About the Speaker
Jennifer Joy Freyd is a psychologist and professor at the University of Oregon, specializing in trauma, memory, and institutional betrayal. She holds a Ph.D. in Psychology from Stanford University and founded the Center for Institutional Courage, promoting institutional accountability. Freyd is known for Betrayal Trauma Theory, which explains how individuals may unconsciously ignore betrayal by trusted individuals or institutions. Her book, “Betrayal Trauma: The Logic of Forgetting Childhood Abuse” (1996), is a key work in psychology.
Her research, published in peer-reviewed journals, focuses on abuse, memory, and institutional responses. Freyd has received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation (ISSTD).
Video: Jennifer Freyd on Ramani Durvasula's Channel
Date: 13.07.23
"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."
Jennifer Freyd
Description
In this insightful interview, Dr. Jennifer Freyd, a leading expert on betrayal trauma, delves into the concept of betrayal blindness—a survival mechanism that allows individuals to overlook harm from those they trust. She explains how this phenomenon impacts mental health, relationships, and self-perception, especially in narcissistic dynamics. Dr. Freyd also introduces DARVO (Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender), a manipulative tactic often used in toxic relationships. The conversation offers valuable insights for survivors, emphasizing self-compassion, healing, and the importance of recognizing betrayal to foster healthier connections.
Content (table)
For your convenience, the interview text is divided into sections, with some parts cut/hidden under a “Expand text” button. Click the “Expand text” button to expand full section text.
Introduction: The Haunting Question of Betrayal Blindness
Ramani Durvasula
00:00:00 — How did I not see it? It’s the haunting question all abuse 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 was this excited to talk to someone.
00:00:26 — After decades of research, Dr. Jennifer Freyd 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 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 Dr. Freyd time and again. Her work is key to understanding what happens to survivors of narcissistic abuse. It is my honor to speak with the legendary Dr. Jennifer Freyd. This podcast should not be used as a substitute for medical or mental health advice.
00:01:24 — Individuals are advised to seek independent medical advice, counseling, and/or therapy from a healthcare 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.
Defining Betrayal and Betrayal Trauma
"Betrayal is when somebody that you depend upon, you're close to, you trust, doesn't have your back in an important situation and in some way harms you."
Jennifer Freyd
Ramani Durvasula
00:01:50 — The views and opinions expressed are solely those of the 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, Dr. Jennifer Freyd, welcome. Welcome. Every so often we have a guest where, again, I’m a bit sort of starstruck, and this is one of those days.
00:02:18 — 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 and a little bit awestruck. So welcome and thank you.
Jennifer Freyd
Well, I’m delighted to be here. Thank you.
Ramani Durvasula
Dr. Freyd, I want to talk about what is betrayal? Everyone uses the word, but you have a really, really great comprehensive definition. What is it?
Jennifer Freyd
00:02:47 — Betrayal is when somebody that you depend upon, you’re close to, you trust, doesn’t have your back in an important situation and in some way harms you. So it can be what we might call an everyday betrayal, like when somebody tells a secret that you asked them to keep, 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 harm.
Ramani Durvasula
00:03:32 — Mm-hmm. 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 be in a trusting relationship with.
Jennifer Freyd
00:03:57 — Yes. 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 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, 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.
The Psychology of Betrayal Blindness
"Betrayal blindness is a survival mechanism for a person who's being mistreated by somebody they must depend upon, but it is a survival mechanism that comes with a big cost."
Jennifer Freyd
Ramani Durvasula
00:04:42 — In order to better understand betrayal trauma, Dr. Freyd developed what she calls the Brief Betrayal Trauma Survey. This 12-question form can help someone recognize the amount of betrayal trauma they’ve encountered based on their personal experiences. This survey is available in the show notes and on our Instagram page at navigatingnarcissismpod.
Jennifer Freyd
00:05:13 — It’s very relational. And you know, what we’ve learned over time is it isn’t just relational. Even if the entity harming you is bigger than a person, such as an institution. But you know, 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 by the very act as part of the harm.
00:05:40 — But another part of the harm is this huge discrepancy between what you trust and what has happened to you.
Ramani Durvasula
00:05:49 — Okay. Can you talk more about that, that discrepancy between what you trust and what has happened to you?
Jennifer Freyd
00:05:55 — Yeah. Well, so part of the reason it’s so harmful is it creates a real-world bind. What people do when they’ve been harmed, and 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 very person or people, what are you going to do?
00:06:21 — 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 bind. There is not an easy way out; you’re stuck in some sense, and you’re going to pay a price even though it wasn’t your fault.
Ramani Durvasula
00:06:41 — There are 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, the not confronting it. But then one could argue there’s a third path, which is to 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. Can you describe what betrayal blindness is?
Jennifer Freyd
00:07:07 — Betrayal blindness is a survival mechanism for a person who’s being mistreated by somebody 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.
People who cannot respond to betrayal trauma with betrayal blindness—and not everybody can, some people are better at it than others—often find themselves in the situation where the abuse just gets worse and worse, and they may die from that abuse. So there are other ways betrayal 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.
00:08:06 — It 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.
The Role of Power and Empowerment in Betrayal
"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 to escalate the mistreatment."
Jennifer Freyd
Ramani Durvasula
00:08:15 — 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.
Jennifer Freyd
00:08:28 — 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 well. And sort of our feelings tend to leak. And it takes a lot of effort to deceive, to 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 the behaviors that are positive for the relationship.
00:08:54 — 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 who consciously try to use it, like they say, “Yeah, I know my partner is cheating on me and doing these other harmful things, but I don’t want to lose that person.”
Jennifer Freyd
00:09:28 — And besides, I need their income. And I don’t want them to have to move out of my house. And they’ll give you a host of reasons. They don’t want to 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, there are really three paths, and they have an interesting analogy to the terms fight, flight, and freeze, because these 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.
00:10:19 — So you go to a store where you keep getting bad products and you’re getting ripped off, well, either you demand the 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 if you have that empowerment, but it’s destabilizing, and you are risking the continuation of the relationship and your status.
00:11:00 — 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 to escalate the mistreatment.
00:11:18 — And when a child tries to flee from mistreatment 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, not meeting their needs, because relationships require this 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 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.
00:12:21 — They may lose their job, and they may 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.
The Connection Between Betrayal Blindness and Narcissistic Abuse
"But some people have learned betrayal blindness so well that they just immediately jump to they're not seeing the problem. Even when they've grown up and have some choices."
Jennifer Freyd
Ramani Durvasula
00:12:38 — 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?
Jennifer Freyd
00:12:56 — 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 not empowered in your relationship with your parents in a kind of physical sense; they can just overpower you.
00:13:28 — 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. There’s inherently the situation there is very asymmetric. The parent holds the power. Well, often in our society, we have that kind of asymmetry.
Jennifer Freyd
00:13:52 — 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 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.
00:14:20 — So we all know some people are socialized to believe, whether due to gender or other dimensions, that 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 some people have learned betrayal blindness so well that they just immediately jump to they’re not seeing the problem. Even when they’ve grown up and have some choices.
Ramani Durvasula
00:14:58 — I think that the issues with child and parent, child and teacher, that absolutely, or even child and coach, anyone who could potentially betray a child, right? That makes sense, a child’s inherently disempowered. It does start getting muddy, though, Dr. Freyd, when we talk about the interpersonal context, like you said, people who are empowered but don’t even know it.
00:15:20 — Is, 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 because, and this is where we get into terms like gaslighting, because even if they do front up 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 behaved.” Whatever it is that they’re pointing out, 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 in power, one person being willing to engage in that kind of abusive psychological warfare makes the other person less empowered. Does that make sense?
Jennifer Freyd
00:16:16 — 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, then they’re going to be very vulnerable to that system being exploited again.
00:16:43 — 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 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.
00:17:16 — Well, given this, that love then gets wrapped up in how betrayal works, basically, if you are in a situation where you love somebody, but they are manipulating you, it’s kind of like you’ve, you are a bit in that dependent relationship because of that love that you feel. It puts you in a situation where you’re going to have some motivation to protect that attachment.
00:17:46 — Even if you don’t need it for your bread and butter, but you need it emotionally, or you think you do. Yeah. And that can be weaponized, that can be played on. Yep. Yeah. So these are good systems; the attachment system is good. But then these systems can be used in other contexts against people.
Ramani Durvasula
00:18:07 — 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.
00:18:28 — At the core 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 is a betrayal. There is an inherent betrayal in somebody who doesn’t treat you as an equal psychological player in a relationship.
00:19:00 — So do you agree with that framing that betrayal blindness may be basically an element of every single narcissistic relationship?
Jennifer Freyd
00:19:08 — I think that’s a very reasonable hypothesis. What you’re saying makes complete sense. And certainly, you know, it makes a particularly big sense if you think about narcissistic relationships that persist over time. How could that persist over time without some amount of betrayal blindness?
The Impact of Betrayal Blindness on Mental and Physical Health
"So going back then to betrayal blindness is that I want to connect it to a really common phenomenon we see in survivors is that people in these relationships blame themselves."
Jennifer Freyd
Ramani Durvasula
00:19:27 — 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 is what would make somebody vulnerable to getting stuck in a relationship characterized by these dynamics of gaslighting, manipulation, invalidation, chronic lying, could be cheating, could be financial abuse?
00:20:05 — Do you think that that is then connected to people either staying in these relationships or getting sucked back in even when they try to step away from them.
Jennifer Freyd
00:20:15 — 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 I think is really important is that abuse can occur in the emotional and psychological sphere.
00:20:45 — And so it’s 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 not always as easy to identify and to label and to know. And part of that is the way we’re taught and we don’t necessarily have those skills. But part of it is that emotional and psychological abuse really occurs over time in a relationship context.
Jennifer Freyd
00:21:16 — It’s not usually in the moment, whereas physical and sexual abuse, there is in the moment 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. And so what makes it abusive is this pattern over time. And I think that’s just harder to recognize.
00:21:42 — And so, yeah, I think it’s harder for 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?
Ramani Durvasula
00:22:01 — 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. It’s not that big a deal. This isn’t about a bad day. These are bad lifetimes. These are 30, 40, 50-year marriages. These are relationships that have been characterized by this kind of emotional and psychological hijacking since pretty much infancy.
00:22:29 — 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. So going back then to betrayal blindness is that 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 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?
Jennifer Freyd
00:23:14 — Yeah, I think they’re quite connected, and 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 that they’re betraying you.
00:23:39 — And one way people take on the blame is through the emotion of shame, Yes. Where they get mistreated by somebody else and then they feel shamed. And that shame has 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. And therefore, it’s not the fault of the person who’s doing it.
00:24:05 — 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.
Ramani Durvasula
00:24:16 — Right. 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.
Jennifer Freyd
00:24:25 — Right. It’s not that people want to be masochistic. It’s that people are trying to protect something they feel is essential.
Institutional Betrayal and Organizational Dynamics
"Our very human desire and need and impulse to love extends not only to other people, but to the groups of people, the organizations that we're in, particularly when, you know, we're in some sense, it's dependent on them."
Jennifer Freyd
Ramani Durvasula
00:24:34 — 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 is exactly where you’re talking about, Dr. Freyd, is this idea of the shame.
00:24:59 — Like, what kind of fool am I that I’m okay with this, but the much more primal drumbeat 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 to keep the primal need met. Is that, does that make sense?
Jennifer Freyd
00:25:21 — Yeah, and I mean, part of that primal need is to also to love. It’s to be loved, but it’s to 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 thing, willingness to love. So it does hurt my heart to see people blaming themselves for staying in a relationship where they love the person.
00:25:55 — The person may be hurting them, and that’s a terrible thing, but that isn’t fundamentally something they’ve done wrong. And although we might, you and 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.
Ramani Durvasula
00:26:19 — 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, that it actually can foster healing and growth, rather than I’m a damaged soul who’s willing to settle for breadcrumbs, is rather, I am a healthy human being who wants to love.
00:26:51 — And this is what comes of loving somebody who’s engaging in chronically betraying patterns.
Jennifer Freyd
00:26:57 — I think a place where I also see this happen is when the person being hurt is being hurt by, say, an organization, their church, their team, their school. And they also love that organization, and our very human desire and need and impulse to love extends not only to other people, but to the groups of people, the organizations that we’re in, particularly when, you know, we’re in some sense, it’s dependent on them.
00:27:30 — 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, and, and it was serving some important needs for them, too.
00:27:48 — And so it is coming from, yeah, from the best place in us to love other people as well as other kinds of human things, like whole organizations.
Ramani Durvasula
00:27:59 — 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 taking it into a larger scale of massive betrayal by an institution, not just an individual. I think of major betrayals, like, let’s use the U.S. Gymnastics scandal, where so many young women were betrayed by an organization.
00:28:31 — Even when they were bringing concerns up, they were being silenced. And so they were saying, “Well, the organization can’t. We 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.
Jennifer Freyd
00:28:54 — 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, independence, and care that builds upon our impulse to trust these organizations. I see this as related to the trust we have in our families.
00:29:23 — We don’t just have an individual we trust and love. Our earliest groups are our families. And we have a term family betrayal in my lab, which captures some of the ways that the group can betray people. And we find that it can be even sort of, in some sense, more powerful than individual one-on-one betrayal, which makes sense because if a whole group is hurting you, like that’s pretty bad.
Ramani Durvasula
00:29:52 — That’s pretty scary. One thing you’ve wrote about in Blind to Betrayal, you talk about Leah Cosmides’ work on the social contract, this idea in 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 groups.
00:30:16 — Does that relate then into our inherent trust of big organizations, is that it’s part of this trusting social contract that we have, that we have to trust this?
The "Whoosh" Phenomenon: How Betrayal Blindness Works
"For some people, their betrayal blindness abilities are so powerful, they don't ever consciously see it, like, they really don't, they can, they can just not see it from the get-go."
Jennifer Freyd
Jennifer Freyd
00:30:25 — Right, what’s really important in both Cosmides’ 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 and then take protective action, and that brings us back to fight and flight so that it doesn’t happen again. But you know, when we’re dependent, we don’t have that option in the same way.
Ramani Durvasula
00:30:55 — No, we don’t. You 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?
Jennifer Freyd
00:31:18 — 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.
Ramani Durvasula
00:31:27 — Yeah.
Jennifer Freyd
00:31:27 — So for some people, their betrayal blindness abilities are so powerful, they don’t ever consciously see it, like, they really don’t, they can, they can just not see it from the get-go. For other people, they first catch a glimmer of something’s just happened to me, and it’s really not okay. And then like, there’s a process that’s going, “This is not safe to know, this is not at all safe to know.”
00:31:56 — And that’s when the whoosh comes in. And when they reflect back on the situation years later, some people are able to introspect and remember that progression from perceiving the problem to whooshing it away just in time before they behave in a way that’s going to get them into trouble.
Ramani Durvasula
00:32:15 — When you say behave in a way that’s going to get them into trouble, what do you mean by that?
Jennifer Freyd
Like confront the person.
Ramani Durvasula
00:32:23 — Okay.
Jennifer Freyd
00:32:23 — Show, you know, some way rock the boat.
Ramani Durvasula
00:32:26 — Right.
Jennifer Freyd
00:32:26 — Because that’s what they’re really trying to avoid. They’re trying to avoid destabilizing something they need. 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. So there’s a reason we don’t want to rock the boat.
Ramani Durvasula
00:32:43 — Right. That’s exactly right. 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 whoosh is getting that information out of the way just before you blow it all up. You know, and that what’s not happening though, Dr. Freyd, is that there is not this secondary attention to the toll it’s taking on the person who remains in the relationship.
00:33:08 — 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, self-doubt. So the person is psychologically getting destabilized, and there’s almost a false sense of safety.
00:33:39 — 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.
Jennifer Freyd
00:33:50 — 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 partly 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 means they lose everything, truly, they lose their home, they lose all their other relationships, that’s an untenable risk.
00:34:25 — 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, you know, come stay at my house,” or, “Here, here’s something for you, we will hold you through this period,” that changes the equation, then the cost and risk of staying is actually higher than the cost and risk of leaving.
00:34:47 — But which way that equation works out, so depends on this larger context a person is in.
Healing from Betrayal Blindness: Steps Toward Recovery
"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 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."
Jennifer Freyd
Ramani Durvasula
00:34:55 — 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 rejection or the cultural shame around, for example, getting a divorce or becoming estranged from a family is so overwhelming that it then, it makes more sense to remain in blindness. What has your work taught you about that?
Jennifer Freyd
00:35:21 — 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 with intercultural trust, and this is largely the work of Jennifer Gomez.
00:35:49 — 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 have betrayal blindness. And in that situation, it’s coming in some sense from the fact that it’s an oppressive, larger context around that group. There’s also cultural issues like, is a society more collective than individualistic? And the pressure to maintain the collective harmony can be another component to betrayal blindness.
Ramani Durvasula
00:36:29 — 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 the shame that it would bring upon the entire family. Yeah. This connects to one of the stories that was in your book, the story of someone you called Kevin in your book.
00:36:56 — And the story of Kevin hit me profoundly. I grew up in the 1970s 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 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.
00:37:25 — And that the betrayal blindness for him is, “This is fair, this is all fine, yes, I can assimilate, and I’ll play 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?
Jennifer Freyd
00:37:45 — 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 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.
00:38:20 — 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 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.
00:38:48 — He would be a victim of discrimination, and that’s a 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 a good enough student or athlete or whatever it is, then he can maintain those relationships.
Ramani Durvasula
00:39:07 — I’m going to give a personal sort of disclosure here. My parents were actually told in the 1960s when I was born, a pediatrician took them aside and said, “Stop speaking Telugu to her.” Telugu is the 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 to assimilate. That was the doctor’s setting out as a goal.
00:39:33 — 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 100%. It’s still the language they speak to me in primarily, but my responses are all in English and I don’t speak with an accent. That was sort of the end game. But that was sort of the sacrifice of assimilation. And I lost a massive part of my culture, that still makes it difficult for me to communicate with family members.
00:40:03 — 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, unpopular person. Something that I still, again, this is what I’m saying, these tentacles go deep, it’s something I still, it’s a way I still view myself.
00:40:24 — 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 we’re assimilating and isn’t that wonderful, but it didn’t work out. I even tried to pursue a career in the media when I graduated from college, and I was told, “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 how much of one’s sense of self gets 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 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 lens of betrayal blindness.
00:41:20 — So I find this to be a really useful, you know, it’s 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 shared in the book, which was, and briefly about, because I think it was such a powerful story that you opened Blind to Betrayal with, which is the story of Julie, who is a successful attorney. Can you share that story from the book?
The DARVO Framework: Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender
"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."
Jennifer Freyd
Jennifer Freyd
00:41:45 — 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 in, you know, appeared to be a very happy person and in a lot of ways was. But she told me about her past and in her past, and clearly she was still, you know, disturbed by this. In her past, she was in a different relationship where her spouse was cheating on her and abusing her, I believe, financially.
00:42:22 — 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 that word, whoosh, with me.
00:42:38 — She described seeing the kiss and somehow managing to whoosh 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, in this highly dependent situation, to stay in relationship with her husband who she believed and arguably really did need to stay with given her total lack of resources.
00:43:13 — She had no car. She had no money. She had no way to exist as far as she knew without him. And what’s remarkable is that eventually she did find her way out.
00:43:25 — 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.
Ramani Durvasula
00:43:42 — It’s remarkable because I think that that framework of she literally saw her husband kissing another woman and still managed to whoosh 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 of the pieces that struck me about Julie’s story was also that she went on into another relationship where this kind of betrayal happened again. So I mean, betrayal blindness is a mechanism that stays within us, so when it does happen again, it will, we’re likely to experience it again and repeat this in relational cycles.
00:44:14 — In her case though, and this is where it really coalesces with what we know about narcissistic abuse, Dr. Freyd, is this idea that as she became more autonomous, she actually came into her own as an attorney, she 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.
Jennifer Freyd
00:44:35 — 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 when the person that they’re interacting with is safe or not safe.
00:45:01 — 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 betrayer, you don’t have the same ability as a person who’s been allowed to freely develop it. So one of the things that you know, happens when people heal, is to redevelop that skill to learn how to make good decisions about who to trust, how to hone in on the red flags, and to know when it’s time to leave a relationship.
Ramani Durvasula
00:45:34 — Well, 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, because they really, really do get to hold on to something so, so important.
00:46:03 — 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 back into town wasn’t to go to see his new baby and his wife, he’d stop and have drinks with his friends at a bar. We don’t typically think of that as a betrayal, but that is also a betrayal.
Jennifer Freyd
00:46:30 — Yes, I mean, I think this is something that you’re identifying is so important, that we have duties in relationships, and for close, intimate relationships, there are particular responsibilities and duties, and so it’s a betrayal to not fulfill those duties.
Ramani Durvasula
00:46:49 — Correct, correct. Thank you for putting it that way, because I think that that’s the, that’s it. There are duties in a relationship, and that, you know, to not, that that is the betrayal. As you know, my work, Dr. Freyd, is in the area of narcissism, and you have developed an acronym that perfectly sums up the most damaging sort of interpersonal pivot 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.
Jennifer Freyd
00:47:22 — Yeah. DARVO stands for Deny, Attack, and Reverse Victim and 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, it can deflect the blame and responsibility.
00:47:49 — 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’re, you know, you’re, there’s something wrong with your memory, you have false memories, this didn’t really happen to you. And then the most insidious part is reversing victim and offender.
00:48:15 — 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 know from the research that DARVO tends to work. It does confuse people. And that’s why perpetrators do it. I experienced it in my own life.
00:48:40 — So in some sense, I really deeply understood it, but didn’t have that kind of analytic, intellectual understanding until and I’d seen it happen to other people. So because it’s pretty common until I saw it happening on TV in a very dramatic way. And it in a situation where I could just really pinpoint it. And that was the Anita Hill, Clarence Thomas hearings.
00:49:08 — 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 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 role. And people around him enabled that.
00:49:34 — And I remember sitting there thinking, this is so striking, because he’s not just any old person, 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 EEOC. So he had the knowledge, he had the professional awareness to respond in a constructive way, but it’s not what he did.
00:50:06 — He did this conversation stopping response and it was, you know, so bad for everybody. It was so bad for Anita Hill. It was so bad for all the people watching this who might have won, had stories to tell, but saw what happened if they dared, if anyone dared to say. So it was somehow clicked for me watching that, that this was a pattern and it was a particularly destructive pattern.
Ramani Durvasula
00:50:34 — When you bring it up in terms of the Clarence Thomas, Anita Hill situation, it 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 24−7. It’s happening all the time. Political leaders, business leaders.
00:50:59 — 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 DARVO story coming out. I mean, there’s a universality 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, it’s denial, right? That I never said that, I never did that.
00:51:24 — 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 does is it plays on the empathy and the compassion and the equanimity of the person being abused.
00:51:49 — 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 DARVO use, I mean, any of the big cases of perpetration, Weinstein, Bill Cosby, R. Kelly. I mean, think of Harvey Weinstein 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 how many, how over 100 women that we know of were perpetrated against, that was DARVO happening at the highest levels.
00:52:20 — 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 and it creates a much more holistic model of what happens in these relationships.
The Universality of DARVO in Modern Society
Jennifer Freyd
00:52:35 — I think it’s also more specific. So we’ve now got measurement instruments for DARVO experiences, like being DARVOed, as well as DARVO use, like your tendency to use DARVO when you’re accused of something.
Ramani Durvasula
00:52:48 — I have copies of those scales here.
Dr. Freyd’s DARVO Use Scale is available in our show notes and on our Instagram at navigatingnarcissismpod. This fantastic resource lists common DARVO phrases like, “You’re delusional” and “I’m the 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.
Ramani Durvasula
00:53:21 — We’re actually starting to use them in some of my own research on narcissistic abuse. We’re bringing in that your DARVO long-form questionnaire. It’s magnificent how this is now so measurable because I do think that there’s a real value even for clinicians to use with individual clients so they can explore this in their clients.
00:53:42 — 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.
Jennifer Freyd
00:53:51 — 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 DARVO response. What we were curious about was who does the DARVOing? And can we figure out who’s more likely to DARVO? So we included some personality scales.
00:54:18 — One of them was the dark triad scale used to measure three constellations of sort of personality traits. One is psychopathy, one is Machiavellianism, and one is narcissism. And we found that the tendency to use DARVO was actually associated with each of those three subscales, 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 Machiavellianism.
00:54:55 — And this is not at all surprising to us, but it does allow us to begin to document the function. DARVO is a tool for people.
Ramani Durvasula
00:55:04 — 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 attachment, love, and connection, they’re singing different songs, they’re dancing different dances, and tremendous harm comes to that person who is being DARVOed and who is being subjugated.
Research on DARVO and Its Connection to Narcissism
"And the irony is that one of the best ways in the long run to take care of, to help one's own healing is to use what we've learned through mistreatment to help other people. "
Jennifer Freyd
Ramani Durvasula
00:55:33 — 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?
Jennifer Freyd
00:55:50 — 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 have lots of wisdom here, but one of the things we wrote about in Blind to Betrayal was really getting very intentional about relationships and actually taking stock.
00:56:16 — So we talk about the use of a particular measurement called the relational health indices that has some scales in it for relational health and we, you know, provide one of them in the book where you can ask yourself, you know, is this what I am experiencing in these relationships?
Jennifer Freyd
And it’s not just for the 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 they’re in relationship with, or to leave 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 start with that one.
Ramani Durvasula
00:57:25 — 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?
Jennifer Freyd
00:57:39 — Yeah. 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 that can happen and why it happens can help people be empowered when they otherwise don’t feel empowered.
00:58:09 — I mean, we see this too, with DARVO, 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 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.
00:58:40 — So there’s a certain amount of grounds you get from being able to identify and label a problematic pattern.
Ramani Durvasula
00:58:47 — 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. Dr. Freyd, 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 be open, feel that there’s a sense of trust, and that social contract, if you will, is safe and trusting and loving.
00:59:16 — The second piece of awareness, we call it, is just straight up psychoeducation. 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 you think people can do for the world, not just to protect themselves. Could you share that? Because I think that’s such an important perspective.
Jennifer Freyd
00:59:33 — 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 for 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 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.
01:00:04 — So what people can do for the world is to learn about these things and get involved with organizations and groups that are attempting to fix and address them, as well as being good friends to other people who are victims. It’s being pro-social.
01:00:24 — And the irony is that one of the best ways in the long run to take care of, 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 ultimately empowering place to be.
Ramani Durvasula
01:00:42 — It really is. Thank you for saying 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 growth 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, and DARVO?
Jennifer Freyd
01:01:06 — 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 just is hugely beneficial. It is a good thing you love. It is a good thing you’re vulnerable.
Conclusion: The Path to Healing and Empowerment
"In a trusting close relationship with a parent or a partner or even an institution, we are trying to protect something good and necessary, an 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."
Ramani Durvasula
Ramani Durvasula
01:01:35 — 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, Dr. Freyd, I cannot tell you what an amazing conversation this was.
Here are my takeaways for my conversation with Dr. Jennifer Freyd. In my first takeaway, after listening to Dr. Freyd 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 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.
01:02:33 — But that not seeing it, while it allows them to stay, takes a toll on their health and behavior. In many ways, Dr. Freyd 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.
Ramani Durvasula
01:02:55 — For my next takeaway, an important observation is this idea of being empowered enough 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.
01:03:18 — They may be children, they may have less power for societal reasons, ethnicity, gender, 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.
01:03:50 — 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, Dr. Freyd points out that betrayal blindness tends to become 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.
01:04:25 — 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 relationship cycles in adulthood. Next, betrayal blindness and its effects remind us that there is no way to win in these relationships.
01:04:54 — These are relationships with people we trust or need to trust, like parents. Seeing betrayal feels harmful because we may not be able to safely do anything about it, but not seeing the betrayal takes a toll on our health. As Dr. Freyd said, this is a survival mechanism that comes with a cost.
01:05:19 — The process of betrayal blindness allows us to maintain the status quo and our lives the way we may want them to be, but this process of whooshing, as Dr. Freyd calls it, takes a real toll on us. For this next takeaway, self-blame is the pattern that most survivors struggle with. Betrayal blindness can help take some of that apart.
01:05:47 — 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. 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.
01:06:23 — Self-blame then tragically fosters attachment which is essential. In our next takeaway, one of the most important things that Dr. Freyd 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.
01:06:47 — In a trusting close relationship with a parent or a partner or even an institution, we are trying to protect something good and necessary, an 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 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.
01:07:27 — Next, the concept of DARVO is not only the architecture of every narcissistic relationship out there, but also rounds out our understanding of gaslighting.
01:07:41 — 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 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.
01:08:26 — Then 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 be loved, was played upon and manipulated.
01:08:55 — But you can still hold on to that as a healthy part of yourself.
Speaker Interview
View MoreSummary with timestamps
The main topics discussed in the interview:
- Betrayal Blindness — a mechanism where people ignore betrayal in close relationships to maintain a connection with the abuser.
- Narcissistic Abuse — how narcissistic relationships are characterized by betrayal, manipulation, and emotional abuse.
- DARVO — a manipulation tactic involving Denial, Attack, and Reversing Victim and Offender roles.
- Gaslighting — a form of psychological abuse where the victim’s reality and perception are undermined.
- Emotional and Mental Health — how betrayal and toxic relationships impact mental and emotional well-being.
- Healing from Trauma — pathways to recovery after experiencing betrayal and abuse, including developing self-compassion and awareness.
- The Role of Attachment — how attachment to an abuser or organization can keep people in toxic relationships.
Ramani Durvasula introduces the topic of betrayal blindness and Dr. Jennifer Freyd as an expert.
Brief overview of the podcast and its focus on narcissistic abuse and betrayal trauma.
Disclaimer about the podcast’s content.
Definition of betrayal and betrayal trauma.
The difference between everyday betrayals and traumatic betrayals.
Introduction of the Brief Betrayal Trauma Survey.
Betrayal blindness as a survival mechanism.
How blindness allows people to stay in toxic relationships.
The cost of blindness: inability to detect future betrayals.
The role of power dynamics in betrayal blindness.
Relational asymmetry and its impact on victims.
The importance of empowerment in overcoming betrayal.
The role of blindness in narcissistic relationships.
Manipulation, gaslighting, and emotional abuse.
Why victims often blame themselves and struggle to leave.
Long-term effects on mental and physical health.
The role of self-blame and shame.
The importance of self-compassion and the healthy drive to love.
Betrayal in institutions: churches, schools, workplaces.
How organizations build and then betray trust.
The influence of cultural and social norms on betrayal blindness.
The mechanism of “whooshing” and its role in maintaining the status quo.
The psychological cost of this mechanism.
The impact of societal and cultural factors on betrayal blindness.
How survivors can begin to heal from betrayal blindness.
The importance of fostering healthy relationships and seeking support.
The role of psychoeducation in recognizing betrayal and setting boundaries.
Explanation of the DARVO framework and its use in deflecting blame.
Examples of DARVO in high-profile cases.
How DARVO is used in narcissistic relationships to manipulate victims.
How DARVO is used by leaders in politics, business, and personal relationships.
The connection between DARVO and gaslighting.
The importance of recognizing DARVO as a manipulation tool.
Overview of Dr. Freyd’s research on DARVO and its link to narcissism.
How understanding DARVO helps survivors of narcissistic abuse.
The importance of self-compassion and recognizing the drive to love as healthy.
The importance of self-compassion and healing.
The role of support systems and healthy relationships in recovery.
Encouragement for survivors to recognize their strength and the importance of their drive to love.
