What is Betrayal Blindness? With Dr. Jennifer Freyd

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
How did I not see it? It's the haunting question
all abused survivors have asked themselves. On this episode of
Navigating Narcissism, I've invited the world's leading expert on betrayal,
who has dedicated her life to finding the answer to
this tormenting question. I can't remember the last time I

(00:23):
was this excited to talk to someone. After decades of research,
doctor Jennifer Fried has coined the term betrayal blindness to
describe our inability to recognize betrayal, especially when the perpetrator
is someone or something we trust, for example, a parent

(00:47):
who abuses a child, or a partner that cheats, or
a church that hides abuse. If you've been listening to
Navigating Narcissism for a while, you've heard me talk about
doctor Fried time and again. Her work is key to
understanding what happens to survivors of narcissistic abuse. It is

(01:10):
my honor to speak with the legendary doctor Jennifer Fried.
This podcast should not be used as a substitute for
medical or mental health advice. Individuals are advised to seek
independent medical advice, counseling, and or therapy from a healthcare

(01:31):
professional with respect to any medical condition, mental health issue,
or health inquiry, including matters discussed on this podcast. This
episode discusses abuse, which may be triggering to some people.
The views and opinions expressed are solely those of the

(01:52):
podcast author or individuals participating in the podcast, and do
not represent the opinions of Red Table Talk productions, iHeartMedia,
or their employees. So, first of all, doctor Jennifer Fried, Welcome.
Every so often we have a guest where again I'm

(02:12):
a bit starstruck, and this is one of those days.
I've been reading your work throughout my career and it's
actually been really influential in shaping my work in the
area of narcissistic abuse. So not only am I so
happy you're here, I'm so deeply honored, in a little
bit awestruck. So welcome and thank you.

Speaker 2 (02:32):
Well, I'm delighted to be here.

Speaker 1 (02:33):
Thank you, doctor Fried. And I want to talk about
what is betrayal? Everyone uses the word, but you have
a really, really great comprehensive definition.

Speaker 2 (02:43):
What is it Betrayal is when somebody that you depend upon,
you're close to, your trust, doesn't have your back in
an important situation and in some way harms you. So
it can be what we might call on every day betrayal,
like somebody tells a secret that you ask them to hold,

(03:06):
or it can be a traumatic betrayal what I call
betrayal trauma when the thing that's being done to you
is deeply harmful, such as marital rape or child abuse
by a caregiver, and in those cases, the very person
that you have a reason to trust and depend upon
is the perpetrator of a harm.

Speaker 1 (03:28):
One thing that struck me about betrayal is that most
people think of betrayal as lying, cheating, or stealing. That's it.
Your work has broadened this definition into this idea of
really being harmed by someone that you presumed yourself to

(03:49):
be in a trusting relationship with.

Speaker 2 (03:52):
Yes, the betrayal trauma theory is a theory that I originally
actually started to work on to make sense of one
particular kind of betrayal blindness, and that in the devising
this theory, I began to start to measure betrayal trauma
and found that betrayal traumas, which are defined as significant
mistreatment by somebody that the victim is dependent upon trusts

(04:16):
and is close to that, they are very toxic that
they have negative effects on almost every system we looked at,
so people's mental health, physical health, substance misuse, behavioral problems.
It's very toxic stuff.

Speaker 1 (04:33):
In order to better understand betrayal trauma, doctor Fried developed
which she calls the Brief Betrayal Trauma Survey. This twelve
question form can help someone recognize the amount of betrayal
trauma they've encountered based on their personal experiences. This survey

(04:55):
is available in the show notes and on our Instagram
page at Navigating Narcissism Pod.

Speaker 2 (05:04):
It's very relational, and you know what we've learned over
time is it's relational even if the entity harming you
is bigger than a person, such as an institution. But
where we started was one on one kind of betrayal
and betrayal trauma, where it was one person hurting another person,
and the harm exists in some sense, well sometimes just

(05:27):
by the very act as part of the harm. But
another part of the harm is this huge discrepancy between
what you trust and what has happened to you.

Speaker 1 (05:37):
Okay, can you talk more about that, that discrepancy between
what you trust and what has happened to you?

Speaker 2 (05:43):
Yeah, part of The reason it's so harmful is it
creates a real world bind. What people do when they've
been harmed, and you know, a healthy reaction is to
seek support and shelter from those who have your back,
those you trust. But when the harm comes from that

(06:03):
very person or people, what are you going to do
if you seek shelter from those who are harming you.
Often that is actually what people end up doing, but
it comes at a big cost. I mean, the other
thing people do is they run away, but that comes
at a big cost. It's a true buying. There is
not an you're stuck in some sense and you're going

(06:24):
to pay a price even though it wasn't your fault.

Speaker 1 (06:26):
There's two paths you've talked about, right. You either confront
the betrayer, which is in some ways dangerous, right, and
then there's the running away then not confronting it. But
then one could argue there's a third path, which is
tell yourself a story so that you don't even have
to view this person as betraying your trust. And that's
where we get into your really important work on betrayal blindness.

(06:47):
Can you describe what betrayal blindness is?

Speaker 2 (06:52):
Betrayal blindness is a survival mechanism for a person who's
being mistreated by somebody that they must depend upon. But
it is a survival mechanism that comes with a big cost,
and that cost is both in the short run in
the sense they can't stop the mistreatment, and in the
long run that they've lost some ability to assess who's trustworthy.

(07:17):
People who cannot respond to betrayal trauma with betrayal blindness,
and not everybody can. Some people are better out of
than others often find themselves in the situation where the
abuse just gets worse and worse, and you know, they
may die from that abuse. So there's other ways betrayal

(07:37):
trauma can be toxic, and one of them comes from
not being able to have betrayal blindness, that it is
inherently a bad thing that is happening to a person.
I can mean, for instance, a child who cannot use
betrayal blindness may end up actually getting kicked out of
the house because their awareness is intolerable.

Speaker 1 (07:57):
Let me ask you this then, because the way you're
saying a child who can't use betrayal blindness, a person
in a relationship who can't use betrayal blindness, the way
you're describing it, it sounds like a conscious process.

Speaker 2 (08:09):
I don't mean it to be. It's really hard to
use it consciously because it's hard to control the attachment
system that right well, and sort of our feelings tend
to leak and it takes a lot of effort to
deceive the hide feelings. So most of the time the
betrayal blindness happens outside of consciousness, and it makes it
much more effective. And then you can engage in all

(08:31):
the behaviors that are positive for a relationship. So if
you don't know you're doing it, that is, you don't
know you're blocking out some mistreatment, you can continue to
be friendly and loving and all the things that keep
that relationship going. So it's actually better to have it
outside of consciousness. But you know, I've talked to people

(08:53):
who consciously try to use it, Like they say, like, yeah,
I know my partner is cheating on me and doing
these other harmful things, but I don't want to lose
that person, And besides, I need their income, don't want
them have to move out of my house. And you'll
give you a host of reasons. They don't want to

(09:14):
confront that person because they realize how risky it is,
and so they try with all their might to put
it out of their mind. And you know, some people
are better at that than others, but I'm sure we've
all tried it at some point, so you know they're
really I think three pass. And they have an interesting
analogy to the terms fight, flight, and freeze, because these

(09:39):
are survival responses to threat. So when somebody betrays you
and you are fully empowered, it actually is in your
interest to either fight or flee because you don't want
to continue to be harmed by this person. So you
go to a store where you keep getting that product
and you getting ripped off, Well, either you demand the

(10:02):
store give you your money back, which would be fight,
or you decide not to shop there anymore, which would
be flight. You can think about that with relationships too.
A friend betrays you in a certain way and you
are empowered to pick different friends, well, you may well
leave that friend or give them an ultimatum you either
correct this behavior or this relationship's over. However, that's great

(10:26):
if you have that empowerment, but it's destabilizing and you
are risking the continuation of the relationship and your status.
If you're not fully empowered. That can be very dangerous.
So a child doesn't have the option really right. And
when a child, say, fights against mistreatment, it's often going

(10:49):
to escalate the mistreatment. And when a child tries to
flee from this treatment in a real world sense, like
maybe you know, hide in their room, or stop talking
to their parents or withdraw, they risk the person, their
parent or whoever it is not taking care of them
and meeting their needs. Because relationships we cry are this

(11:09):
active involvement. So this is where that third path comes
in that I call betrayal blindness, which is the not
seeing to some degree what's going on in order to
stay engaged in a relationship that you feel and may
truly be necessary to your survival, and it can keep
a child or an adult alive. You see a similar

(11:33):
dynamic in the workplace when somebody really needs a job
and they have a boss who's bullying them or sexually
harassing them. If they confront that by complaining or they
withdraw from that boss in some way, they may lose
their status, they may lose their job, and they may

(11:53):
feel that that's an existential threat. They really need that job.
So in that case, people can also use betrayal blindness
to keep the job by not seeing fully the mistreatment.

Speaker 1 (12:08):
You said here that if a person feels empowered, then
they may be able to face down the betrayal situation.
In your experience, what do you believe drives this sense
of a person feeling sufficiently empowered to be able to
address betrayal in a relationship.

Speaker 2 (12:26):
That's a great question, and a complication is sometimes people
are actually empowered and they don't feel it. Sometimes people
are not empowered but they think they are, so people
are not empowered when there is a vast power difference
between the two sides. If you're a small child, you're

(12:49):
not empowered in your relationship with your parents in a
kind of physical sense. They can just overpower you. In
a really healthy parent child relationship, the parent will try
to provide a kind of power to the child that
for instance, the child can complain and the parent will listen.
But it's a resource the parent's giving the child. Inherently,

(13:12):
the situation is very asymmetric. The parent holds the power well.
Often in our society we have that kind of asymmetry,
So you know, it can show up. Suppose a traffic
violation and uses all their social position, whether it's racial
or their gun in their holster, to overpower the person

(13:33):
that they've just stopped. What's really tragic is when somebody
is in fact empowered and they don't see it. And
one way that comes about is through childhood mistreatment as
well as societal messages. So we'll know, some people are
socialized to believe, whether due to gender other dimensions, that

(13:56):
they are supposed to succumb to other people's wishes and demands,
and may feel that they don't have the power to
stand up for themselves when even in some sort of
more objective sense, they do. But you know, some people
have learned betrayal blindness so well that they just immediately

(14:17):
jump to the not seeing the problem, even when they've
grown up and have some choices.

Speaker 1 (14:24):
I think that the issues with child and parent, child
and teacher, even child and coach, anyone who could potentially
betray a child, right, that makes sense. A child is
inherently disempowered. It does start getting money, though, doctor Fried
when we talk about the interpersonal context, like you said,
people who are empowered but don't even know it is.

(14:45):
You know, my work is in these narcissistic relationships where
in fact, you might even have two people who might
even hold relatively similar levels of societal power, and yet,
like you said, through chronic blindness in the relationship, they
don't feel empowered, They don't feel they can step up
to this person. And this is where we get into
terms like gaslighting, because even if they do front up

(15:08):
and say, hey, I just saw these inappropriate text messages
or I just heard from someone in your office that
you're behaving badly, or I saw how you behave whatever
it is that they're pointing out, that that betrayer as
it were, will say to them, no, I didn't, or
what's wrong with you? And so, while there's no difference

(15:28):
in power one person being willing to engage in that
kind of abuse of psychological warfare, it makes the other
person less empowered. Does that make sense?

Speaker 2 (15:40):
It totally does. And you know I've seen this play out.
I mean, if the person who's being betrayed had times
in their life, and we all did, because we were
all children where they didn't have power, and if in
those situations there was any kind of abuse of that
power and they learned to cope with it with betrayal blindness,

(16:00):
then they're going to be very vulnerable to that system
being exploited. Again. Another factor here is that we are
wired and built to form attachments to other people to love,
and we do that from the earliest days with people
who have so much more power than us, because we
love our parents, and that love is how we experience

(16:23):
the attachment system that keeps us alive. And a baby
that can't express love in the way babies can gets
into trouble with a parent because parents need this to
reinforce all that caregiving. Well, given this, that love then
gets wrapped up in how betrayal works. Basically, if you

(16:44):
are in a situation where you love somebody but they
are manipulating you, it's kind of like you are a
bit in that dependent relationship because of that love that
you feel. It puts you in auation where you're going
to have some motivation to protect that attachment, even if

(17:05):
you don't need it for your bread and butter, but
you need it emotionally or you think you do, and
that can be weaponized, that can be played on. So
these are good systems, the attachment systems good, but then
these systems can be used in other contexts against people.

Speaker 1 (17:24):
In your book, blind to Betrayal, which every one of
you needs to go out there and read immediately. This
is one of the best books I've ever read. Every
survivor of narcissistic abuse needs to read this book. On
this show, we're talking about narcissistic abuse, right We're talking
about people who are in relationships that are almost It's
a given that these are betraying relationships. At the core

(17:46):
of it, the person with that personality organization who's in
the relationship and motivated by power, dominance, control and their
own insecurity, plus the traits of lack of empathy, entitlement
and all of that, is attempting to basically subjugate another person.
You know that the other person is acting entirely in
their service, and that is sometimes to me, that inherently

(18:09):
is a betrayal. There's an inherent betrayal in somebody who
doesn't treat you as an equal psychological player in a relationship.
So do you agree with that framing that betrayal blindness
may be basically an element of every single narcissistic relationship.

Speaker 2 (18:26):
I think that's a very reasonable hypothesis. What you're saying
makes complete sense, and certainly you know it makes particularly
makes sense if you think about narcissistic relationships that persist
over time, right that, how could that persist over time
without some amount of betrayal blindness?

Speaker 1 (18:44):
I'd argue they cannot. And I think that blindness to
me fits this so well, because a narcissistic relationship is
a relationship with somebody whose personality organization is such that
they cannot be in a healthy, balanced, equitable relationship, and
so they are going to betray to get their needs met. Right, So,
using that as a framework, do you think betrayal blindness

(19:07):
is what would make somebody vulnerable to getting stuck in
a relationship characterized by these dynamics of gas lighting, manipulation, invalidation,
chronic lying, could be cheating, could be financial abuse. Do
you think that that isn't connected to people either staying
in these relationships or getting sucked back in even when

(19:29):
they try to step away from them.

Speaker 2 (19:31):
Yes, I do, And you know, if I'm correct, then
helping people not respond with betrayal blindness will help them
not stay in such relationships and protect themselves and have
healthy boundaries so that they're not being mistreated in this way.
And I think one of the things you're saying that

(19:51):
I think is really important is that abuse can occur
in the emotional and psychological sphere. And it's much easier
for us to identify abuse when it's physical or sexual,
but for emotional and psychological abuse, which are so powerful
in some ways at the heart of all abuse, are

(20:12):
not always as easy to identify and to label and
to know. And part of that is the way we're taught,
and you know, we don't necessarily have the skills, But
part of it is that emotional and psychological abuse really
occurs over time in a relationship context. It's not usually
in the moment, whereas you know physical and sexual abuse

(20:32):
there is in the moment's sense of it. But everybody
can have a bad like if you're in a long
term relationship with somebody, you're going to say something harmful sometimes.
I mean, that's human. So what makes it abusive is
this pattern over time, and I think that's just harder
to recognize. And so yeah, I think it's harder for

(20:54):
people to say this is abusive, to understand it's abusive,
whether you're the victim or even watching a relationship. I mean,
how many times do we say in this world that
this harmful relationship at the psychological level is abusive.

Speaker 1 (21:11):
I think that in narcissistically abusive relationships too. From the
world at large, Like you said, these are long term relationships,
and I'm really glad you made that distinction, because I
think what happens is that there's a real risk of
like everybody has a bad day, you know, it's not
that big a deal. This isn't about a bad day.
These are bad lifetimes. Like these are thirty forty fifty
year marriages. These are relationships that have been characterized by

(21:34):
this kind of emotional and psychological hijacking since pretty much infancy.
So this is the only reality that this person really
really knows. But the pushback from the world, and honestly,
even I think the psychological community is sometimes like, oh,
that's just someone who's a jerk. It's a larger scale
psychological issue that is actually doing significant harm to an individual.

(21:58):
We will be right back with this conversation. So going
back then to betrayal blindness, I want to connect it
to a really common phenomenon we see in survivors is
that people in these relationships blame themselves. This has got

(22:21):
to be me. I've got to be doing something wrong.
How do you see betrayal blindness connecting to the self
blame we see that people experience when they're in emotionally
abusive relationships.

Speaker 2 (22:31):
Yeah, I think they're quite connected. In Another sort of
related concept here, I think is shame. If you can
take some or even all of the blame of what's
not working onto yourself, it actually supports the betrayal blindness,
right because you are no longer going to see the
other person as responsible, so you're not going to see

(22:54):
that they're betraying you. And you know, one way people
take on the blame is through the emotion of shame,
where they get mistreated by somebody else and then they
feel shamed, and that shame has it sort of implicit
in it that there's something I've done or could do
differently to have prevented or in the future prevent this mistreatment,

(23:18):
and therefore it's not the fault of the person who's
doing it. It's something about me, and therefore I can
stay in relationship with this person because I'm the one
who's the problem. So it's part of that very dynamic
of betrayal blindness, right.

Speaker 1 (23:32):
But the driver then, ultimately, going back to the attachment model,
is to maintain the relationship that we're still going back
to that sort of home base as it were, Right, It's.

Speaker 2 (23:41):
Not that people want to be masochistic. It's that people
are trying to protect something they feel is essential.

Speaker 1 (23:48):
Yep. And to everyone listening to this who's going through
narcissistic abuse, I hope you can sit with that that
you are trying to preserve something, an attachment that feels
so essential to you. This is not you being foolish.
This is about you actually trying to safeguard something that
feels important to you. And I think where survivor struggle

(24:10):
is exactly where you're talking about, doctor Fried. Is this
idea of this shame like what kind of fool am
I that I'm okay with this. But the much more
primal drum beat to that is the attachment need. That
inherent human need for love, connection, relation, and attachment is
so strong that this entire cognitive process is a way

(24:32):
to keep the primal need met. Does that make sense?

Speaker 2 (24:35):
Yeah? And I mean part of that primal need is
to us, so to love, it's to be loved, but
it's too love too, and so it's a good thing
about us. I mean, I think that people's eagerness to
love is one of the best things about us, and
the fact that it can make us vulnerable to mistreatment,
to betrayal that comes hand in hand with this good

(24:59):
thing will to love. So it does hurt my heart
to see people blaming themselves for staying in a relationship
where they love the person. Yeah, the person may be
hurting them, and that's a terrible thing, but that you know,
isn't fundamentally something they've done wrong. And although you and

(25:20):
I from the outside might want them to get out
of that relationship because we see it's harming them, their
impulse to make it work and to stay in it
comes from a good place.

Speaker 1 (25:31):
You've put it more clear than anyone I've spoken to
about this, that the impulse to want to stay in
this kind of let's call it, toxic relationship actually comes
not from a good place. I'd say from the best place,
which is our drive to love. And I think that
when people can see themselves through that compassionate a lens,

(25:52):
that it actually can foster healing and growth. Rather than
I'm a damaged soul who's willing to settle for bread
cross is, rather I am a healthy human being who
wants to love, and this is what comes of loving
somebody who's engaging in chronically betraying patterns.

Speaker 2 (26:10):
I think a place where I also see this happen
is when the person being hurt isn't being hurt by say,
an organization, their church, their team, their school, and they
also love that organization and a very human desire and
need an impulse to love extends not only to other people,

(26:32):
but to the groups of people the organizations that were
in particularly when you know we're in some sense its
dependent on them, and so people will be like, why
did I stay? You know, how did I first of
all not see that there was this abuse going on
in my church? And then why didn't I leave the church? Well,
because they loved that organization and it was serving some

(26:54):
important needs for them too, And so it is coming
from the best place in us to love other people
as well as other kinds of human things like whole organizations.

Speaker 1 (27:06):
Right, And people also trust these organizations. It's not even
about loving these organizations. I actually think we're more likely
to trust organizations sometimes than individual people because it is
an organization, it is bigger than us, and a person
did trust this, you know, this takes me to think about,
you know, taking it into a larger scale of like

(27:26):
massive betrayal by an institution, not just an individual. I
think of major betrayals like, let's use the US gymnastics scandal,
where so many young women were betrayed by an organization.
Even when they were bringing concerns up, they were being silenced,
and so they were saying, well, the organization can't we

(27:47):
love gymnastics, We love the sport. This is the governing body.
We have to believe in it. It's almost implicit that
they do trust these kinds of organizations, whether they be
churches or guild organizations, or even employers or even institutions
like the justice system.

Speaker 2 (28:02):
Yes, absolutely we see that. And you know, to some extent,
the organizations also foster this emotional reaction. So the organizations
will say, you know, we're your family, We're here for you.
They will use the language of trust and dependence and
care that builds upon our impulse to trust these organizations.

(28:23):
I see this as related to the trust we have
in our families. If we don't just have an individual
we trust and love. Our earliest groups are families, and
we have a term family betrayal in my lab which
capture some of the ways that the group can betray people,

(28:44):
and we find that it can be even sort of
in sometimes more powerful than individual one on one betrayal,
which makes sense because if a whole group is hurting you, like,
that's pretty bad, that's pretty scary.

Speaker 1 (28:57):
One thing you've wrote about in Blind to Betrayal you
talk about leak cosmodes work on the social contract, this
idea and evolutionary psychology that we actually are as human
beings quite good at detecting betrayal, right, which is interesting
because then that bangs up this idea of the social
contract that there is a trust that comes into our
relationships with individuals or group. Does that relate then into

(29:20):
our inherent trust of big organizations, is that it's part
of this trusting social contract that we have that we
have to trust.

Speaker 2 (29:26):
This, right. What's really important in both cosmuities ideas and
mine is that we continue to interact with the same
people or organizations over and over, and so if they
mistreat us, then what we should do is detect that

(29:49):
and then take protective action, and that brings us back
to fight and flight. Yeah yeah, so that it doesn't
happen again. Yeah yeah, But you know, when we're dependent,
we don't have that option in the same way.

Speaker 1 (30:00):
No, we don't use this term in the book that
really stayed with me, which is this concept of the whoosh.
We see the betrayal, We can even see the betrayal
happening in real time. We're very aware that our trust
is being betrayed, whether we catch someone in an infidelity
or a lie. But this idea of the whoosh, could
you talk about that?

Speaker 2 (30:19):
So this is something that some people experience more than others,
and I think it has to do with the timing
of when one's betrayal blindness sort of kicks in. So
for some people, their betrayal blindnessabilities are so powerful they
don't ever consciously see it, like they really don't. They
can just not see it from the get go. For

(30:40):
other people, they first catch a glimmer of something's just
happened to me, and it's really not okay, And then
there's a process that's going this is not safe to know,
this is not at all safe to know, and that's
when the woosh comes in and when they reflect back

(31:02):
on the situation years later, some people are able to
introspect and remember that progression from perceiving the problem to
whushing it away just in time before they behave in
a way that's going to get them into trouble.

Speaker 1 (31:17):
When you say behave in a way that's going to
get them into trouble, what do you mean.

Speaker 2 (31:20):
By that, like confront the person, Okay, show you know
some way, rock the boat, right, because that's what they're
really trying to avoid. They're trying to avoid destabilizing something
they need. And you know, I think rocking the boat's
just a great metaphor because if you rock the boat
too much, the boat tips. I mean, you're really in trouble.

(31:40):
So there's a reason we don't want to rock the boat.

Speaker 1 (31:42):
Right, right, That's exactly right. And I often call it
also maintaining the status quo. I'm married to someone, we
have kids, we have an extended family, we have a home,
we have a life. That the woosh is getting that
information out of the way just before you blow it
all up, you know. And that what's not happening, though,
Doctor Fried, is that there is not this secondary attention

(32:04):
to the toll it's taking on the person who remains
in the relationship. The focus becomes so heavily on the
attachment on the status quo, on not rocking the boat.
That what's getting missed is that inherent harm that is
just happening under the radar and often then contributing to anxiety,
mood symptoms like depression, helplessness, hopelessness, powerlessness, confusion, self blame,

(32:31):
self doubt. So the person is psychologically getting destabilized and
there's almost a false sense of safety. Status quo remains.
But I'm falling apart, and that, to wit is the
struggle of every survivor of narcissistic abuse. Maintain the status
quo as I psychologically erode.

Speaker 2 (32:49):
You put that so well, and I think what's a
really important factor there is what happens if they don't
maintain the status quo, And that then is hardly on
the rest of us, right, It's what happens depends on
the social context the person finds themselves in. If they're
in a setting where rocking the boat on that relationship

(33:12):
means they lose everything, truly, they lose their home, they
lose all their other relationships, that's an untenable risk. But
if they're in a situation where there's a safety net
out there, there's going to be people that say here,
come stay at my house, or you know, here's something
for you. We will hold you through this period. That

(33:32):
changes the equation. Then the cost and risk of staying
is actually higher than the cost and risk of leaving.
But which way that equation works out so depends on
this larger context a person is in.

Speaker 1 (33:48):
Absolutely, have you looked at betrayal blindness as sort of
a cultural phenomenon as well, that even if we can
clear out safety nets and all of that, that ultimately
the cultural reject or the cultural shame around, for example,
getting a divorce or becoming a strange from a family
is so overwhelming that it then makes more sense to

(34:09):
remain in blindness. What has your work taught you about that?

Speaker 2 (34:13):
I haven't myself directly examined that so much, but some
of my former students have taken that up, and one
of the things that they have found is that especially
for groups of people who are oppressed by mainstream culture,
there's this need to have a protective sort of group

(34:35):
with interracultural trust, and this is largely the work of
Jennifer Gomez, and that then adds additional pressure to maintain
the status quo when there's any kind of disruption within
that group. So that adds to the cultural pressure to

(34:56):
have betrayal blindness, and in that situation, it's coming in
some sense from the fact that that's an oppressive larger
context around that group. There's also cultural issues like is
a society more collective or individualistic, and the pressure to
maintain the collective harmony can be another component to betrayal blindness.

Speaker 1 (35:17):
Absolutely, and I agree that the betrayal blindness is going
to happen when it is a collective situation in which
familial disruption or estrangement. There's just absolutely no space that
could be held, and there would almost be greater harm
through ostracism that would happen if a person did that,
as well as a shame that it would bring upon
the entire family. Yeah, this connects to one of the

(35:38):
stories that was in your book, the story of someone
you called Kevin in your book, and the story of
Kevin hit me profoundly. I grew up in the nineteen
seventies in the United States as well. What you captured
in his story is that somebody who's not of majority race,
and especially at that time in history, I still think
it's an issue, but it was even more pronounced In

(35:58):
Kevin's case, he was told that if he assimilated, good
things would happen. But he played by all those rules
in this larger system of the culture, of school, of education,
all of that, and he was still ostracized, and that
the betrayal blindness for him is this is fair, this
is all fine. Yes, I can assimilate, and I'll play

(36:19):
the sports that the other kids play, and I won't
speak with an accent. I'll do all of that. And
then he wakes up and realizes that, no, I'm still
being ostracized. Could you reflect on that story of Kevin.

Speaker 2 (36:31):
What Kevin does is he takes on what's essentially prejudice
and discrimination. He takes it on as if it's his
own individual failing. So if he doesn't get invited to
a birthday party, it's because in some way he's failed
to be popular, or if he's not selected for the

(36:52):
sports team, it's because he's not a good enough athlete.
And this taking it on as an individual problem as
opposed to seeing it as a societal problem. In his case,
he's an Asian American in a very white context where
he doesn't understand and won't let himself understand that he's

(37:14):
being mistreated on the basis of the fact that he's
not white, and he's being othered and ostracized for being
Asian American. If he were to see it that way,
that would then put him in a conflictual relationship with everybody.
He would be a victim of discrimination, and that's a

(37:37):
very hard position to be in while also trying to
maintain all those relationships and friendships. If it's his fault,
if he's just not good enough student or athlete or
whatever it is, then he can maintain those relationships.

Speaker 1 (37:51):
We're going to be so give a personal sort of
disclosure here. My parents were actually told in the nineteen
sixties when I was born, a pediatrician took them aside
and said, still stop speaking Teluguta Teluguza language my parents
speak from India. And they asked why because obviously I
was picking up the language that was happening around and
they said, well, because she'll have an accent and you
need her to assimilate. They wanted me to be able

(38:13):
to assimilate. That was the doctor setting out as a goal.
So my parents stopped speaking that language directly to me.
They would stop me when I'd respond, so I wouldn't
have an accent, but they continued having their conversations. I
just wasn't allowed to respond in that language, and over time,
my comprehension of the language is one hundred percent. It's
still the language they speak to me in primarily, but
my responses are all in English and I don't speak

(38:35):
with an accent. That was sort of the endgame, But
that was sort of the sacrifice of assimilation. I lost
a massive part of my culture. That still makes it
difficult for me to communicate with family members. But to
your point, when I tried to try out for the
high school choir, I was discouraged from doing so because
I sort of didn't look the part. When I didn't
fit in, I just assumed that it's because I'm an unskilled,

(38:57):
unpopular person, something that I still well. Again, so what
I'm saying, these tentacles go deep. It's a way I
still view myself. And so you really had to give
up what would have been an incredibly important part of
your history. You know, I wasn't able to communicate with
my grandmother as well as I wanted to because of this,
And it was all that what we're assimilating and isn't
that wonderful, but it didn't work out. I even tried

(39:20):
to pursue a career in the media when I graduated
from college, and I was telling absolutely not people like
you are back of camera. You're not front of camera.
So I even think to myself, I brought food for
lunch as a little kid, Indian food, and the kids
would actually mock it or take it or bully around it.
And I said to my mother and then it was
all peanut butter and jelly from that point forward. But
the other lunch was healthier and more palatable. But so

(39:41):
how much of one's sense of self get stolen by this?
And instead of making it about this is a racist system.
My parents were so desperate to make it successful in
the United States they did were like no, no, no, no,
we're just not doing it right. So we internalized it.
So Kevin's story hit me hard, and I never ever
ever thought of that through a life of betrayal blindness.
So I find this to be a really useful you know,

(40:03):
it was really useful. I have to thank you more
than anything. The gift that this book gave me was
a personal one that it actually gave me a very
different frame of reference. I thank you. Now I want
to hit another story you had shared in the book,
because I think it was such a powerful story that
you open Blind to Betrayal with, which is the story
of Julie, who is a successful attorney. Can you share
that story from the book.

Speaker 2 (40:24):
Julie was a woman who had, on the surface, totally
succeeded in life. She had a really thriving profession and
lived in a beautiful home, and you know, appeared to
be a very happy person, and in a lot of
ways was. But she told me about her past, and
clearly she was still disturbed by this. In her past,

(40:46):
she was in a different relationship where her spouse was
cheating on her and abusing her. I believe financially she
was utterly dependent on him and trapped in the house
with him when she walked in on him one time
kissing another woman. She was the first one to use

(41:08):
that word woosh with me. She described seeing the kiss
and somehow managing to wosh it out of her mind
so that it wasn't there anymore. And it was in
a public place too. I mean, it was kind of
a remarkable feat of betrayal blindness, but it allowed her

(41:29):
in this highly dependent situation to stay in relationship with
her husband, who she believed in arguably really did need
to stay with given her total lack of resources. She
had no car, she had no money, she had no
way to exist as far as she knew without him.

(41:51):
And what's remarkable is that eventually she did find her
way out. She had a young child, so it was
particularly difficult, but she did find her way out and
then managed to pursue her own goals and dreams, which
is why by the time I talked to her she
was this highly successful person.

Speaker 1 (42:12):
It's remarkable because I think that that framework of she
literally saw her husband kissing another woman and still managed
to wooh it out. You know, we often think like, Okay,
there may be innuendo, there may be suspicion, but this
was really happening in her face. One are the pieces
that struck me about Julie's story was also that she
went on into another relationship where this kind of betrayal

(42:33):
happened again. So I mean, betrayal blindness is a mechanism
that stays within us, so when it does happen again,
we're likely to experience it again and repeat this in
relational cycles. In her case though, and this is where
it really coalesces with what we know about narcissistic abuse,
Doctor Fried is this idea that as she became more autonomous,
she actually came into her own as an attorney, she

(42:54):
cultivated sources of support that actually was the path to
healing and growth for her, which is exactly what we
tell survivors of narcissistic abuse. My conversation will continue after
this break.

Speaker 2 (43:12):
Yeah, and it makes sense that once somebody has used
betrayal blindness to survive a situation, they'd be vulnerable to
it again because there's an ability to detect betrayal that develops,
you know, in childhood, when the child's in a situation
in a context where they're allowed to develop that, and
it's a very healthy ability. It lets the child know

(43:34):
when the person that they're interacting with is safe or
not safe. But if you have to suppress that to
preserve a relationship, when you meet somebody new and they
are they're not safe, they're a betrayal, you don't have
the same ability as a person who's been allowed to
freely develop it. So one of the things that happens
when people heal is to redevelop that skill to learn

(44:01):
how to make good decisions about who had to trust,
how to hone in on the red flags, and to
know when it's time to leave a relationship well.

Speaker 1 (44:10):
I often call it the privilege of not having had
a betraying childhood, because it is a privilege if you
have a childhood that is not emotionally abusive. It's a
privilege that cuts across anyone, even if they're unprivileged or underprivileged.
In other areas. It's a huge privilege because it allows
you to maintain that critical intuition that you can take
into adult relations. So blessed are those who are not betrayed,

(44:34):
because they really really do get to hold on to
something so so important. It's also interesting in the story
you told of Julie in your book, was that yes,
he was sleeping with other women, he was sleeping with
her friends, all of that, but her husband also she
had a new baby at home, and he was electing.
After all week away, his first stop when he came

(44:54):
back into a town wasn't to go to see his
new baby and his wife. He'd stop and have drinks
with his friends that bar. We don't typically think of
that as a betrayal, but that is also a betrayal.

Speaker 2 (45:05):
Yes, I mean, I think this is something that you're identifying.
Is so important that we have duties in relationships, Yes,
and for close intimate relationships there are particular responsibilities and duties,
and so it's a betrayal to not fulfill those duties.

Speaker 1 (45:24):
Correct. Correct, Thank you for putting it that way, because
I think that that's it. There are duties in a relationship,
and you know, to not that is the betrayal. As
you know, my work, doctor Fried is in the area
of narcissism. And if you have developed an acronym that
perfectly sums up the most damaging sort of interpersonal pivot

(45:45):
that happens in any kind of toxic relationship, can you
talk about your acronym and tell us where you came
up with this, because this to me, when I use this,
it's a game changer.

Speaker 2 (45:56):
Yeah. DARVO stands for deny attack and reverse victim an offender.
So it's an acronym that connects to when a person's
being held accountable for a misdeed, how they respond, and
it is a destructive kind of response. Not all people
respond with DARVO, but when they do respond with darvo.

(46:19):
It can deflect the blame and responsibility because first of all,
they deny, they say, no, I didn't do that thing
you're saying. Then they attack the credibility of the person
making the accusation, so they say, you know you are
just doing this for attention, or you're just doing this
for money, or you know there's something wrong with your memory,
you have false memories. This didn't really happen to you.

(46:42):
And then the most insidious part is reversing victim and offender.
So now the person being accused puts him or herself
into the victim role and says, you know you're harming
me by this accusation, and therefore you're the offender in
this situation. So it's this very powerful reversal, and we

(47:02):
know from the research that darba tends to work. It
does confuse people, and that's why perpetrate just do it.
I experienced it in my own life, so in some sense,
I really deeply understood it, but didn't have that kind
of analytic intellectual understanding. And I'd seen it happen to
other people because it's pretty common until I saw it

(47:24):
happening on TV in a very dramatic way. And in
a situation where I could just really pinpoint it, and
that was the Anita Hill Clarence Thomas' hearings. Yes, and
Clarence Thomas was at that point considered for being appointed
to the Supreme Court. And Anita Hill had brought forth
an accusation that Clarence Thomas had sexually harassed her at

(47:47):
work back when he was running the EEOC, and Clarence
Thomas denied it. He attacked her credibility, and he very
much put himself in the victim world, and people around
him enabled that. And I remember sitting there thinking, this
is so striking because he's not just any old person.

(48:11):
He was head of the EEOC. And if there's anyone
who would know how important it is to be able
to talk about sexual harassment, how hard it is to
talk about, how important it is not to attack the
person who brings it up, it would be the head
of the EOC. So he had the knowledge, he had
the professional awareness to respond in a constructive way. But

(48:34):
it's not what he did. He did this conversation stopping response,
and it was so bad for everybody, was so bad
for Anita Hill, and it was so bad for all
the people watching this who might have had stories to
tell but saw what happened if anyone dared to say so.
It was somehow clicked for me watching that that this

(48:55):
was a pattern, and it was a particularly destructive pattern.

Speaker 1 (49:00):
When you bring it up in terms of the Clarence
Thomas Anita Hill situation, absolutely makes sense. But we see
people do this all the time. I think we're living
in the era of DARVO now. I mean, in some ways,
the Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill story, that almost feels
like a throwback to the early days. Now DARVO is
twenty four to seven. It's happening all the time. Political leaders,

(49:23):
business leaders. I mean, I would almost challenge anyone out
there to watch the news or read news sites for
one day and tell me you don't see at least
one darvau story coming out. I mean, there's a universality,
you know, to this. But what I love about DARVO
is I think it takes gaslighting and it gives it
the final punctuation point, right, because when we think about gaslighting,

(49:45):
it's denial, right that I never said that, I never
did that. It's attack. There's something wrong with you. What
the heck is wrong with you? But that last piece
of reversing victim and offender. I think that that still
remains in that second part of gaslighting, which is to
sort of undermine the person being abused. But I think
it puts it in very stark focus because what it

(50:06):
does is it plays on the empathy and the compassion
and the equanimity of the person being abused. So they'll say, oh,
wait a minute, maybe I am wrong. And there's not
a case out there where we have not seen darvaux use.
I mean any of the big cases of perpetration Weinstein,
Bill Cosby, R Kelly, I mean, think of Harvey Weinstein

(50:28):
rolling into the courtroom in the wheelchair. Look what you've
all done to me. I can't believe this is being
done to me. I mean, after over one hundred women
that we know of were perpetrated against. That was darvo
happening at the highest levels. But this framework, whether if
it's a massive news story involving hundreds of people or
it's simply happening in somebody's interpersonal relationship, it takes gaslighting

(50:52):
and it creates a much more holistic model of what
happens in these relationships.

Speaker 2 (50:57):
I think it's awesome, more specific now got measurement instruments
for DARVA experiences like being darvout, as well as DARVO use,
like your tendency to use DARVO when you're acused of something.

Speaker 1 (51:10):
I have copies of those scales here, and doctor Fried's
DARVO use scale is available in our show notes and
on our Instagram at Navigating Narcissism Pod. This fantastic resource
lists common DARVO phrases like your delusional and I'm the

(51:32):
real victim here and can be used to check yourself
to see if you're likely to use DARVO as a
tactic or you're experiencing it. We're actually starting to use
them in some of my own research on narcissistic abuse.
We're bringing in your DARVA long form questionnaire. It's magnificent

(51:53):
how this is now so measurable, because I do think
that there's a real value even for clinicians to use
with INDIVI visual clients so they can explore this in
their clients. It's a phenomenal resource. Could you talk a
little bit about your research connecting DARVO and narcissism, because
I can see them as being inherently connected.

Speaker 2 (52:11):
We knew from prior research that has been published that
there are certain things that relate to the probability that
you get darvoed, so gender is one of them. So
women appear to be more likely to receive a DARVA response.
What we were curious about was who does the darvoing

(52:32):
and can we figure out who's more likely to darvo.
So we included some personality scales. One of them was
the dark Triad scale, used to measure three constellations of
sort of personality traits. One is psychopathy, one is machia
of alienism, and one is narcissism. And we found that

(52:56):
the tendency to use DARVO was actually associated with each
of those three sub scales, and that people who are
more likely to respond with DARVO are also more likely
to show traits of narcissism as well as psychopathy and machiavelianism.
And this is not at all surprising to us, but

(53:17):
it does allow us to begin to document the function.
Darvo is a tool for people.

Speaker 1 (53:23):
Right, and it goes back to the driving of these
antagonistic relationships is domination, power and control. That's it. It's
not intimacy, it's not closeness, it's not even attachment or love.
It's really power domination and control. And if one person
in a relationship is being driven by power and control
and the other person is actually seeking for attachment, love
and connection, they're singing different songs, they're dancing different dances,

(53:47):
and tremendous harm comes to that person who is being
darvoed and who is being subjugated. You know one thing
that is so important for people to know and is
a takeaway. I think that many survivors will say, Wow,
this stuff has a name betrayal blindness, betrayal trauma, darvo
But then they want to know what to do. What
are some things that people can do to address betrayal blindness.

Speaker 2 (54:08):
I tend to think about this both in terms of
what can you do for yourself to protect yourself and
also what can you do for the world to sort
of make this a better world that we're going to
all share for the self. You probably you have lots
of wisdom here, but one of the things we wrote
about in Blind to Betrayal was really getting very intentional

(54:31):
about relationships and actually taking stocks. So we talk about
the use of a particular measurement called the Relational Health
Indices that has some scales and for relational health and
we provide one of them in the book, where you
can ask yourself, you know, is this what I am
experiencing in these relationships? And it's not just for the

(54:53):
intimate relationship, it's for all the important relationships in a
person's life. They can go through this, and if the
relationship is not healthy, then it's very beneficial for the
person to either require it become healthy by getting an
agreement from the person their relationship with, or to leave

(55:16):
that relationship and find other relationships. And for some people
that's going to be easier for them to do with
maybe not their closest relationships, like start there and start
to build healthy relationships around them, and then maybe tackle
that most central relationship, which can be very scary to

(55:40):
start with that one.

Speaker 1 (55:42):
That's great. Yes, what are other thoughts you have on
ways that people can sort of get ahead, if you will,
or at least use the understanding of betrayal blindness to
inform them as they go forward into other relationships or
manage the relationships in their lives.

Speaker 2 (55:55):
So looking for signs that the person themselves might be
using betrayal blindness, you know, asking themselves, am I safe
in this relationship? Do I need to space out in
order to stay in it, which would be a really
big red flag that something's not right if you need
to space out. And to know that this is something

(56:17):
that can happen and why it happens can help people
be empowered when they otherwise don't feel empowered. I mean,
we see this too with darva, where if we tell
people about the concept, they're less susceptible to being swayed
when they see it. So if somebody doesn't know the
concept and they see darvo happening, they tend to in

(56:40):
some sense believe the perpetrator who's using it. And so
if you educate people and they go, oh, you know,
they're essentially able to say I'm being kind of manipulated here,
and I'm not interested in being manipulated, then they're safer.
So there's a certain amount of grounds you get from
being able to identify and label a problematic pattern.

Speaker 1 (57:03):
And both of these things very much resonate with what
I consider to be central tenets of working clinically with
survivors of narcissistic relationships, the first being fostering other supports.
Doctor Fried. Not everyone can leave, you know that, I
know that, So if they're not going to we have
to help them cultivate. It might even be therapy as
another safe relational space, but some place where they can

(57:25):
be open and feel that there's a sense of trust
in that social contract, if you will, is safe and
trusting and loving. The second piece of awareness, we call
this just straight up psycho education. This is it. There's
an architecture to this, and if there's a model for this,
it means it's not just happening to you. You said
that there are things that using people can do for
the world, not just to protect themselves. Could you share that,

(57:46):
because I think that's such an important perspective.

Speaker 2 (57:48):
It's because I believe this so strongly that I'm spending
most of my time these days nurturing a nonprofit called
the Center for Institutional Courage, And in the work we're
doing at the Center Institutional Courage, we're particularly focused on
the harm and betrayal that occurs at the institutional level,
which by the way, includes institutional darvo and coming up

(58:09):
with an alternative way for people and organizations to be
in the world to not do all this harm. And
that's what we call institutional courage. So you know, what
people can do for the world is to learn about
these things and get involved with organizations and groups that

(58:30):
are attempting to fix and address them as well as,
you know, being good friends to other people who are victims.
It's being pro social and the irony is that one
of the best ways in the long run to help
one's own healing is to use what we've learned through
mistreatment to help other people. That's a very rewarding and

(58:51):
ultimately empowering place to be.

Speaker 1 (58:54):
It really is thank you for seeing that. That's so
beautifully put, and I think that's also a context survivors
will appreciate in terms of how they can also do
good in the world. Many of them feel like they've
lost their voices, and to know that that's a place
of sort of healing and gross for them will be profound.
Is there any other words of wisdom you'd like to
leave with survivors of relationships that are characterized by betrayal, trauma, betrayal, blindness,

(59:17):
and darvo.

Speaker 2 (59:18):
I do believe very strongly in self compassion. It takes
a lot of energy to beat yourself up and blame
yourself when really you are doing the best you could
that the situation was and maybe still is not fair
and destructive, and that loving yourself and taking care of yourself.
It's sort of trite, but it is true that it

(59:41):
just is hugely beneficial. It is a good thing you love.
It is a good thing you're vulnerable.

Speaker 1 (59:47):
I love that. I really love the frame you put
on this, that it's a good thing to love. We
tend to lose that in the conversation about toxic relationships,
So thank you for bringing it home to that. So,
doctor Fried, I cannot tell you what an amazing conversation
this was. Here are my takeaways for my conversation with
doctor Jennifer Fried. In my first takeaway after listening to

(01:00:09):
doctor Fried talk about betrayal blindness, it seems that almost
everyone who is in or has ever been in a
narcissistic relationship has experienced some level of betrayal blindness. These
are relationships where trust is betrayed regularly. As a psychologist

(01:00:30):
who has worked with people in these situations and with
people who stay in the relationships for years, I have
witnessed them not seeing or acknowledging what happens, but that
not seeing it while it allows them to stay, takes
a toll on their health and behavior. In many ways.

(01:00:52):
Doctor fried has given us a blueprint for understanding narcissistic abuse,
what happens, why people stay, and how it takes such
a toll on health and well being. For my next takeaway,
an important observation is this idea of being empowered enough

(01:01:13):
to not only be able to see it, but do
something about it. A real struggle for people in any
relationship characterized by betrayal trauma is that they are not
empowered for any number of reasons. They may be children,
they may have less power for societal reasons ethnicity, gender,

(01:01:35):
social status, or they may simply be in a relationship
that is characterized by imbalance and inequity, which, by the way,
is what we see in narcissistic relationships. She calls this
relational asymmetry, and this is really important to understand because
we can pay attention to this dynamic in our relationships.

(01:02:00):
As you heal from a toxic relationship and may even
be angry at yourself for not fighting back, it seems
pretty likely that you were in an asymmetric relationship where
fighting back may have felt too risky. In this next takeaway,
doctor Fryed points out that betrayal blindness tends to become

(01:02:24):
our normal, and if you had to learn to use
it as a child, you are more likely to use
it as a go to as an adult. This is
an important pattern for survivors to explore and lines up
with what we observe as the legacy pattern of people
who experienced childhood narcissistic abuse also finding themselves in similar

(01:02:48):
relationship cycles in adulthood. Next, betrayal blindness and its effects
remind us that there is no way to win in
these relationships. These are relationships with people we trust or
need to trust, like parents. Seeing betrayal feels harmful because

(01:03:10):
we may not be able to safely do anything about it,
But not seeing the betrayal takes a toll on our health.
As doctor Fried said, this is a survival mechanism that
comes with a cost. The process of betrayal blindness allows
us to maintain the status quo and our lives the

(01:03:32):
way we may want them to be. But this process
of wishing, as doctor Fried calls it, takes a real
toll on us.

Speaker 2 (01:03:43):
For this.

Speaker 1 (01:03:43):
Next takeaway, self blame is the pattern that most survivors
struggle with. Betrayal blindness can help take some of that
apart by not acknowledging the betrayal, and then if you
take the blame for the betrayals, you won't see the
other person as responsible, which is where shame comes in.

(01:04:07):
Most survivors feel ashamed that they got mistreated, and this
brings up the idea that you could have done something
to stop the betrayal from happening. All of this means
that survivors then think this is my fault, which then
means you can stay in the relationship. Self blame then

(01:04:30):
tragically fosters attachment, which is essential in our next takeaway.
One of the most important things that doctor Fried shared
with us is something we already knew, but she put
a finer point on it. Love is good. Wanting to
love and be loved is good in a trusting, close

(01:04:53):
relationship with a parent, or a partner, or even an institution.
We are trying to protec something good and necessary and
attachment and love. Our healthy drive to love also explains
some of the why of betrayal blindness and also the
why of why we stay. Many survivors view themselves as

(01:05:16):
weak or needy or ridiculous for staying, but perhaps you
can tap into recognizing that you are a person who
wants to love and be loved and that is healthy. Next,
the concept of DARVO is not only the architecture of
every narcissistic relationship out there, but also rounds out our

(01:05:41):
understanding of gaslighting, because not only are our reality, perception,
and experience denied, we are dismantled and told there is
something wrong with us, and then have to carry the
burden of believing that we are the offenders and the
abusers when they reverse victim and offender, and that is

(01:06:05):
one more piece of how we get stuck in the
cycles of self blame. And finally, once we understand betrayal blindness,
we recognize that healing means discernment, the ability to detect betrayal.
Learning about the mechanics of betrayal blindness and DARVO, then

(01:06:30):
you can see the betrayals and call them what they are.
Foster support and healthy relationships with a foundation of trust,
Support other people who are going through these experiences, and
practice self compassion. Remember the very best part of you,
the part of you that simply wanted to love and

(01:06:52):
be loved, was played upon and manipulated, But you can
still hold on to that as a healthy part of yourself.

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Host

Dr. Ramini Durvasula

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