she depended on her abuser she believed her abuser she relegated functions to her abuser sometimes ego functions internal functions and then the betrayal betrayal alone is bad but betrayal with trust betrayal with need betrayal with survival betrayal that's that's horrible and in the context of intimate partner violence vulnerability fear relationship relationship expectations shame low self-esteem communication issues these are all outcomes of the exposure to betrayal trauma and their barriers not only to escape but also barriers to forming new relationships you see ironically if you the if you cheat if you cheat on an abusive partner it's a sign of health it's a sign of partial health let's be precise because at least you are taking care of yourself at least you're trying to solve your wounds you're trying to self-administer some medication it's a dysfunctional solution there are much better solutions no contact is the best solution gray rock second best solution but cheating is a solution that indicates partial health what is not healthy is to deny to minimize to under report to reframe to lie to yourself about the abuse the trauma and the torture that you're experiencing i want to introduce here another concept and it's a concept of assumptive assumptive world in 1992 janef bulman b u l m a n she i mean identified he identified three assumptions one the world is benevolent two the world is meaningful three the world is worthwhile is worthy these three highly optimistic i call them malignantly optimistic assumptions put together create what he called the assumptive world the assumptive world is a core belief system individuals perceive the world as essentially good secure and fair and these assumptions are shattered by distorted social behavior anti-social behavior even a social behavior when social behavior becomes anomic seek pathologized then this world view is is at risk it's threatened maybe the world is not benevolent maybe it's not meaningful and maybe it's not worthwhile and so i'll commit suicide in the context of betrayal trauma theory when caregivers or intimate partners in close relationships when they violate you they destroy your assumptive world and and they impair your ability to reconstitute the assumptive world because if you burned once badly it's difficult after that to be naive pathologically naive malignantly optimistic it's difficult after that to trust really to trust again and so they damage you for life watch my previous video about self-stalking the damage of life and they contribute to avoidance not only of the trauma experience which which is betraying yourself but avoidance of future future possibilities to remedy the damage and this this is a part of post traumatic stress disorder or complex post traumatic stress disorder an individual who may experience little or no conscious awareness of their trauma still develop ptsd or cptsd it shows you that consciousness awareness are not everything if the trauma does not have conscious knowledge the effects of the abuse still manifest physically via somatization or psychological symptoms such as dissociation watch my video presentation to the conference about signs of narcissistic abuse many found that dissociation can be a predictor of the of developing ptsd after a trauma so dissociation proceeds actually trauma it's not true that people who have ptsd or cptsd are conscious that's one of the reasons that i keep railing railing against the over diagnosing and and self-attribution of cptsd every victim in his dog has cptsd that's not true ptsd and cptsd are very often preceded by a denial of the abuse denial of what had happened repression forgetting dissociation that's why the body is reacting and the mind is rebelling against this lie this confabulation the body is telling you hey wake up you've been traumatized and your mind is telling you listen i'm in trouble i've been badly damaged stop invalidating me stop denying what had happened face up to it dissociative identity disorder is at the end of this spectrum because some trauma victims deploy a protective response such as dissociation or repression to block awareness of the trauma to the end to to the extreme for example in childhood sexual abuse some interpersonal injuries they they create dissociative reaction that is so bad that it leads to dissociative identity disorder previously called multiple personality disorder and it's connected intimately with overwhelming trauma and or with with a very very long exposure to complex trauma this trauma can create identity diffusion or identity disruption or disturbance um your very identity is challenged by the trauma and the abuse partly because you are denying them it's like you're internalizing energy bad energy Freud used this metaphor he said that unconscious content has energy and this energy is like a volcano like like tectonic energy along fault lines and this energy finally flares up erupts and fractures you and this is multiple personality dissociative identity and in borderline borderline borderlines are on the verge of this they're like on the edge that's why they're called borderlines they're on the border between neurosis and psychosis they are so dysregulated and they lack narcissistic defenses for example they for example they do have access to their negative and positive emotions and they have empathy so borderlines don't have defenses and whenever they experience hurt and humiliation and rejection or even anticipated they fracture they're at high risk of a psychotic episode or suicide 10 percent of people diagnosed with borderline personality disorder end up committing suicide and about 30 to 40 percent self mutilate and self harm so distinct personalities sometimes are the only solution remember the splitting that i told you before that's multiple personality when the child is faced with overwhelming inexorable uncontrollable abuse and trauma the child fractures breaks apart splits in the fullest sense of the world the false self is another personality the true self is another personality what is this if not multiple personality the narcissist has dissociative identity disorder it's a private case of did he has two personalities with distinct perception cognition sense of self agency i mean they are so disparate the true self and the false self the person may experience the person with such a condition experiences gaps in the recall of everyday events or traumatic events same with the narcissist narcissists try to bridge these gaps by confabulating and so they are perceived to be liars few narcissists lie actually they don't need to their whole life is a lie the false self is false it's all a fantasy it's all a confabulation there's not a shred of truth in any of it the least of all in what the narcissist knows about himself and the continuity of his life the narcissist is discontinuous and of course narcissists try like everyone else try to somehow self soothe and self medicate with alcohol with drugs with women with with something with work work out is addictive behaviors interpersonal trauma such as betrayal trauma is intimately connected to addictive behaviors especially substances so childhood physical and sexual abuse increases the risk for substance abuse and betrayal trauma and also shifts the locus of control from internal to external once you're traumatizing abuse and especially if you can't you're not allowed to have a voice especially if you're terrified to verbalize to actualize to manifest your pain and your hurt especially if you suppress the rants at the beginning of each video especially then and you would you would tend tend to feel that you are no longer in control of your life that the control of your life your inner life and your life generally your biography has shifted from the inside to the outside starting with your abuser your abuser is in control is at the driver's seat intermittent reinforcement he decides what day is good what day is bad sometimes what moment is good what moment is bad so handing over the control to alcohol or to drugs is a natural extension when you talk to alcoholics they tell you they drink made me do it the drug made me do it i mean they they they refer to the drink or the drug like a form like a kind of abuser it's a way to cope with post-traumatic negative effect traits such as avoidance tension reduction self-medication and now we come to personality disorder and and disorders and most particularly to borderline personality disorder borderline personality disorder has there are numerous studies that show that it has links to early maltreatment and attachment difficulties in early childhood the maltreatment is emotional physical verbal or very frequently sexual abuse but by caregivers by people in whom the child plays trust to perpetuate and maintain his its survival betrayal trauma theory incorporates attachment disruptions attachment dysfunctions and damage from caregiver it's part of the of the definition and it is the only marriage i'm aware of between attachment theory and abuse theory it includes dissociation as a diagnostic criterion of borderline personality disorder and some people say that betrayal trauma theory explains the dissociation that borderlines experience because dissociation is a defense mechanism against childhood trauma high betrayal traumas have been implicated in the development of traits indicative of borderline personality disorder and it goes further and further it's very deep betrayal trauma theory is very deep it explains hyper reflection in the schizophrenia spectrum and other psychotic disorders it explains hallucinations so they they tend to suggest that childhood abuse is intimately linked to hallucinate hallucinations when you reduce betrayal trauma via talk therapy hallucinations disappear there's no need for for medication it's it's it's an amazing theory which i really advise you to to go more deeply into there seem to be intergenerational effects individual levels of dissociation are correlated with betrayal trauma experienced by the individual but also with the betrayal trauma experienced by the mother of the individual so it seems that the mother is ending her betrayal trauma if the child becomes the repository of her betrayal trauma her pain her hurt she offloads it to the child it's um it's perhaps that mothers with betrayal trauma or dissociative symptoms maybe they have more difficulty in creating a safe environment for the children maybe they are pretty supposed to becoming dead mothers they can become a safe a safe base so let's summarize this part of the video betrayal trauma says that there is a social utility in remaining unaware of trauma when the perpetrator is a caregiver and it's based on the study of social contracts it explains why and how humans are excellent at detecting betrayal and that under some circumstances detecting betrayal may be counter counterproductive to survival and there are cases where the victim is dependent on the caregiver and so survival may require that she remains unaware of the betrayal or even denies and so there are examples of childhood sexual abuse and childhood psychological abuse to substantiate this the traditional assumption in trauma research has been that fear is the core of the response to trauma afraid change that and it is not not to the merit of the credit of my profession that the revolution that she had introduced did not go further freight as early as 20 years ago in 2001 noted that traumatic events differ in degree of fear of betrayal depending on the context and characteristics of the event research suggests that the distinction between fear and betrayal is very important to the post traumatic outcomes the prince in the same year 2001 found that self-reported betrayal predicted PTSD and dissociative symptoms much more than self-reported fear so it seems that the critical element is not a fear is that the violation of trust is a betrayal and there are numerous other studies that that have confirmed this that betrayal is that the psychologically toxic substance that creates dissociation that leads to post traumatic conditions including PTSD I refer you to Kelly to Weathers to Mason to Bruno as late as 2012 and I also encourage you to go online and have a look at Frade's two-dimensional model for traumatic events it places everything neatly everywhere now a few frequently asked questions one is it necessary for the victim to be conscious of the betrayal in order to call it betrayal trauma the answer is no I will quote from the prince and frade it's an article they published in 2002 the role of betrayal in betrayal trauma theory was initially considered an implicit but central aspect of some situations if a child is being mistreated by a caregiver he or she is dependent upon this is by definition betrayal whether the child recognizes the betrayal explicitly or not indeed the memory impairment and gaps in awareness that betrayal trauma theory predicted were assumed to serve in part to ward off conscious awareness of mistreatment in order to promote the dependent child's survival goals while conscious appraisals of betrayal may be inhibited at the time of trauma and for as long as the trauma victim is dependent upon the perpetrator eventually the trauma survivor may become conscious of strong feelings of betrayal of course we we still have to study in depth the emotional perception of betrayal how betrayal is experienced the distress the subjective experience of distress and what's the connection to recovery how does it prognosticate recovery and brown and frade started to do this work in 2008 but it's far from complete next question is gender a factor do men or women experience trauma betrayal uh betrayal trauma more often it seems that men experience non-betrayal traumas more than women women experience betrayal traumas more than men this goes well with other discoveries that women attach more deeply and differently they're more empathic and so i am not sure how valid this is nowadays is the number of narcissistic women today equals the number of narcissistic men and many women have begun to develop psychopathic features psychopathic behaviors and traits many women especially and and also post traumatized women women who had gone through cp dsd are indistinguishable from border lines and so i don't know how this how valid this is this is here but goldberg and frade um in a series of articles in 2004 2006 said that men experience um betrayal trauma less and the impacts of betrayal trauma on men and women according to the prince are also different uh men men have a impact is less significant with women these gender differences probably have to do with socialization some factors of socialization even a culturation because gender roles as you recall from my previous videos gender roles are learned they're not real they're not embedded in biology 99 percent of gender role is is learned it's it's mediated and communicated via socialization agents like mother and later father so we learn these roles and we can by the way unlearn these roles or the learning process can be disrupted and then we end up being gender undifferentiated very confused about how to be a man how to be a woman how to be a be you know middle ground so it seems that socialization factors also affect how one experiences betrayal and trauma and so now there's a question about how is betrayal trauma related to the Stockholm syndrome and i want to quote from a website dedicated to frade's work Stockholm syndrome named for a 1973 bank hostage situation in sweden refers to what seems at first a paradoxical reaction to being held hostage this reaction involves positive feelings towards the captors the kidnappers the hostage takers Stockholm syndrome is a term applied to the special case of those feelings developing after a hostage takeover as when an individual or group is kidnapped and held for ransom from a theoretical perspective Stockholm syndrome reaction may possibly be understood as a special kind of betrayal trauma the unusual aspect of Stockholm syndrome compared with most betrayal trauma situations is that the strong emotional attachment occurs after the abduction and without the brief pre-existing context of an enduring caretaker or trusting relationship it is usually considered that for Stockholm syndrome to occur the captors the hostage takers must show a certain amount of kindness or at least a lack of cruelty towards the hostages from a betrayal trauma perspective the most important elements of predicting Stockholm syndrome would not be kindness per se but rather caretaking behavior on the part of the captors and an implicit or explicit belief on the part of the victims that survival depends upon the hostage takers and so the victims would have to experience the captors the hostage takers is a source of caretaking and is necessary for survival in order to develop the emotional attachment necessary to create a betrayal trauma once the captors are experienced as necessary caretakers a process much like that in infancy could occur such that the victims have a good reason for attaching to the hostage takers and thus eliciting caretaking behaviors at that point at that point a certain amount of reality distortion might be beneficial to the victims such that seeing the captors in a positive light might support an adaptive response to the victim's predicament this theoretical possibility leads to an empirical prediction that remains to be tested anecdotal support for the premise that features of dependence and survival are at the heart of the development of Stockholm syndrome can be found in an FBI online article about the Stockholm syndrome and I'm quoting from that article by the FBI in cases where Stockholm syndrome has occurred the captive is in a situation where the captor has stripped nearly all forms of independence and gained control of the victim's life as well as basic needs for survival some experts say that the hostage regresses to perhaps a state of infancy the captive must cry for food remain silent and exist in an extreme state of dependence like a baby in contrast the perpetrator serves as a mother figure protecting her child from threatening outside world including law enforcement's deadly weapons the victim then begins struggle for survival both relying on and identifying with the captor I also refer you to an article by Fabrik or Mano Vecchi and Van Hasselt 2007 article which elaborates upon it a lot it is important to note I'm continuing from the website it is important to note that Stockholm syndrome is rare whereas betrayal trauma events and reactions are unfortunately fairly common nonetheless Stockholm syndrome might prove to be a useful extreme boundary condition for investigation of betrayal trauma theory while at the same time betrayal trauma theory might provide useful insight into behavior of hostages that is otherwise considered paradoxical I would add to this that trauma bonding is a middle case like in the extreme when you're really taken by kidnappers with guns you might develop Stockholm syndrome but when you are kept hostage because you are dependent on an abuser an egregious abuser even just a verbal abuser physical abuser psychological abuser sexual abuser when you are dependent when you can't walk away when you can't go no contact for a variety of reasons there's a middle ground and that's trauma bonding it also incorporates betrayal trauma because in trauma bonding you're denying the negative aspects of abuse torment torture teasing withholding ignoring humiliating rejecting and degrading you you're denying all this and you're denying all this so that you are able to continue to attach and bond with the source of everything that you need or the things that you need so that's a middle ground situation next question are demands for silence a factor in not knowing about betrayal so there are implicit motivations for not knowing we describe them yeah a person is dependent on on the abuser so he denies the abuse but the victim may have other reasons for not knowing for silencing for repressing for denying for example the perpetrator might demand silence might isolate the victim from his social safety net or family or friends might establish a rule that your dirty laundry is made only in house you never air the dirty laundry a rule of silence and others may collaborate and collude in that because of discomfort and embarrassment family society demands for silence and i refer you to to work by welteries in 1999 demands for silence mainly to a complete failure to even discuss an experience to even mention it you know it's uncomfortable it's shameful it's disgraceful i don't want to embarrass anyone i don't want to discomfort anyone so i'm not going to talk about this experiences that have never been shared by anyone else may have a different internal structure than shared experiences shareability and social support are critical in healing curing reframing and transforming traumatic experiences towards closure i want to link betrayal trauma to a few other disciplines and modalities let's start with attachment theory john baulby the father grandfather and great grandfather attachment theory in the objects relation school john baulby in 1969 identified a link between attachment processes and dissociative psychopathology he proceeded vacuuming by quite a while so he said that some attachment processes may lead to dissociation he referred to internal representations as internal working models i call them internal objects actually the current usage is internal objects so internal working models where one can discern which internal content is dominant which internal content requires attention and which can be segregated into unconscious awareness it's like there's a it's like a male sorting facility before the age of trauma where this this the male is sorted to be taken care i mean express mail uh you know surface mail and to the garbage mail like mail in balance and once the attachment system is activated the internal working model is identified as a guide to the formation of attachment behavior and to the appraisal of attachment emotions in the self any others there's a theory of mind what makes other think uh tick are they attached to me are they showing signs of attachment baulby emphasizes that traumatizing experience experiences especially with one's caregiver these are likely to result in negative impacts on a child's attachment security stress coping strategies and even sense of self securely organized internal working model the evidence indicates the secure attachment is associated with positive appraisal of one's own attachment emotions and expectations that a child requests will be experienced as significant and legitimate by a caregiver compare this to an insecurely attached or insecurely organized internal working model avoidance resistant this is associated with a negative appraisal of attachment emotions with the expectation that one's requests for attention and attachment will be rebuffed will be received as a nuisance or an intrusion by the caregiver emotionally unavailable mother dead mother and then there's a disorganized internal working model it's very common in borderline and even in narcissism this is linked to unresolved traumas and losses experienced by the caregiver and the effect they had on the subsequent attachment style of the offspring main and Hesse in 1990 they theorized that within betrayal trauma theory disorganized attachment develops when the caregiver is both a source of the child's solution and a source of the child's fear what do you do when the same person is supposed to provide you with safety and security and daring and exploratory grandiosity and love the same person and this and that very person is the source of your nightmares the waking nightmare the surrealistic dreamscape what do you do in such case you approach avoid what and this form of retouchment is leads to altered consciousness in this altered consciousness what we call dissociation it's a disruption of conscious memory identity perception of one's immediate environment Freud her self and her colleagues in 2007 she identified knowledge isolation the extent to which information is hidden from awareness boluthers and thought known is a private case dissociation during time of extreme stress or trauma we have we have conclusively demonstrated using functional magnetic resonance imaging that when you dissociate in extreme stress or trauma people have been exposed for example the most horrifying real-life videos and photos and we saw how the brain the neural mechanisms the brain changes the functioning changes and this evidence the childhood trauma is a meteorological factor is a cause of dissociation and has massive impacts on on several areas of the brain prefrontal cortex hippocampus hippocampus amygdala so the level of betrayal trauma experience high moderate law they influence the degree of dissociation when you have low betrayal trauma it's um it's uh sometimes doesn't create dissociation but low betrayal trauma doesn't include strong elements of violations of trust it seems again that the trust is the critical problem and we have empirical evidence that exposure to high betrayal trauma where there's a massive violation of trust is linked to increased level of dissociation impaired memory of trauma related words as compared to low dissociation trauma stressor related disorders dissociation in personal personality disorders founded on dissociation which emanate from dissociation like borderline like narcissism all of them are connected to betrayal trauma dissociation during trauma affects individuals and causes them to compartmentalize the traumatic experience from conscious awareness dissociation is an adaptive process it's aimed to maintain self-preservation it's a protection against psychological pain and if we look at the development of psychopathology and tie it into attachment theory this dissociation is the core feature it's the core feature in most most I would say psychiatric disorders association can occur and even to the point where there's alternative personality state or self-state as we have in borderline personality disorder and dissociative identity disorder and so models of attachment-based dissociative disorders trauma related disorders they all involve betrayal trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder diagnostic groups personality disorders trauma and stress related disorder dissociative disorder even schizophrenia and psychotic disorders even substance abuse disorders addiction all are unified in the mechanism in the transmission vector trauma abuse dissociation onwards to the pathology now there's something called betrayal trauma inventory bti and it assesses betrayal trauma in patients it measures all kinds of physical emotional sexual abuse in childhood in other world all kinds of traumas and it's essentially behavior behavioral it deals with behaviors like did someone hold your hand your head underwater or try to drown you before you were at the age of 16 I'm not kidding you it's one of the questions and so you see how many yes how many yeses there are you calculate the age the relationship the severity of the injuries memory of the events and it takes about 45 minutes and coupled with or founded upon the abuse and perpetration inventory api you get a pretty clear picture of any trauma or traumatic landscape before the age of 16 the brief betrayal trauma survey is adopted from the bti it includes only 11 items for traumatic experiences such as sexual physical emotional abuse and it include it there's a question if the person was someone close to them on an interpersonal level and it looks at events prior to the age of 18 then there is the institutional betrayal questionnaire ibq created by smith and frayd in 2011 it's even shorter it is a 10 item questionnaire it assesses into institutional betrayal in the context of sexual assault on college campus for example similar and identifies the level of involvement of the institution in the unwanted experience and in the associated experiences for example normalizing totally pathological conditions or creating environments which facilitate abuse and breach of rights covering covering covering up incidents and failed policies this is all i am sure very very relevant during this pandemic and finally let's talk about what can be done treatment for betrayal trauma is very new and no one is quite sure what to do there's not enough evidence-based treatment and betrayal trauma is a very wide concept that applies to numerous pathologies which no one is quite sure how much they have in common so there's an article by jennifer gourmetz in 2016 suggested that relational cultural therapy relational cultural therapy may be the best treatment for betrayal trauma it's a therapy which was established by jen miller it's a feminist therapy honestly so i don't advise men to take it and the therapist focuses on relational disconnections that the client experiences so there's no the therapy doesn't deal with symptoms it deals with disruptions in relationships it works through decontextualizing the betrayal trauma separating the self-decision making from the trauma and it's an interesting approach because it introduces the social and cultural aspect and it implies that what we experience as symptoms are actually merely the way we experience disruptions in meaningful relationships again we are coming to sapolsky's and others point of view the self is the intersection of relationships take away of the relationships there's nothing left even in pathological narcissism there's a hive mind even there even the false self is the intersection of the gaze of multiple others it is this intersection that gives rise to a human being in the full sense of the world when it's disrupted you get a narcissist you get a psychopath but even then they're not they're not islands the narcissists cannot survive without narcissistic supply which happens to come from other people the psychopath cannot achieve goals it's goal oriented cannot achieve his goals act on his impulses be defined if there's no one to define and no one to take from we are social creatures zoned political thank you Plato thank you always thought it is and if any of you succeeds to solve the riddle of why I had chosen to attribute this sentence to Eugene O'Neill and not to each its originator Jean Paul Saper please let me know I'll be delighted one of you came close by me don't let anyone traumatize you by betraying your trust watch my video about who to trust and when to trust it's a good introduction