Counselors on the Couch

Week 5 — Relational Distancing: When the Distance Begins to Swallow You

This video explores relational distancing after betrayal trauma. When the person who once felt familiar begins to feel unsafe, the heart pulls back. The body pulls back. The mind pulls back. His voice may not feel safe. His touch may not feel safe. His apologies may not feel safe. His promises may not feel safe. Even his presence may not feel safe.

At first...

Week 6 — Safety Versus Comfort: Choosing What Heals Over What Feels Good

This video explores the difference between safety and comfort in betrayal trauma recovery. After betrayal, the desire for immediate relief is powerful. The nervous system wants the pain to stop. The heart wants certainty. The body wants rest. A woman may reach for anything that lowers the anxiety, even briefly.

Comfort asks, “How can I feel better ri...

Week 7 — Boundaries Versus Control: Protecting Yourself Without Controlling Others

This video explores one of the most important distinctions in betrayal trauma recovery: boundaries versus control. After betrayal, a woman needs protection, clarity, truth, accountability, and safety. She cannot simply go back to the old level of access as though nothing happened.

But in the fear and pain that follow betrayal, it is easy to confu...

Week 8 — Triggers and Core Fears: Understanding What Drives Your Reactions

This video explores triggers and core fears in betrayal trauma recovery. A trigger is what touches the wound. A core fear is the wound underneath.

After betrayal, ordinary things may stop feeling ordinary. A phone may not feel like a phone. Silence may not feel like silence. A vague answer may not feel like a vague answer. A delayed response may not feel...

Week 9 — When Anger Becomes Bitterness

This video explores anger, bitterness, and the danger of allowing betrayal trauma to become the lens through which all of life is seen. Anger after betrayal is not strange. It is not automatically wrong. It is not proof that a woman is failing.

Anger is an internal warning system. It says something sacred was violated, something precious was taken, something safe became unsafe, and somethi...

Week 10 — Preparing the Heart: When Walls of Anger Give Way to Growth

This video explores the heart work that comes after anger and bitterness. The next step after betrayal trauma is not forced forgiveness, quick reconciliation, or pretending the betrayal was smaller than it was. The next step is preparation.

Before healing can take root, the heart must become ready to receive what God wants to do next.

This video introduces the...

Week 11 — Preparing for Change: Forgiveness and the New Love Story

This video explores forgiveness, covenant, healing timelines, and the possibility of a new love story after betrayal trauma. For many betrayed women, the word forgiveness does not feel comforting. It may sound like pressure, silence, trust too soon, reconciliation too soon, or being told to make everyone else comfortable.

That is not what forgiveness means here.

...

Week 12 — Clearing the Path: From Survival Mode to Chosen Response

This video explores how betrayal trauma trains the body and how healing helps a woman move from survival mode to chosen response. Betrayal does not only wound the heart. It trains the nervous system.

When something reminds a woman of the betrayal, even something small, the body may react before the mind has time to think. Fight. Flight. Freeze. Confront. Withdra...

Week 13 — A Marriage Born Again: Co-Authoring a New Love Story

This video explores the threshold after betrayal trauma: what comes next? After betrayal, the old marriage cannot simply be patched and returned to what it was. The marriage a woman thought she had is gone, not because she failed, not because she did not love enough, and not because she was foolish for trusting. It is gone because betrayal revealed that the story s...

Week 1 — The Day of Discovery and the Broken Love Story

This video introduces the Day of Discovery, the moment when betrayal trauma begins to change the way a woman sees her marriage, her husband, her memories, her future, and even herself. For some women, discovery comes through a phone, text message, hidden account, browser history, confession, pornography use, infidelity, sexual secrecy, or evidence that was never meant to ...

Week 2 — Unrelenting Grief in Betrayal Trauma

This video explores unrelenting grief in betrayal trauma, the kind of grief that does not move in a straight line or resolve simply because time has passed. Betrayal grief can rise after a good conversation, a difficult conversation, a memory, a song, a smell, a date on the calendar, a phone left on the counter, or an ordinary moment that suddenly feels painful.

Women recovering fro...

Week 3 — The Reactive Cluster: Emotional Dysregulation in Betrayal Trauma

This video explores emotional dysregulation and the reactive cluster in betrayal trauma. After betrayal, many women feel as if their emotions no longer behave the way they used to. A small trigger can produce a large reaction. A tone of voice, a silence, a phone, a delay, or a vague answer can suddenly bring anger, fear, panic, tears, numbness, or shutdo...

12.          Authoring a New Chapter in Your Story: Reconciliation is one of the most misunderstood aspects of the divorce healing process. Participants will learn that reconciliation can happen even if their marriage is not restored and why it’s important to pursue reconciliation. Reconciling to self comes first, long before you might reconcile to your former spouse and others. Re-friending your...

Do Overs- How can I avoid repeating my mistakes? 

Ready to relate-the synergy of relationships: The myth of meeting someone halfway vs a re-frame of what it means to “work” on a relationship). Basing relationships on true love through   1 COR 13: definitions of love: Healthy leadership, expectations defined, accepting people for who they ARE, not who you want them to be or become, functional relationship paradi...

How to Forgive and Move On. Forgiveness is necessary for you to move forward with life post-divorce. Forgiveness does not mean you are going to re-friend your spouse. But, to be truly free, you must find a way to:Forgive yourself, forgive your ex-spouse, forgive others in order to live life without bondage to anger or spite, without being controlled by bitterness, or consumed with exacting a price for your pain. 

Unforgiveness ...

Alone by not Lonely. Rejection and abandonment are primary feelings associated with divorce. Others might be sadness, displacement, confusion, shame, betrayal…

When the chain of hurt to anger is not broken, loneliness often fills in the gap left by unresolved needs. Loneliness is not due to the reality of singleness; it is a belief about being single; will I ever find someone new; will I get hurt again if trust again; will an...

Separation and Divorce is a major predictor of financial crisis (at least in the short run).  My favorite professor used to say that divorce (and particularly single parenting) was the number one predictor for poverty among women in America. That statistic may or may not be true in today's economy. It has much to do with the state of your financial security before separation, if you have kids, and if you have a well establishe...

Collateral Damage & The Dividing of a Family. 

Most effected by divorce are the children of the couple. The age and developmental nature of children varies, but none are unaffected. Even older teens and adult children are impacted psychologically, emotionally, and at times physically. Loyalties are tested and stretched, boundaries are violated, and the people who the child counts on are the ones responsible. 
But th...

Sex and Soul-ties, when Separated or Newly Single

Its natural to feel lonely after separation or divorce. To suddenly realize that you are now truly alone is sometimes overwhelming. The mind craves significance inside companionship. So, what do many people do, jump back into the dating pool and start to latch on to new people. Others can’t truly let go of their former spouse and have brief physical reconnects, only to ...