Betrayal; Why You Can't Just Get Over It

In this episode, Life Coach Lisa A. Romano explains why there are just some things that happen within the context of a relationship that you just can't get over. The brain is not designed to forget. It is designed to remember and specifically, painful events. Anyone who suggests you should just get over it does not understand trauma. Lisa breaks down 3 success mindset tips to help you figure out what to do when you can't seem to shake the past.

Transcript

Welcome to the Breakdown to Breakthrough podcast.

My name is Lisa A.

Romano.

I am a life coach,

Bestselling author,

YouTube vlogger,

Meditation teacher,

And expert in the field of codependency and narcissistic abuse.

I am a believer in the power of an organized mind.

My aim is to help people learn what it means to live above the veil of consciousness rather than living a reactive life.

May your heart feel blessed,

Your mind feel expanded,

And your spirit find hope as you spend time with me here at the Breakdown to Breakthrough podcast.

So today we're talking about what it means to move beyond betrayal and how to deal with people who tell us that we're not forgetting on purpose or we should just get over the past or we are deliberately throwing our relationship away because we can't get over what was done I mean to address people who insinuate that you're doing something wrong if you can't let go and these are people who don't understand trauma.

These are people that don't understand the mind.

These are people that have absolutely zero understanding of neuroscience.

Now the brain is designed to remember.

The brain is not designed to forget.

Your brain is incredibly powerful and it was designed to be this amazing warehouse of information.

And science is.

.

.

Well,

Researchers have discovered that the brain has the capacity to hold far more information than we ever once realized.

When something happens to you in the external world that is painful,

Your brain is supposed to remember that.

Now why would it be difficult for you to let go of someone who cheated on you or let go of the memory of that experience?

Why would it be difficult for you to let go of someone's lying to you in the past,

You caught your partner lying to you and you're in couples therapy or you're having a discussion and they're saying,

Well,

You just have to get over that.

You have to forgive me and move on.

Why can't you just forget it and let go?

To me,

This is such a nonsensical conversation and maybe it's just because my mind is just very analytical.

It makes no sense.

It's like saying,

Why does water run downhill?

Because of gravity and water always seeks its own level.

When it comes to not forgetting,

It means that there was pain there and that's exactly what your mind is supposed to remember.

Why?

If you think about our very early ancestors,

Being afraid kept them safe.

Feeling where they heard the saber tooth tiger kept them safe.

Remembering where the sharp rocks were kept them safe.

Your brain is designed to remember the things in your life that hijack your ability to feel safe,

To feel content and to trust.

And anything that happens in your experience that disrupts your ability to have faith means that it has disrupted your ability to feel safe and your brain's priority is to keep you safe.

So if someone cheats on you and you're having a difficult time letting it go and moving beyond it,

It's because this experience has caused your brain to feel as if this person is not someone that you can trust.

And if you can't trust this person,

Then you can't get into a state of homeostasis.

You can't move forward.

You can't have a life that is full of meaning,

That is full of purpose because in order to have a life that's full of purpose,

In order for you to experience success and abundance in your life,

Then this first order of business,

The need to feel safe must be satisfied.

That is why it is so difficult for us who are in toxic relationships to experience consistent abundance at work or to have consistent health to feel prosperous because there is this experience of a relationship that's making us feel very unsafe and our body goes where our mind goes.

So if someone has betrayed you,

How do you focus on your career?

If you love this person and you have children with this person and this person has access to your bank account,

This person has access to your credit card,

You have a summer house somewhere let's say,

They have the keys,

How do you go to work and focus on a project or how do you create a business when the person that you're sharing your life with is someone that you can't trust?

Your body will go where your mind goes.

Your mind is designed to pay attention to situations that are painful because it wants you to deal with it.

It wants you to put this to bed,

Pardon the pun.

It wants you to take care of this,

Why?

So that you can move forward,

That you can feel faithful in your life,

So that you can feel abundant in your life.

So you don't have to keep looking over your shoulder.

So you don't have to sleep with one eye open.

Now people who tell you that you should just get over it,

I want you to understand that these are people that don't understand the brain.

You need to understand that your brain is designed to remember and there's nothing wrong with that.

What we're trying to do is the evolution is taking place in the mental field,

In the emotional field,

In the mindscape.

We're having a revolution,

If you will,

Of consciousness.

We're learning how to think about the way that we feel,

Which is different.

Mammals,

German shepherds,

Animals in general,

They react to instincts.

Human beings have instincts and many of us still react to instincts.

We get angry,

We scream.

We get angry,

We kick.

We get angry,

We pout.

We're not thinking about our emotions.

We're instantly responding or reacting to them and it just doesn't have to be that way.

Now if you're living below the veil of consciousness too,

And I'm a firm believer that the first part of our life is imitation and the second part of our life,

After we have this breakthrough spiritual awakening moment or series of them,

Becomes a life of inspiration,

Becomes a life of creation.

That's where I'm living now,

At least I think so.

I feel like I am living a very purposeful,

Very intent-filled and very intentional life,

A life of creation,

And I absolutely love it.

Whereas the first part of my life,

I felt depressed,

I felt repressed,

I felt suppressed,

And I was.

What I didn't know was that the conditioning was in my mind,

That the repetition,

Observation,

And consistency,

My parents who were very wounded people themselves,

Conditioned me to believe that I wasn't good enough,

Conditioned me to believe that love was conditional,

Conditioned me to believe that I had to prove my worth to other people.

And this of course led to suppression because if I now have to be hypervigilant and I'm focusing on you and your needs,

I cannot allow my needs to come to the surface and I cannot meet them.

So I cannot develop a healthy sense of self.

I cannot develop self-esteem.

I cannot develop self-value and I cannot bring to the world my innate gifts because I am so suppressed.

I have these barriers in my mind that are the result of mental conditioning.

I have subconscious limits,

I have limitations,

And I'm not aware that these can be shifted,

That I can outgrow these limitations.

I'm not even aware of it.

And that's one of the reasons I love working in this space with people who have a desire to break through.

They want to have a success and abundance mindset,

But they have this childhood programming issue and it's preventing them from really moving forward.

So you have adult children of alcoholics who marry alcoholics,

Or you have adult children of alcoholics who end up marrying people who are narcissistic and very irresponsible,

Or you have adult children of alcoholics that have control issues.

They can't have fun.

They can't let go because until we can acknowledge how we feel,

We can't fix it.

And so you might be somebody who is stuck in a toxic relationship,

Who has been betrayed and who is consistently gaslit to believe that you're just not getting over it,

You're just not trying hard enough.

So it's important A,

To recognize that if you're talking to someone who is living below the veil of consciousness,

You are talking to someone that uses rationalizations and justifications basically to justify their limitations.

And they want you to believe what they believe.

And so if they can't accept that they're wrong and they can't change and they're not willing to change and they don't know how to take accountability,

Well then that person's rationale is you should just get over it because they don't know how to level up.

They don't have a success mindset.

They're just,

This is status quo and I hurt you.

I totaled the car and so I drink and so I get crazy sometimes and I embarrassed you.

So what?

Get over my drinking.

That person with that mindset doesn't have a success mindset.

This person doesn't have,

Is probably not in the personal growth development stage of their life.

They're probably not into personal development.

And so you have to accept that.

You have to see for what it is.

If you are on the other hand or someone who is more success mindsetted,

Mindset,

Or has a more of a success mindset,

If you are someone who has a burning desire to grow and to develop the self,

Then your core values aren't in alignment.

So of course someone who has an irrational mindset is going to appear irrational to you and your logic is going to be irrational to them.

They'll seem irrational to you and you'll seem irrational to them.

And that's where a lot of people get stuck.

It's like,

Well,

Who's rationale is going to win out?

Ultimately,

I think that we have to all get to a place where we accept how we feel.

So the first thing is that you want to understand that someone is telling you to get over it,

Who has wounded you and betrayed you,

Who's living below the veil of consciousness,

Is coming from a place that is not one of accountability.

You have to see that.

So you want to start understanding that this person's entitled to their feelings.

But the second part of it is you have to start trusting yourself.

We always have to get to a point of self-acceptance.

And that's really a tough place to be if you're someone who struggles with validation.

If you struggle with putting yourself first,

If you've lived a life of servitude and you're frustrated by it,

But you still don't know how to get in touch with the self,

This is going to be a really tough step for you to accept how you feel.

But it has to be the starting point.

No captain of any ship can get from point A to point B unless they first understand where they are.

And so before you can navigate to land of forgiveness,

To the land of letting go,

You first have to accept where you are.

So that's a really important part.

So that means that you say to yourself,

I'm not happy.

This is very troubling for me.

And you also want to recognize that your feelings are one part of the equation.

But another part of this equation is how this person that betrayed you responds to the betrayal.

So you take your feelings and we just put it on the shelf.

And then what we do is we think more rationally and logically about how this person responded to your experience of their betrayal.

People who are highly dysfunctional are angry at you when you get angry at them for cheating on you.

So people who are highly dysfunctional,

Living below the veil of consciousness,

Get mad at you when they do something wrong,

When they cross your boundaries.

They're mad at you for being mad at them because they crossed a boundary.

It's completely irrational.

But many of us get stuck right there in relationships.

And so we're surviving relationships,

But we're really not thriving in relationships.

And we as human beings in this day and age,

We have the right to thrive.

Maybe our mothers didn't have that right or they always had that right,

But maybe they didn't feel like they had that right.

Our grandmothers,

Our great-grandmothers might have not felt like they had that right.

And this goes for men too,

Because after many,

Many years of coaching,

I'm actually coaching as many men as I coach women.

And I think that speaks a lot to what's happening in our society,

That men are learning that they have a voice too,

That they experienced narcissistic abuse by their partners and they have a right to work this out too.

They have alcoholics as mothers,

Alcoholics as fathers,

Narcissistic mothers and fathers.

And yes,

The first part of their life,

They attract their mother,

They attract their father,

And they have just as many issues as women and they have just as much as a right as a woman to work this out as well.

And I think that's fantastic.

So remember,

The second part of this is acknowledging how you feel,

Coming into alignment with how you feel,

Acknowledging it aside from what other people say and specifically the person who has hurt you.

The second part of it is you want to level up your consciousness and you want to start really collecting data and intel about how this person responds to the way that you respond to the betrayal.

If you are dealing with someone who consistently manipulates you,

Consistently minimizes you,

And really just expects that you should just forget it.

In other words,

Like,

Yeah,

I did all of these terrible things,

But I said,

I'm sorry.

Now it's up to you to just forget it.

That to me doesn't really speak to solving the issue.

You have to decide,

Well,

Number one,

Does this person see you?

Can this person hear you?

Does this person take accountability or do they just tie everything up in the bow and throw it in your lap and say,

Well,

Now it's up to you to just forget it.

Number one,

Neurologically,

It's just impossible.

You can't forget when someone hurts you.

Your brain is designed to remember.

What we want to do is we want to validate the experience of being hurt and recognize that the answer is not to forget.

Now if you want to forgive this person,

You can forgive this person and never talk to them again.

You can forgive this person and give them another chance,

But you're still not going to forget it.

You can make a conscious choice to not bring it up in the relationship moving forward if,

In my opinion,

This person is 100% committed to never doing that thing again and throughout this process because they're the person that broke the marital contract.

They're the person that hurt the partnership.

They're the person that brought distrust into the relationship,

Not you.

And this person has to be humble enough to make sure that they're doing everything that they can to prove to you that they're sorry and they love you so much and they're so committed to you that they will do whatever it takes to convince you that they're committed to you and it will never happen again.

Now if that happens,

If that person who betrayed you is able to get there,

By all means,

You might want to move forward and you might be able to regulate your desire to throw it up in their face and you might decide not to as long as this person is actually doing their work,

That's fine.

But there's also another option.

There are people out there that once they get betrayed,

They're done.

You know,

I happen to be one of those people and I know that there are therapists that say that relationships can actually sustain betrayal and that's fine.

I don't think I'm one of those people.

If I put 100% of myself behind someone and that person betrays me,

Then I can't go back.

I just can't go back because in order for me to be myself in a relationship,

I'm the kind of person I want to give 100% and I don't want to feel like I have to sleep with one eye open.

I don't want to have negative thoughts about my partner.

I'm done with that.

I've been there.

I'm not doing that.

I want to live in the now.

I want to live in the flow.

I want to live an empowered life.

I want to attract abundance in my life on all levels and abundance isn't just money by the way.

Abundance is contentment.

Abundance is doing what you love.

Abundance is creation.

Abundance is living by my standards and not someone else's standards and feeling good about where I am and not judging myself for where I've been,

Where I am and not saying that,

Oh,

Just because I don't,

I'm not where I want to be,

I'm not good enough.

No,

I don't want to live in that vibration anymore.

And so for me,

If someone betrays me to that level,

I've trusted you that much.

No,

I'm just one of those people that I will say namaste and I will walk away.

I won't hate you.

I will not hate you.

I'm not there anymore.

I might've hated you 30 years ago,

But not anymore.

The person I am today is just like,

Okay,

It's obvious.

We're not in the same vibrational plane anymore.

We're not an energetic vibrational match and that's okay and I wish you well.

So I just wanted to create a session and offer some of these ideas for those of you who are wondering,

Is it me?

Is it me that I just can't let go of this betrayal because my partner says it is?

My therapist says that I need to just let go.

My therapist says that I should just forget it.

This is someone who doesn't understand that it's impossible to forget.

Moving forward,

You can manage the emotions that get triggered when you think about the memory.

You can manage that.

You can manage and regulate whether or not you speak about the past with your partner or whether you talk to your friends about or a trusted friend,

A conscious friend,

A friend who would actually help you or a therapist or a coach.

You can regulate who you speak to.

You can regulate your desire to want to punish your partner.

You can get past that,

But I don't think it's realistic for anyone to expect you to forget anything because that's just not what the brain is designed to do.

On the path to personal development,

On the path to developing a more successful mindset or success mindset,

It's about emotional regulation.

It's about emotional intelligence.

It's about self-acceptance.

It's about self-awareness.

It's about humility.

It's about empathy for the self as well as other people.

It's about accepting who you are and what you need and what you want and also acknowledging when it's time to be done,

When you've outgrown a relationship that someone else insists or suggests that you don't have a right to outgrow.

I think we've got to move beyond that.

If we are really going to live empowered lives,

We need to give ourselves permission to feel what we feel in spite of what other people feel and in spite of how other people want us to feel.

I'm not talking about moving into the narcissistic pool.

I'm talking about coming into alignment with our truth.

Oftentimes if we're dealing with problematic personalities controlling personalities,

Coercive control,

We're dealing with people who will do absolutely anything to talk us out of what we feel.

That's what I'm talking about.

If you've come from a home where you have grown up feeling invisible and you never had a right to feel what you're feeling,

That's the person I'm speaking to.

At the end of the day,

We all come here to manifest a healthy dose of self-esteem,

A healthy dose of self-love,

Self-accountability,

Self-awareness so that we can live fulfilled,

Purposeful lives.

This session has been directed towards people who have generally been conditioned to dishonor themselves,

Who have felt invisible and who may have experienced coercive control and manipulation as a child as well as an adult,

And who is dealing with people who betray them and who have done things to them to cause them to distrust and who are now being told that they should just get over it.

It's impossible to just get over it.

It's impossible to forget.

Like I said earlier,

You can learn to move forward and navigate painful emotions when you have a memory,

But forgetting is just not all that possible.

Forgiveness,

Yes,

You can forgive,

But you may not be able to forget,

And that's okay.

Don't put that pressure on you.

If you decide to forgive,

Dear one,

My suggestion is to make sure that the person that you are forgiving is sincere and is willing to and is capable to change the behavior that caused you to distrust them in the first place.

Dear one,

You are enough and you've come to live an abundant life,

And I pray that you never settle for anything less.

Goodbye for now.

Reviews

I wish there were 10 stars for this talk! This spoke directly to my heart and the trauma I am facing now in a relationship where he hid his dope addiction from me for 7 years! And as you say, they attack you for not moving on and accepting it. I feel devastated right now that our relationship of 10+ years is coming to an end.😭but I also know that we couldn't carry on like this. Our whole relationship was based on a lie and that is not ok!

Perfect timing. My partner’s therapist has told him that forgiveness has to come from me, and it feels like the burden of moving the relationship on is now heavily on my shoulders. I can’t move on, he can’t do more than apologise, we’re stuck. I’d appreciate recommendations on other resources to use to help me, thank you so much, I love all your discussions!

This talk was fantastic - very validating. Thank you!

Absolutely brilliant, Lisa. I appreciate this practical wisdom that is so useful. Thank you.

So insiteful and resonant with my experiences and feelings, thank you 🙏

One of the MOST HONEST talks I've heard on this topic. Thank You!

Very insightful. Many thanks Lisa 🙏❤️

I love your talks❤️

This gave me words for a lot of what I couldn't name for myself. Thank you.

That’s exactly what I needed to hear today. Thank you.

Thank you!

So clarifying and validating. This will help me continue to differentiate between extending grace versus accepting abuse. I’m so grateful to have this to listen to again when I need it. Namaste. 🙏

Thank you. I needed to hear that. Difficult times🥲

Very good. I will be listening to more from this teacher.

Always words of wisdom.

This lesson is not only applicable to relationship betrayal, but also to betrayal of friendship. Thank you for sharing in such an honest and heartfelt way.

Thank you for this 🙏🏼

What a great talk, as usual. Inspiring and ear opening, thank you so so much for sharing

Incredibly insightful and feeling. Open my mind to new ways of understanding the past and how to move forward. Thank You!!!

Lisa is so insightful and this session was very helpful! Thank you Lisa!