He Knew You Wouldn’t See It | How Abusers Exploit Your Brain w/ Dr. Jennifer Freyd | S2E14

You didn’t “miss the signs.” Your brain protected you from them.

That’s not stupidity, it’s survival.

Dr. Jennifer Freyd, the researcher who coined the term DARVO and “betrayal blindness,” joins Lisa to unpack the psychology behind why survivors don’t see abuse while it’s happening. 

Together, they break down how the mind hides danger to preserve attachment, why love and dependence make leaving so hard, and how abusers exploit that instinct to keep you blind.

This episode isn’t about shame, it’s about biology. Your brain did exactly what it was built to do: protect you from losing the person you thought you needed. Seeing that truth is the beginning of your freedom.

Transcript

00:00:00:00 - 00:00:08:17
Music


00:00:18:18 - 00:00:31:20
Lisa Sonni
Do you ever look back at this abusive relationship and think, how did I not see this? How do they not see the lies, the manipulation, the double life? This is brutal, right? This isn't stupidity. It's psychology. It actually has a name.

00:00:31:20 - 00:00:58:21
Lisa Sonni
It's called betrayal. Blindness. And today's guest? Quite literally coined that term. Doctor Jennifer Freyd has written some amazing books, including the groundbreaking book Blind to Betrayal. And her research really changed how we understand the mind's survival mechanisms. It is so important. It is so validating. And we're really going to unpack why you couldn't see this happening. And we're going to talk about how abusive people sort of exploit this in us.

00:00:59:00 - 00:01:01:20
Lisa Sonni
could you introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about you?

00:01:01:22 - 00:01:21:07
Dr. Jennifer Freyd
Yeah. Well, thank you so much for giving me this opportunity to talk with you and your audience. It means a lot to me. I am right now the president of a nonprofit I founded called The Center for Institutional Courage. And I do a lot of other things as well. But for most of my career, I was a professor.

00:01:21:10 - 00:01:52:08
Dr. Jennifer Freyd
I retired just a few years ago, and as a professor, I taught courses and mentored students. But especially I conducted a lot of research and I developed theories, one of which is called the trail trauma theory. And the trail blindness comes from that. But other theory is as well. And then in my field psychology, when you conduct a theory, it's also a good idea to go collect data to test hypotheses that flow from that theory, to evaluate it.

00:01:52:08 - 00:01:56:06
Dr. Jennifer Freyd
And so I did a lot of what we call empirical research as well.

00:01:56:11 - 00:02:10:23
Lisa Sonni
That is incredible. And I find it so interesting when people choose this field of study, because I think there's a lot of misinformation out there which we're definitely going to get into Can you tell us a little bit about betrayal blindness. Like how does that show up.

00:02:11:00 - 00:02:39:16
Dr. Jennifer Freyd
Well, I think it's probably a good idea to go back a little bit to The idea of betrayal trauma, and betrayal trauma theory. So betrayal trauma is when you are really harmed by somebody that you're very close to, that you trust, and especially that you're dependent upon. And it creates a very profound dilemma or bind for people because they both need to know about betrayal to protect themselves from more betrayal

00:02:39:18 - 00:03:07:19
Dr. Jennifer Freyd
and they need to maintain these close relationships. Often the relationships are essential to their survival. Child being betrayed by a parent usually can't afford to push that parent away. When you're really empowered in life and you find out you're being betrayed, you can reject the person who betrayed you or demand they fix the situation. But if you're dependent on somebody, that is usually really dangerous thing to do.

00:03:07:19 - 00:03:35:04
Dr. Jennifer Freyd
And it's not just kids, I mean adults in relationships where they are dependent on their partner, may not be able to safely push that person away either by withdrawing from the relationship or confronting the person for the wrong doing. People in the workplace, they may really need that job, and a boss may betray them profoundly, and they can't afford to confront it because they may lose their job and they need that job.

00:03:35:09 - 00:04:01:13
Dr. Jennifer Freyd
So why do people do in that situation? Well, it's tricky because you can try to pretend you didn't see the bad thing. Like let's say you, you know, your spouse was unfaithful. You can try to pretend you don't, didn't see that. You don't know. And that's something that people will sometimes do. But that's hard. It's hard to keep pretending if you can just actually block the information from your awareness, then you can go forward as if everything's fine.

00:04:01:14 - 00:04:27:18
Dr. Jennifer Freyd
And that's betrayal, blindness, betrayal blindness is when you don't even see the betrayal in order to protect a relationship. And people need to understand that this is not something bad about humans that have betrayal, blindness. It's actually survival. It keeps you in a relationship that is either necessary or you believe is necessary, and it works outside of conscious awareness.

00:04:27:18 - 00:04:53:16
Dr. Jennifer Freyd
It's not like you wake up in the morning. You say, I'm going to be blind to this betrayal. it just happens. So you don't even see it. it's just not part of your, perception. And, we know because we've not done lots of research on this, that it happens all the time. It often changes people's memories for events. It changes how they perceive events. And later they may come to see the reality. Their circumstances may change,

00:04:53:16 - 00:05:13:09
Dr. Jennifer Freyd
they may grow up and they're able to see what their childhood was really like. Or they may have been in an abusive marriage, but they were able to get out of it for some. reason. And then they look back and they're like, oh my God. All along this was going on and I didn't see it. And maybe even other people did see it.

00:05:13:14 - 00:05:16:19
Dr. Jennifer Freyd
Yeah, that illustration can be really hard.

00:05:16:23 - 00:05:39:06
Lisa Sonni
Yeah. Seeing that other people saw it and you didn't. Now I've experienced to this, I didn't have a name for it. I thought I was stupid at the time, but it was right in front of me and I absolutely didn't see it. And it's interesting because people have called it denial. But the way that you're describing this, it actually feels very different from denial, because to me, denial is, you know it and you just say, oh, that's not true.

00:05:39:07 - 00:05:42:06
Lisa Sonni
You're talking about you don't see it the block.

00:05:42:10 - 00:06:07:12
Dr. Jennifer Freyd
Yeah. Right. Yeah. I mean, denial means different things to different people. but you're right. Typically we think of denial as kind of a willful thing. Like I'm going to just not deal with this thing I don't want to deal with. Betrayal. Blindness is really outside of conscious awareness. It's not anything people are choosing. It's happening because really, we evolved as creatures to be able to do this,

00:06:07:17 - 00:06:32:09
Dr. Jennifer Freyd
and it it's, Yeah, it's, a survival mechanism. It keeps us in relationships. we need for it. We think we need. And that's important to know, because sometimes we don't really need a relationship. But for lots of reasons, we think we need a relationship. Now. A kid really does need their parents or caregivers. That's true sometimes. If it's only people As children have been abused and they've learned betrayal blindness as a way to get through it,

00:06:32:11 - 00:07:02:04
Dr. Jennifer Freyd
sometimes they keep using that ability as an adult, even when they don't really have to, and that the cost of betrayal blindness, betrayal blindness is a great thing if it keeps you alive. Because it's better to be alive than dead. But there is a cost. Which is? It makes it hard to stop the ongoing betrayal. It makes it hard to get help. And it makes people more vulnerable to getting into a new relationship that's harmful because they're really good at not seeing it.

00:07:02:07 - 00:07:05:20
Dr. Jennifer Freyd
But this is not not the same thing. This general denial.

00:07:05:23 - 00:07:25:22
Lisa Sonni
I can see the difference, honestly. And I again, going back to I lived it. I can definitely see how things were right in front of me that I couldn't see six inches from my face. And the need that you're talking about, or the perception of need that really hits for a lot of clients that I have and speak to,

00:07:26:03 - 00:07:37:18
Lisa Sonni
they feel like they need the relationship and perhaps their trauma bonded. I know that's not necessarily what everyone is experiencing. How do you think those two things kind of work together? Betrayal, blindness and trauma bonding?

00:07:37:22 - 00:08:02:17
Dr. Jennifer Freyd
Well, betrayal blindness is a kind of way to protect a relationship. So in some sense, the trail blindness can help you bond in a trauma situation, but I don't really work with the concept trauma bonding myself. And what I would say is, but what betrayal blindness is about is, It's a survival mechanism. It's a way to get through a situation that's really, really terrible.

00:08:02:18 - 00:08:12:03
Dr. Jennifer Freyd
It's not that victim's fault that they're being abused. So whatever they do, you know, they're just trying to get through a situation somebody else is imposing on them.

00:08:12:05 - 00:08:39:12
Lisa Sonni
And I think I love that you said that because that's so key that someone else is doing this. I am so passionately against anything that is victim blaming. And it's difficult because it's. You see that so all the time. Right. That's your own fault for not seeing it or you should have known. And I don't think that we can I think even if we see it, even if you know that your husband's having an affair, just as an example, it's still make sense sometimes to stay, even though objectively on the outside,

00:08:39:12 - 00:08:57:20
Lisa Sonni
perhaps I don't actually feel that way, but when you're in it, I can understand that, you know. Oh, it was a mistake. It was so even when you see it, it's hard to leave. But imagine if you are trying to protect yourself from even knowing that this is happening at all. It's like you want to live in this little protective bubble and pretend that everything's okay, right?

00:08:58:01 - 00:09:19:02
Dr. Jennifer Freyd
Yeah. And I think what you're touching on there, too, is some of the nuance and complexity in human relationships. we all end up hurting somebody at some point, getting hurt, call relationships have some amount of betrayal. That's just part of being alive, right? You told your friend the confidence and they shared it with somebody else. And that's a betrayal right there.

00:09:19:04 - 00:09:40:01
Dr. Jennifer Freyd
it's human. Mistakes happen. It's not a good thing, but it it's human. And if you end every relationship because of that kind of thing, you're just not going to have any relationships, right? and also there's there's nobody who themselves has been perfect about this. We've all made mistakes. it's a good thing to be, willing to give people a second chance.

00:09:40:01 - 00:10:02:09
Dr. Jennifer Freyd
It's a good thing to be, somewhat flexible after there's been some, you know, something harmful. But it's all a matter of degree. Right? And a a pattern. So you know, even in a, close, intimate relationship, a betrayal sometimes can lead to, a deepening and improvement of a relationship if both parties say it's up to it, talk about it. betrayal is

00:10:02:09 - 00:10:26:21
Dr. Jennifer Freyd
one of the reasons people engage in it is they unconsciously think that by knowing any response they have to, that knowledge is just going to makes things worse because the other person's fundamentally not safe. So if I find out somebody I trusted harmed me and I tell them you harmed me, are they going to apologize and try to make right, or are they going to punish me in a really healthy, great relationship?

00:10:26:21 - 00:10:46:21
Dr. Jennifer Freyd
When somebody harms another person, you can talk about it and you can make repairs and you can deepen that relationship. But if the other person is not safe and you tell them it just can either bring the relationship to an end, which in some situations is good, but in some situations that's too dangerous or it can lead to punishment.

00:10:46:23 - 00:10:59:16
Dr. Jennifer Freyd
So it's in those cases where betrayal blindness is probably the best thing a person, a victim can do, it gets them through a kind of impossibly difficult situation.

00:10:59:18 - 00:11:09:08
Lisa Sonni
heard that you have said that seeing betrayal can sometimes be more dangerous than staying blind to it, and it feels like such a paradox. But this is what you're talking about.

00:11:09:10 - 00:11:32:11
Dr. Jennifer Freyd
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, like, I looked at a couple of families where multiple kids were abused by the same perpetrator, and the kids have handled it in different ways. And the kids who were really good at trail blindness tended to have a better long term outcome because they did not get expelled from the family or, punished even more. The kids who couldn't be blind,

00:11:32:13 - 00:11:56:11
Dr. Jennifer Freyd
and they often had a bad outcome because they withdrew from their parents or confronted their parents in ways that led to getting thrown out of the house or getting more punished. it is true that the blindness can save lives, and it can keep people, you know, from getting additional abuse. At the same time. I just want to go back to it does have this big cost to.

00:11:56:11 - 00:12:16:11
Dr. Jennifer Freyd
And so when people are healing from past trauma, ideally they can get to the point where it's safe for them to remove the blinders and get really realistic about what has happened to them, because in the long run, that's, you know, that's best to not have to be blind to what happened. But for that, you need to be safe.

00:12:16:11 - 00:12:24:07
Dr. Jennifer Freyd
You need to be out of that dangerous relationship. You need to have people around you who are not going to, you know, harm you in that way. So yeah.

00:12:24:11 - 00:12:46:14
Lisa Sonni
it's all very difficult because abusers definitely don't like to give you that space to start to see things. And, many victims report obviously being very isolated. So it's it's hard to start to see it. It's kind of a perfect shift here. Because how do you think perpetrators of abuse sort of facilitate betrayal blindness or do they just sort of weaponize it?

00:12:46:14 - 00:12:55:09
Lisa Sonni
Do they know, do they see maybe they don't know the term? I recognize they probably don't know the term, but do you think that they fundamentally know that you're not seeing it? How do they exploit that?

00:12:55:12 - 00:13:28:16
Dr. Jennifer Freyd
there's this word, sort child abuse. And I think it applies outside of child abuse, which is grooming. And that's when a perpetrator does things to facilitate the abuse. And, a clever perpetrator will take their time grooming a victim. And you can definitely, in the grooming, increase the probability of betrayal blindness. Because what you do is you increase that dependance and that trust and that will just, you know, increase the pressure to be blind to the betrayal.

00:13:28:18 - 00:13:53:08
Dr. Jennifer Freyd
At the same time, you can increase the implicit threat. Should they, try to leave the relationship or confront the person. So again, you're you're, you're making the benefit of betrayal blindness higher for the victim because you're you're making the victim feel dependent on you. And also feel that should they let themselves see what's going on, their situation is only going to get worse.

00:13:53:08 - 00:14:20:17
Dr. Jennifer Freyd
And perpetrators, some perpetrators definitely do this. they will even use explicit language about, you know, like ugh, If you tell anybody about our secret relationship or whatever it is, if you discuss our marriage outside of our marriage, no one's going to believe you and it's just going to, make me angry at you. And then also, increasing dependance on people is a very common manipulation tactic that abusers use.

00:14:20:17 - 00:14:37:02
Lisa Sonni
it sure is. And when you rely on them for your safety, or you rely on them for belonging, or you love them, or you feel like you love them, even I can see why that would be so hard. They seem to kind of be really good at manufacturing that dependance. And then you feel stuck.

00:14:37:02 - 00:14:58:19
Dr. Jennifer Freyd
And, you know, nobody should ever, be hard on themselves for feeling love for somebody, including love for a perpetrator. We are the most beautiful thing about us is love Now we are born with the ability to love. And it's a really good thing. And it fundamental. It keeps us alive. I mean, think about what a baby has to do after they're born.

00:14:58:19 - 00:15:18:23
Dr. Jennifer Freyd
They have years and years and years of profound dependance, and they need to engage with their caregivers in ways that keep the caregivers motivated, because caregivers are working really hard to keep that baby alive. So what is the baby do? It's cute. It smiles. It makes cooing sounds. It hugs as it gets older. Kisses. It says, I love you.

00:15:18:23 - 00:15:45:19
Dr. Jennifer Freyd
It does all these things to, engage in a relationship that's very rewarding to a caregiver. It's rewarding to both. And the emotion there is love. What they're doing is learning to love and getting loved back. And it's totally life sustaining. But it also, you know, it's it brings so much meaning and joy. So if you love somebody who said it hurt you, first of all, it's just very hard to make love go away.

00:15:45:19 - 00:16:04:18
Dr. Jennifer Freyd
I mean, sometimes it does, but it's really hard to do it. And, when people like blaming themselves for having love somebody that hurt them, I'm like, no, no, no, it's a good thing that you're able to tell us it's not a good thing somebody's hurt you, but it's a good thing that you're able to love. There's nothing wrong with you for loving somebody, even if they have hurt you.

00:16:04:20 - 00:16:23:13
Dr. Jennifer Freyd
I mean, a lot of what I work on these days is what I call institutional betrayal, which we can also be blind about. And, you know, people will even love institutions. By that I mean, like, they might love their church or their school or their country or, their youth sports or whatever it is. And those are institutions that can't even love you back.

00:16:23:13 - 00:16:41:13
Dr. Jennifer Freyd
But because we are so geared up to love, we love even things that can't love us back. And you know, you know, institutions can hurt us. They can't love us, but they can hurt us. And so we're vulnerable to that kind of betrayal. But it's not a bad thing. It's a good thing that we we have all that emotion in us.

00:16:41:16 - 00:16:59:18
Lisa Sonni
I totally agree with you. Actually. I think, you know, so many people are like, I just wish I stopped loving him. I just wish I could turn this off. I wish that you could turn it off for loving the perpetrator of abuse, but not our ability to love and the damage that gets done in these relationships. So many survivors are like, I'm never dating again.

00:16:59:18 - 00:17:17:08
Lisa Sonni
I never want to be with someone again because they're so hurt, so betrayed by what happened. So I, I totally get that this oscillation of kindness and abusive ness, cruelty mixed with kindness that you see, what do you think that does to the brain's ability to actually see danger?

00:17:17:11 - 00:17:44:13
Dr. Jennifer Freyd
Yeah. It's a good question that there's a, a term some of my students came up with, they called it rotating betrayal blindness. When you sort of see the reality of the situation for a little bit, and then you kind of go back to, no, I don't see it. And there's been some really dramatic cases that, that, that have been documented where like somebody was in a court case as a witness regarding some terrible interpersonal crime they experienced.

00:17:44:13 - 00:18:01:22
Dr. Jennifer Freyd
They could talk in the court case about it. But then, you know, a year later, they don't remember anything about it. So it's just like comes, it goes, it comes, it goes. And I don't know the effect of that kind of oscillation itself, but it does seem to be a pretty common thing that happens to people.

00:18:01:22 - 00:18:22:14
Lisa Sonni
it's like you're the love of their life and you're their enemy in the same breath. And it creates obviously so much cognitive dissonance and so much confusion, but it also keeps you hooked on hope, because now we're hoping that the good version comes back. And yeah, I feel like every good moment that you have, it's all like sprinkled in with the bad.

00:18:22:17 - 00:18:25:08
Lisa Sonni
It sort of resets the blindness every time.

00:18:25:08 - 00:18:46:14
Dr. Jennifer Freyd
That is such a good insight that you have there, because, you know, there's this old concept that's just very true from behaviorism and it's called intermittent reinforcement. if every time you do something, you know, you, cross the street when you shouldn't, you get arrested. That is going to be less effective then you never know when you're going to be arrested.

00:18:46:14 - 00:19:10:08
Dr. Jennifer Freyd
Like, it's like you're it actually increases your resistance to that. gambling's like this. Right. Just think about slot machines. every time you don't get the coins, but intermittently you do. It's very reinforcing. People keep wanting it again. So those little bits of good times and love moments and everything reinforce a relationship that's otherwise pretty bad.

00:19:10:09 - 00:19:30:20
Lisa Sonni
it's brutal because made a video about this earlier today, actually, that the thing that gets me about abusive relationships that I had no idea until I was in my own is you don't think that they're nice. What I had never experienced this before. I thought, well, abusers are obviously bad people. That's clear. I have nothing is less clear because they're not appearing to be bad people.

00:19:30:20 - 00:20:07:12
Lisa Sonni
I mean, I would I would argue they kind of are, but I think the the difficulty is that they're so nice to you sometimes. And that oscillation of mixed cruelty and kindness is always going to make you hope more for the good times. And it becomes so addictive. And then you feel like you can't leave. And if you feel like you can't leave, then if you find, I don't know, text messages that are a little inappropriate or you decide not to look or you, you rationalize something you might see that's pretty clear evidence that maybe something sneaky is going on, but you don't want to see it because it's then what I always feel like.

00:20:07:12 - 00:20:28:11
Lisa Sonni
Then what? Once if you if you see it now, you have to make a decision, right? You have to do something. What if you're not ready? Now, gaslighting is also another, you know, number one thing that pathological people do and exploitative, manipulative people do. And I think that this interacts a lot with betrayal, blindness. It sort of deepens the dependance on their version of reality.

00:20:28:11 - 00:20:39:12
Lisa Sonni
So do you think that this on an ongoing basis, does it make people more able to believe things that aren't true, or more able to just be completely blind to what's really going on?

00:20:39:15 - 00:21:02:16
Dr. Jennifer Freyd
Yeah, I mean, that's so much at the heart of manipulation, right? It's like you tell people you design reality for them, which is what gaslighting is, you know, defining untrue reality to the point where people are believing it. And I, I, also, developed a concept that called Davo, which is an acronym that stands for Deny the Attack and Reverse Victim and Offender.

00:21:02:16 - 00:21:23:08
Dr. Jennifer Freyd
this is a group of things that perpetrators do to being held accountable. So they deny they've done anything wrong. They attack the person who's made any kind of allegation or accusation. They attack their credibility usually. And then this is the most insidious part. And it's a kind of gaslighting. Think reverse victim and offender. And they say, I'm the victim.

00:21:23:08 - 00:21:47:13
Dr. Jennifer Freyd
You've made this unfair or false accusation against me. You're a terrible person for saying this about me. And it is so confusing to people because suddenly they are put into this role of being the bad person. And we've researched this quite a bit. We know that it is, bad for the person as the recipient of this Davo, and it also is unfortunately fairly convincing to observers.

00:21:47:16 - 00:22:11:14
Dr. Jennifer Freyd
They believe it, they fall for it. The only good news here is that if you educate people about it, they're less susceptible but so many perpetrators of sexual violations use DARVO It's very common. We did one study with students who had been sexually assaulted by some other student, and they were all at the same school. So they would run into the perpetrator.

00:22:11:15 - 00:22:19:19
Dr. Jennifer Freyd
And over half of those perpetrators were using some DARVO techniques when they would run into the person. So it's really common.

00:22:20:00 - 00:22:35:19
Lisa Sonni
Wow, I hate how common that is. And it happened to me all the time. It happens to my friends all the time. And it is it's hard to see because I think that when you've been gaslit for so long. Right. It's an immediate like, wait a minute, I want to be, self-aware. I see myself as a person who's able to receive feedback.

00:22:35:19 - 00:22:59:05
Lisa Sonni
So let me think about this. Did I cross a line? I remember making a video once talking about Davo and just the example that I used, which in hindsight, I suppose I could see how the internet would be very divided on this topic. But the example in my little online skit was that a woman found out that her partner was cheating because she went through his phone and he tried to flip it about, hey, you're going through my phone!

00:22:59:07 - 00:23:21:10
Lisa Sonni
How dare you! So he denied that anything happened. And then when he realized he was caught red handed, he attacked her for going through his phone. And then he's the victim of the betrayal because she went through his private device, which there's something to be said for that conversation. Right. Maybe they're both wrong in some way, but, I mean, the perpetrator of the cheating is the one who's wrong, not the person who's catching the person.

00:23:21:15 - 00:23:35:11
Lisa Sonni
I think that that that was lost in that particular skit. But it was an interesting experiment about how a lot of people will also side with the perpetrator, because a lot of people didn't even talk about the cheating. It wasn't about that. It was about catching.

00:23:35:11 - 00:23:55:19
Dr. Jennifer Freyd
I can see how you might want to sort of have space to talk about the problems with looking for somebody strong. On the other hand, if somebody is cheating in the way you described, that's a pretty major infraction. But also it's probably in some way, was part of why the victim of that cheating felt the need to look at their phone.

00:23:55:19 - 00:23:58:00
Dr. Jennifer Freyd
They knew something was off. Right? Right.

00:23:58:01 - 00:23:59:06
Lisa Sonni
Time blindness, like, hey, you're

00:23:59:06 - 00:24:16:22
Dr. Jennifer Freyd
going to go look for somebody. So and I mean, unless you just have, you know, really bad problem, being unable to trust somebody, there are people with that, usually because they've been betrayed so many times. but more often, if you get suspicious about somebody, there's a reason for it, right? It's like, right. It's like, if anything, it's like your betrayal.

00:24:16:22 - 00:24:20:08
Dr. Jennifer Freyd
Blindness is not 100%. And you kind of know something's off.

00:24:20:13 - 00:24:39:01
Lisa Sonni
Something feels, you know, and I don't know, I'm a woman. It's Woman's intuition, something you start to feel something and you go through it. And I don't condone. I'm not here to condone going through someone's phone. I'm just saying that I understand what might drive someone to that. And the craziest thing is, oh, she went through his phone, but she found proof that he was cheating.

00:24:39:01 - 00:25:00:12
Lisa Sonni
So obviously, yeah, her intuition was telling her something, you know, and that I see that frequently. And, you know, whatever people need to do to get themselves out of these relationships, I'm just saying that I understand it's not about agree. We're not voting on people's reactions to things, but it's hard. And, you know, fear is something that I know is huge.

00:25:00:12 - 00:25:13:18
Lisa Sonni
And I talk to my clients all the time about fear of the unknown or of violence you have said that fear really keeps the blindness intact. How do you mean? You know, is it like the threat of losing someone? What do you think?

00:25:13:18 - 00:25:43:14
Dr. Jennifer Freyd
Yeah, because losing someone is typically, you know, comes at great cost. So the more you have a reason to fear that loss, especially if there's any kind of dependance. So if they're providing you with necessary things, I mean, there’s the emotional dependance. But often there's also material dependance, like you're, you know, dependent on their finances or their you for unhoused without them or, you know, there's just so many ways people are have something to fear.

00:25:43:18 - 00:25:50:21
Dr. Jennifer Freyd
And when they do, that will increase the probability of betrayal blindness, because the blindness is solving a problem.

00:25:51:00 - 00:26:18:08
Lisa Sonni
Yeah. And I think, you know on the outside it just looks like somebody is again in denial. But I really want people to take from this that it is a block. So it allows you to just not see it. There's no denials a different a whole different episode perhaps. But do you see the trauma responses. Because I feel like when you're living in the state of fear, your nervous systems, let's say, out of whack, do you feel like the survival responses reinforce betrayal blindness?

00:26:18:08 - 00:26:49:07
Dr. Jennifer Freyd
Yeah, that's a good question. It's quite possible. I don't know. That's not something that, you know, I studied, we do know that betrayal trauma is associated with trauma response. Very much so. If you compare people that have been traumatized was a lot of betrayal involved versus a maybe a similar kind of trauma, but without as much betrayal. So, if somebody is sexually assaulted by somebody like a spouse or, relative, they really trust it versus they are sexually assaulted by a stranger.

00:26:49:12 - 00:27:18:08
Dr. Jennifer Freyd
You compare those two, they're both bad situations. They both can be really scary. But the one with betrayal is associated with more trauma response, more anxiety and depression and dissociation and physical symptoms. betrayal is really toxic for people. what they don't know is whether the blindness adds to that. the blindness is protecting people from the outcome of a relationship that becomes more dangerous or a relationship they lose that they need.

00:27:18:09 - 00:27:33:18
Lisa Sonni
when this shift happens, maybe when people start to be able to see, like, there's too much evidence that just is too clear, too loud, too in your face, what starts to happen for the survivor when they start to come out of this betrayal blindness?

00:27:33:21 - 00:27:55:23
Dr. Jennifer Freyd
Yeah, it can be really a psychological crisis. And then, of course, it depends whether they're still in the relationship or out of the relationship. But a lot of people don't really get full awareness until they're out of relationship. Like, they they may leave somebody and not even entirely know why they're leaving them. And then they get away, and then they look back and they oh, they're like, oh my God, that's what was going on.

00:27:56:00 - 00:28:19:18
Dr. Jennifer Freyd
Yeah. Sometimes it's within the relationship. The blindness starts to break down and it usually leads to a major psychological crisis for people. You know they they may seem like they've lost their mind and they're so anxious and upset and panicked and, freaked out, because they're seeing a reality that is truly bad that they've not seen all this time,

00:28:19:19 - 00:28:27:15
Dr. Jennifer Freyd
but it also can really, motivate behavior that often motivates people to get away from a really bad relationship.

00:28:27:19 - 00:28:43:14
Lisa Sonni
I think when you start to see things and I mean, maybe we're even a little bit talking about the cognitive dissonance of, like, you start to see it, but you're still a little bit like, wait a minute, this doesn't match my perception of this person or match what I think. But it's hard to come out of it and hard to start to see it.

00:28:43:14 - 00:28:50:16
Lisa Sonni
But I think the evidence starting to really zero in on the evidence. what am I seeing? What can't I deny anymore?

00:28:50:17 - 00:29:17:13
Dr. Jennifer Freyd
one situation that will prompt people sometimes to break out of the term blindness is related to protecting their own kids. So if they're for instance, in a marriage with an abuser and the abuser is becoming potentially dangerous to their own kids, sometimes that'll force them out of the trail. Blindness, because the need to protect their kids, overrides the need to protect the primary relationship with their spouse.

00:29:17:13 - 00:29:37:20
Dr. Jennifer Freyd
but it can be a very dangerous, you know, treacherous situation because that spouse really might be very dangerous when the betrayal blindness breaks down. So, yeah, that's one of the reasons, you know, it is so dangerous for women or anyone. It's not just. It's just usually women who are trying to get out, you know, actually physically out of an abusive relationship.

00:29:37:20 - 00:29:39:19
Dr. Jennifer Freyd
That's a very dangerous time.

00:29:39:20 - 00:30:02:11
Lisa Sonni
It is. And I know, I know firsthand when you have kids, it is so difficult because I think it there's this difficult piece for any woman who has children with someone like this that's like, I want to leave. Let's say, you know, now when you've decided you want to leave, but you now have these issues of how do I move forward with having kids in this, you know, you don't want to give your children over to someone dangerous.

00:30:02:11 - 00:30:24:02
Lisa Sonni
It's very, very hard. That's obviously for people with children. Betrayal. Blindness clearly affects everybody. That's that's in these relationships. And I wish that there was a magic wand that we could wave, but it's hard to see it. The evidence is going to help. What kinds of physical reactions do you think people experience when they have these little breakthroughs and they start to see things?

00:30:24:02 - 00:30:24:23
Lisa Sonni
What have you seen?

00:30:24:23 - 00:30:58:02
Dr. Jennifer Freyd
Yeah. Well, again, it's not something I've directly measured or studied, but, things that go along with sort of a trauma response, include, Physical discomfort, like, insomnia, achy ness. Pain, you know, all over and in particular places, a lot of stomach, issues, headaches. I mean, it's if the body reacts to these situations. And so whenever you have a psychological crisis of awareness, it usually does have all these physical symptoms that go along with it.

00:30:58:02 - 00:31:17:11
Lisa Sonni
I know for me it was panic. I felt like overwhelming panic. It was like my whole body was tingling or hot. I couldn't I almost couldn't breathe. You know, it was this sudden realization of this is what reality is. This is what's really going on. I can't deny it for one second longer. Oh my God, this means I need to take action.

00:31:17:11 - 00:31:38:00
Lisa Sonni
And I think for me that was the biggest issue for me moving forward was now I have to see this. I can't, I can't pretend anymore. I can't lie to myself. It's it started to become too obvious. Yeah. And I struggled so much to be grounded in that moment, you know? And I say that moment, it was many moments, many, many moments that I had.

00:31:38:00 - 00:32:01:21
Lisa Sonni
But it's hard to kind of keep your nervous system regulated through this. But this is rebuilding trust in ourselves even, because now, like, you didn't see it. Right? Are you are you stupid? Like I said at the beginning, it I felt stupid, which I know isn't true now, but in the moment I certainly did. how do you see survivors sort of rebuilding that sense of self-trust for themselves after. Yeah. Blindness.

00:32:02:00 - 00:32:24:10
Dr. Jennifer Freyd
You know, I think one thing that really helps is when people can find at least one other human being who supports them. And, that offers a healthy relationship because trust is so much a part of, of relationships. And, if you are able to trust another person and they're able to trust you, it makes it a lot easier to trust yourself.

00:32:24:10 - 00:32:48:14
Dr. Jennifer Freyd
It's hard to do that work without, trusting relationship. some years back, I wrote a book called Blind to Betrayal with Pamela Burrell and our last chapter is basically about healing and sort of tries to answer the question you just asked. And one of the things we, offer in that section is how do you assess a relationship to find out if it is a safe relationship for you?

00:32:48:16 - 00:33:14:01
Dr. Jennifer Freyd
That is one that's going to let you regain the ability to make good trust decisions for other people and and yourself. And it's never going to be perfect. You can always get betrayed by somebody, have every reason to trust. It's never going to be 100%. But there are things that you can look for in people that are clues as to whether they're it's a healthy relationship.

00:33:14:04 - 00:33:33:22
Dr. Jennifer Freyd
And, yeah. So we kind of list some of those things. And you can ask yourself, is this, quality of this relationship? And if it's not, it's probably not a good relationship to stay in. And if it is, it's really potentially one from which you can grow and heal and relearn how to safely trust another person, and then how to trust yourself.

00:33:34:01 - 00:33:50:07
Lisa Sonni
I always tell people to like, check in with how you feel and see what you know, write down what you know to be true, to sort of reconnect with this idea of trusting yourself. Because after all this DARVO and not seeing things, you I know the feeling of coming out of this and it's it's chaos in our minds.

00:33:50:07 - 00:34:16:01
Lisa Sonni
I really appreciate all this, you know, work that you do around this topic because giving names to things, it's huge. People need language to be able to identify this because it's something I talk about a lot is how we don't know that it's abuse. You don't know what's happening. And if you don't have names for things and you don't have the language to share, to ask for help, even with friends and family, let alone professionals, it can be really confusing for people.

00:34:16:01 - 00:34:19:08
Lisa Sonni
So I appreciate all that you've done to bring this topic.

00:34:19:12 - 00:34:36:11
Dr. Jennifer Freyd
I mean, I assume you might know or guess a lot of where I get my inspiration is from my own experiences in the world, in my own need to name what I've gone through and what I've observed happening to other people to. Yeah, to make it less, less confusing.

00:34:36:12 - 00:34:55:07
Lisa Sonni
I'm going to take you to our little final section of the episode today, which is called Real Talk from the comment section. So I'm just going to read you, one by one, two comments from my comment section on an old video that I made about betrayal blindness. I wasn't necessarily explaining it in full, but I was talking about the concept and why we don't see it.

00:34:55:07 - 00:35:09:00
Lisa Sonni
And so I'm going to read you these two comments, and I'm just curious what your what your, professional opinion is on these ridiculous comments. So the first one is, these women act like they were hypnotized at some point. You have to take responsibility for being stupid.

00:35:09:03 - 00:35:29:06
Dr. Jennifer Freyd
Oh, this seems like a davo comment, right? it's attacking the credibility of the person. And, putting them into this. Well, yeah, it's really going for their credibility and saying they're stupid for having this reaction. But it raises a lot of red flags, doesn't it? Like, what would what would make a person need to say that?

00:35:29:09 - 00:35:50:03
Lisa Sonni
I know the internet's a wild place. You know, the comment sections are I picked some that were appropriate for sharing, but some are just downright mean. And I typically block people. But not before I screenshot some of these comments for the podcast. Okay, so the next comment is, oh please. You ignored all the signs and stayed. Anyway. You just didn't want to see the truth.

00:35:50:03 - 00:35:56:07
Lisa Sonni
That's not his fault. You ignored every red flag and now you want sympathy. Grow up lady. Okay, that's

00:35:56:07 - 00:36:12:08
Dr. Jennifer Freyd
missing the whole point, isn't it? we have the trail of blindness as a way to survive an untenable situation, and it's never the fault of the victim for coping with being victimized. It's always conscious of the perpetrator for having done it right.

00:36:12:12 - 00:36:28:18
Lisa Sonni
I always feel like we need different language. You know? We always ask, why did you say no? Why did he make it so difficult for you to leave? I think we need to just reframe a lot of conversations. But I think what's interesting to when men leave these comments is men are not immune to betrayal blindness, sir.

00:36:28:20 - 00:36:29:07
Dr. Jennifer Freyd
Yeah,

00:36:29:07 - 00:36:52:07
Lisa Sonni
so could have been true to. Not that I wish that on anybody because it's horrible, but It's really unfair. You know, the way that perpetrators, speak to victims and the way that victims get treated by society, betrayal, blindness just isn't about stupidity or weakness or denial. Your brain is protecting you and it's unconscious. And that's the part that I feel like people kind of gloss over is like, you chose not to see.

00:36:52:07 - 00:37:03:22
Lisa Sonni
That's not what this is. That would be close to denial. This is not seeing it. It's a block. So yeah. What do you want survivors to know when they start to see the truth about their own betrayal?

00:37:03:23 - 00:37:32:07
Dr. Jennifer Freyd
I want survivors to be really kind to themselves, really compassionate to themselves, to celebrate that they survived. I mean, that's why we say survivors, they are alive and they survive through these abilities. Like the trail blindness. And they did whatever they had to do to survive that situation. And now it takes a whole lot of courage to, you know, reevaluate everything and face up to The reality takes a whole lot of courage.

00:37:32:07 - 00:37:43:18
Dr. Jennifer Freyd
So, that's hard. That's really hard. But it's really great. And so be compassionate for yourself in the past and celebrate what you're doing now, because it's really great, I love. That.

00:37:43:20 - 00:37:55:03
Lisa Sonni
Thank you so much. Doctor Freed, for being here. And I'll link ways to for people to, you know, read your books and interact with your projects now, in the description. But thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate your time.

00:37:55:06 - 00:37:57:07
Dr. Jennifer Freyd
Thank you for having me.

00:37:57:09 - 00:38:06:18
Lisa Sonni
If this episode gave you clarity. Share it with someone who needs it. Thanks for being here and for being honest with yourself. And remember, you're stronger than before.

00:38:06:20 - 00:38:11:00
Music
Stronger than before.