Betrayal Trauma Recovery - BTR.ORG

• Take a look at the negative messages we’ve come to believe about ourselves from childhood, our culture, our marriage/relationship, and the betrayal we’ve endured.
• Identify the lies in these negative messages, and work to reframe them to reflect the truth about who we really are.
• Work through a few tools to help us connect with our self-love, and craft mantras that will help us.
• STAY connected to that self-love when the gremlins pop up and try to rob us of our peace and self-love.

For more details, email Coach Sarah at sarah@btr.org

Anne: Sarah, why is the topic of self-worth/self-image important to you?

Coach Sarah: I have met a lot of women as a coach in this area – brilliant, beautiful, caring, amazing women.  And almost without fail, they do NOT see themselves this way.  Because they are traumatized, they feel weak, broken… almost like “damaged goods”.  I deeply desire to help women see themselves differently… as forces to be reckoned with; loving, giving, funny, intelligent…  because once a woman really, truly connects with this – no one can take it away from her again!  She KNOWS her worth, and she won’t settle for less!  And I’m convinced that our self-image – the way we view ourselves, correlates directly with our self-worth.  

I think our culture has done a pretty “good” job of giving women inferiority complexes.  There are so many messages/images of how a woman should look, act, walk; what kind of job she should have, what interests she should carry, etc.  Where our women are impacted differently is, I think, the comparison isn’t as broad – it has become very specific and personal – because it’s not just “society at large” that is sending out these messages, our spouse has been fantasizing or actually been sexual with these images/people.

Society, at large, hasn’t made a commitment to “choose” us, but our spouse has… and yet, their betrayal makes it feel like they are not choosing us.  Many struggle with connecting that to not being desirable enough, and this is a huge hit to how we value and see ourselves.  

There are a few things, and I share them in my group, but one that really stands out is a blog I read by Glennon Doyle.  It was a paradigm shift for me… one that helped me see how beautiful this life is that I’m creating, and how our focus is so often on the wrong things.  That’s all I want to give away on that one right now!

About a year into my coaching in Austin, I did a retreat for my ladies.  As I was putting it together, and thinking about each woman specifically, one thought kept playing over, and over and over: “She deserves to be pampered.  She deserves to know what it feels like to be loved well.”  Even if the “addict” is involved in a legitimate recovery, and is working hard, it’s a LONG road, and often, sobriety and personal recovery trumps the relational aspect of things, so the woman is still left feeling lonely, or not loved well.  It’s so difficult to not internalize this.  Women get “used to” it, and can often translate that to their worthiness.  When I connected these dots… well, that’s when I started focusing on building my clients up, discover their worth, and connect to the fact that they are worthy of such love.