Editor’s note: Resource Perspectives features articles written by members of Lovefraud’s Professional Resources Guide.
Rebecca Potter works as a licensed mental health counselor in West Palm Beach, Florida. She can be reached at: tlc211@gmail.com.
Surviving betrayal and trauma
By Rebecca Potter
Rebecca Potter profile in the Lovefraud Professional Resources Guide
I recently attended a workshop by Dr. Patrick Carnes, Ph.D., author of The Betrayal Bond. I was shocked by the denial of the psychological community regarding the trauma experienced by survivors of emotional and sexual trauma. I took my worn and used copy of The Betrayal Bond to Dr. Carnes for his signature. He signed my copy and asked, “Why used?”
Dr. Carnes’ work has helped me surface from the web of pain and confusion developed while trying to safely escape an emotionally, verbally, financially abusive husband. When I left, I was further damaged by my exposure to the legal system and Family Court. There was no place that I could go to receive treatment, attorneys took advantage of me, insurance companies lied and hid fraud that they had committed with my former mate. Need Dr. Carnes ask why my copy was used and battered, somewhat like me?
Just get over it and move on
This was the attitude I faced when I tried to find professional legal help. The pain in my body was so real, yet invisible to anyone else. I couldn’t explain the terror that I felt when I had to sit in the same room with my former husband: The intense emotion I felt when he told the courtroom lies and the court believed those lies without evidence. The permission that the Court gave to him, which allowed him to further abuse me and how I was ignored and told, “Just get over it and move on.”
The impact of sexual addiction induced trauma
The field of treatment and intervention for disorders related to compulsive sexual behavior and sexual addiction is a new emerging field. Research has focused on the sexual addict, creating models for diagnosis and treatment, while the partners of sex addicts have been neglected and ignored.
Current clinical treatment models prefer to address the partner of a sex addict as a codependent or co-addict, which basically implies that the partner has their own disease termed: co-addiction or codependency. Codependency is in a category of a process addiction—an addiction to certain mood-altering behaviors, such as a tendency to behave in overly passive or excessively care-taking ways that negatively impact one’s relationships and quality of life. Other process addictions include: gambling, food, shopping, spending and hoarding.
The clinical needs of partners of sexual addicts continue to be ignored, minimized, obscured and gravely misunderstood. Partners actually often experience clinically significant sex addiction induced trauma. These traumatic symptoms are a result from the direct impact of sex addiction:
- chronic patterns of sexual acting out
- relational perpetration
- emotional abuse
- deception
- betrayal
- psychological manipulation
Traditional therapists continue to ignore the symptoms of trauma. These partners often present with symptoms that match rape trauma syndrome and post traumatic stress disorder. Sex addiction-induced trauma is a highly specific type of trauma that involves symptoms of fear and panic of potential disease and contamination, fear of child safety and potential of child molestation, social isolation, embarrassment, shame, guilt and intense relational rupture and attachment injuries.
Neglecting the treatment of trauma and focusing instead on co-addiction and codependency are inadequate and clinically contra-indicated, wrought with moral and ethical challenges. Partners and spouses of sex addicts are a profoundly and clinically traumatized population requiring informed care and ethical treatment.
Recovery
I know, because I experienced similar trauma. Recovery has been a long road. I still experience flashbacks and have adrenal fatigue when my symptoms are triggered. I have started women’s and men’s relationship recovery groups. We meet each week to support each other with the withdrawal of leaving a chaotic relationship and help each other process the deep brain injuries from the exploitation and trauma.
I also suggest that survivors participate in online support groups if they are not able to find a trauma therapist in their area. One online group : www.adultchildrenofalcholics.org. There are phone meetings daily. The websites will list the phone meetings. The pain that you are experiencing is real and must be processed with those who understand trauma.
I look at my marriage as an educational process that I needed to experience to assist others in healing. Yes, my ex will marry others and commit the same abuse. There will be many women and children harmed by his manipulation.
Katy,
yes, your story does remind me of mine, though I think you suffered far worse, physically.
That is a huge part of it: control. This behavior runs in my family. They have told me stories about their parents and grandparents which mirror what they did to me.
The sinister aspect is how they hide it in the guise of love.
There are other things they did. My mom was always “worried” just like ex-spath was. They both like to sew seeds of all the possible terrible things that could happen to a person. They wanted to sew fear so that I would become fearful. And pretending to be poor was another thing they have in common. Also, they liked to keep me dependent by doing things for me instead of teaching me how to do them myself. My mother never let us cook or even clean the house. We lived like invalids, reading books because we weren’t allowed to go anywhere.
Skylar
Ah. The differences.
No love for me, not even pretend. I was constantly told I was the one they didn’t want. Severe neglect. Lots of beatings. I was the responsible child. I cooked for the family, even cooking the morning oatmeal when I was four. I could count so I knew how many cups of water/oatmeal and I stood on a wooden stool and stirred it. I cleaned the house. I was cinderella. I used to laugh and complain about that, how could I be cinderella, but no one but me cleaned. we lived in utter filth and I couldn’t stand it. i am NOT ocd neat freak but admit that a clean house makes me feel like a princess.
But your spath and how personable he was and how he didn’t get angry, he made friends first, made them need him, and then cut their legs out – that’s out of my spaths playbook.
Skylar & Katy ~ Your stories are so important to me. My grandchild was about to live “your lives”. When I saw what was happening to him, I could not let it go on. If ever I doubt if all the legal battles, thousands and thousands of dollars and emotional trauma is worth it, you are my answer. I am so grateful.
No child deserves the kind of treatment you went through. It NEVER was your fault, it NEVER should have happened.
I have spent my adult life TRYING to do whatever I could to fight child abuse and neglect. Then it turned up right in my own family, my own daughter. Sometimes, I think it is a lost cause, but then I meet people like you, that NEVER gave up.
Thank you
Katy,
that’s their motto: keep your friends close and your enemies closer. That’s what the spath neighbor woman told me. She was in on the con to see me dead and she couldn’t help doing a tell.
The thing that I don’t get though, is: how can someone you don’t even know become your enemy? And why would a person who loves you and takes care of you be considered an enemy? There is no logic in that yet they like to consider themselves as so logical.
Milo,
Kudos to you for caring and fighting for kids. So much abuse goes on under the radar. You’d never know it because they make sure it’s invisible. Even I didn’t know how much abuse I had been through. It seemed normal.
MiLO
I too am a person who does not close her eyes to child abuse. I KNOW that if someone notices, the abuser changes their behavior. Many times abuse is a WHIM, and if the moment passes without ability to give in to the whim, then so much the better for the child.
I know the abuse is not my fault. I knew it as a child. It was illogical. I did not do what I was beaten for. And that stereotypical “if i got it wrong, then this beating is for what I didn’t catch you doing” was a joke seen on tv but used to justify that such beating were acceptable.
I never looked for anyone to rescue me. Never expected it. So I was never resentful that it didn’t happen. I was victimized but I never saw myself as pitiful. It just was. So when I grew up, I just saw my adulthood as my opportunity to do what I wanted in my life. It is pure irony that I married a man who did to me what I thought I escaped. I think that was my attraction to him, he couldn’t stand someone who thought herself beyond control and thus a challenge to him. My husband thinks himself a “winner”. That very attitude makes me see him as a LOSER and he HATES me for it. The reasons he hates me… well they make me smile.
Dear Mags,
I think the answer to your question about “is she one too?” is “there is a good chance, yes!” It is NOT uncommon for a psychopath or someone high in Psychopathic traits to hook up with another someone who is also high in the traits, or even full blown, and they USE EACH OTHER, and the one who “loses” in that fight will present themselves to the NEXT VICTIM as a “victim” of a psychopath or cheat….
The point is that he will NOT TREAT HER WELL FOR VERY LONG, and he will treat her in the end just as he does you. They are not in any stable relationship for long….he will swindle from her parents or use her for kinky sex of whatever, but their realtionship won’t be happy for very long.
My advice is to NOT HAVE ANYTHING TO DO WITH EITHER OF THEM. NO CONTACT. NONE! ZIP! ZERO! NADA! ZILCH!!!! It will drive him crazy, he loves having two women fighting over him. Think how special that makes him feel.
I used to tell my S-ex that he should send my parents a thank you note because they did such a great job of prepping me for him. My father was a S – he tried to kill me when I was 8. My mother was a malignant N, but pretty well into S territory herself. The beatings were bad, but it was the emotional abuse that really took their toll. But, still I plodded on, trying to please the unpleasable.
And so I moved on from my parents to disastrous personal relationships and work relationships. Tolerating unimaginable crap because I was conditioned not to fight back, to think of others before myself, indeed, to devalue myself. I kept it up until I let the S blow through my life like a typhoon.
After S I realized that I had to make some huge changes in my life. The first thing I did was discover this site. Among the suggested books was Patrick Carnes’ “Betrayal Bond.” My problem with BB was that I couldn’t wrap my mind around how I kept getting involved with controlling peop0le like the S both personally and professionally. And, plain and simple, a relationship with an S is all about control.
The I discovered Dan Neuharth’s “If You Had Controlling Parents.” That book was the lightbulb that went off over my head. He discusses all the types of control parents can utilize to control a child and gives great case study examples. When I went back and reread BB, it made perfect sense to me.
I’m now a lot more attuned to controlling personalities. I’ve learned that when I encounter one, I need to remove myself, not waste time to figure out what type of cluster B he is. I need to move on to protect myself.
A lot of bloggers on this site came from abusive controlling families. I recommend these two books be read – in my opinion “Controlling Parents” first, so that you can begin to understand how you end up controlled, then BB, so that you can understand how you keep ending up with this kind of personality.
Matt, woops, please redo your post. It fell off the page.
And please tell me what is a S versus a malignant S. Isn’t an S an S?
My mother tried to kill me when I was 15.
I want to hear your story.
SK
Mattguyver ~! 🙂
Hey, Hens. How’s life treating you these days?
superkid10:
My internet is going up and down tonight — more superior service brought to you courtesy of Verizon. I think the post is intact now.
That should have been malignant N. As I learned here, all Ss are Ns, but all Ns are not Ss. My mother exhibits some of the classic traits of a borderline, but my psychiatrist, based on what he knows about her (granted he can’t give a real diagnosis because she isn’t in the room), but he thinks she skates just shy of S territory. In any case, while she beat the crap out of me on an almost daily basis – belts, electric cords, fists, whatever was handy, my father is the one who tried to kill me by drowning me when I was 8. To hear him tell it, he was just horsing around. Right. Maybe I should try holding him under water until he blacks out and he can see what horsing around feels like.