I wanted to start off this video by simply saying, I believe you, if you grow up in a family or you still engage with a family with high toxicity, being betrayed by them, where they choose the side of a perpetrator or abuser is kind of a horrific part to that kind of experience or that kind of family system.
So I just wanted to put out there that I believe you and this stuff happens. So if you've ever felt betrayed by family, by having them side with an abusive person or a perpetrator over you, this video is gonna be helpful to you. And in the format, what I'll be discussing is I'll be describing the problem, which is sort of being betrayed by family or having them choose the side of a perpetrator, and then I'll be giving concrete specific examples of what that looks like in a toxic family system.
Then I'm gonna get into how it. Affects us emotionally as well as discussing triggers as we kind of leave the family system or grow up into adulthood. And lastly, I'll be talking about how to process or work through it when it's happening or if it's happened in the past. So hang out with me and we'll get into all of it.
So I've had clients who, in their adulthood, were leaving abusive marriages or relationships in their parents cross. Boundaries and became enmeshed with their ex at their own child's expense. I've had clients who were assaulted in their teens and they told their parents about it, and then they were accused of making it up by their parents and then lectured on what that knowledge would do to the perpetrator's reputation.
I've had clients of. You know, accused of insane things in both childhood and adulthood, and the family automatically assumes the accuser is right. In my own childhood when I really couldn't take the emotional abuse anymore and I had, would have reactions in my own family, one parent would side with the other.
And then those moments were crazy making for me, and they were surreal because my parents visibly hated each other most of the time, but they would sometimes bond if they could get a common enemy going. We're gonna come back to that later. These behaviors exemplify high toxicity in. Family or in a parent where they readily cross lines and side with a perpetrator over their own child.
It's betrayal. It's really a sign of poor mental health. And the parent, it's also highly dramatic, which is something we're gonna come back to later. So much of this happens in our childhood as, as part of really the day-to-day kind of trauma that we go through. Um, and if abusive families don't change.
These situations often carry on into our adulthood, like the example of when someone's leaving a, a toxic relationship in the parent's side with the abuser. So when these moments happen in our adulthood, there are definitive moments for childhood trauma survivors. They are such rupturing events that they often show us.
The profound toxicity in the family that we really haven't been able to kind of, you know, see through the veil or accept yet. So for survivors, these moments are often dissociative, shaming, betraying experiences. We might ask, is this even real? Am I actually in the wrong? Even though I was just assaulted, we can become foggy, shut down, and hit a place of kind of giving up on either reality or justice or both of those things.
So this video will be about cutting through past or our present kind of fog or confusion and exploring what dynamics are going on when the toxic parent quickly names our perpetrators as the actual victims and not believe their own children. So let's go through some common examples that I see in my work where a parent sides with the abusers and what happens to the survivor and all that.
These are both. Big situations in that daily household growing up experience of not being believed in big and small ways. There are different versions of betrayal here. So remember what this isn't. Healthy parents, they advocate for their children. They acknowledge what, what they're feeling or going through, or they're taking action on behalf of their children.
And here we're gonna be looking at concrete examples where children of adults need help in the family sides with the aggressor. So examples of when they take the abuser's side. Being told to apologize to an aggressor, even like another kid and not listen to, and this can range from small conflict with kids to being a teen and being told to apologize to a violent bully at school.
Another example is being told to get thicker skin when a stepparent is being verbally abusive to you. Another example is a weird way. It's like switching teams where your parents were initially upset about what happened to you, but after talking to the abuser, they shame you for making it all up and they, they essentially buy the other person's story.
An odd version of betrayal is not doing anything but not denying it. Either say a family member is sexually off around you, but after you let your parents know nothing changes and they still live there or they're still continuing their visit for your parents not wanting to get into any uncomfortable confrontation with the person.
In a video that I did on invalidating parents, I'll put that in the description to this video. A betraying parent can choose the side of abusers by always playing devil's advocate. They are never really taking sides, which is actually a way to take sides while being crazy, making and shaming to you.
Related to that last example, some parents can never fully acknowledge that their ex was abusive to you and that they are out of having an opinion or admit to having any part of it, which is another way to betray. Parents can automatically take the side of an authority figure over you teachers, religious leaders, other parents blindly assuming that you're at fault without even hearing what happened to you.
So parents can encourage you to be codependent and make up with a person you're in conflict with. This was my mother's. Go-to the message sent to you. Is that what happened? Isn't really all that important, but keeping things going even if they're bad. Is, that's the important part. This is a form of gaslighting and not advocating.
Another version is half acknowledging but refusing to make waves with anyone similar to a prior example. Another example is taking the side of an abusive x. To prove a lifelong lesson to you. These dynamics are much older than the abusive marriage or partnership. This becomes incredibly rupturing if there are grandchildren in the mix.
And this one's really related to toxic family roles that I'll discuss later. And lastly, another example is a lifelong pattern of like little dramas or criticism portraying you as. Selfish or insensitive, like, why didn't you smile at the waiter? They work hard, you know? Or, I know the cable company messed up your day, but I felt bad for them and apologized to the man who came out.
In these cases, there actually isn't an actual real perpetrator, but you are implied as one. And parents can make up victims and perpetrators. This is something called drama that I'll come back to later. Lastly, here's the last example is, um, a parent adopting a step, parent's disdain for you, and that parent starts to police your attitude.
Despite you being abused by the stepparent, this can look like a marked change in your parents' view of you after becoming involved with someone like a girlfriend, a boyfriend who is, has high toxicity. So you can begin to see in these examples that can happen both in childhood and adulthood, what the nature of this looks like, the vibes of what this looks like when a parent is betraying towards their own child.
Here are appropriate emotional reactions and issues. You know what this is like, and how would anyone feel when these situations take place? These situations, whether, again, whether it's in childhood or in adulthood, can leave us experiencing any of the following, dissociation not feeling in your body or grounded in reality.
That kind of like, where am I? Is this even real that was I the bad guy here? Betrayal by family is usually a retraumatization from earlier issues and early dynamics. A good defense in childhood trauma is how we emotionally leave the situation and leave our bodies when the stress is too much. Another is to feel a deep shame about not being believed as a reaction to this.
Another reaction is a big one here is second guessing reality because reality is being twisted in front of you. Another is. Like panic about the consequences, like it becoming worse for you if you keep fighting with your parent about the stepparent about it. So there's a huge anxiety about not being believed in how this is gonna play out, how it's gonna go down.
In other words, shutting down for not knowing how to think or feel. It's almost just like exhaustion. And lastly, a big one here is gonna be abandonment and rejection, where you really feel. Like abandoned by the parent taking the side of somebody else. Another highly common reaction or the conditioning to the family betrayal or high toxicity of choosing the abuser is the fond response.
Whether there is betrayal or scapegoating, it can really be an overwhelming and overpowering experience. That kind of a good defense, especially for little kids, is to kind of give in and submit. That's kind of a, both a combination of. Fawning and dissociation, which they're often paired together. I think we will experience different levels of these emotions depending on our development.
Not being believed that a teacher emotionally abused you when you're, say you're eight years old is different from being an adult and having your parents not believe you, that your, say your partner is financially exploitive. How are they different and why an 80-year-old. Has little power and doesn't have the abstract thinking that comes after puberty.
It's a brain development thing, so at eight years old, you just kind of have to accept your parents' reality about the situation. Like, oh, I guess my stepparent is good and I'm bad. Being an adult and having your parents not believe you about an abusive spouse is more shocking perhaps. You know, there's cognitive dissonance doesn't hit children the way it hits adults.
If adults get there, you can really feel at odds with your world because these moments are like an assault on reality. Hearing that your parents took your emotionally abusive ex out to lunch because they didn't believe you, tells you of perhaps the most significant sign of toxicity. Which is that kind of drama switch.
Try not to think about the word drama as just like a light term that say Joe from accounting was dating someone and shipping and receiving, and it went south In human resources, it is now involved. Drama or a drama switch pertains to something called the Carman Triangle. I talk a lot about that in my videos where victims are turned into perpetrators in one party.
Rescues the new victim who is actually the perpetrator. I know it's confusing, but parents can rescue an abusive ex by making you the perpetrator. This is switching the roles of the victim and the perpetrator, as well as probably the rescuer, and I talk about that carbon drama triangle in a video called cheap intimacy.
Relevant to this video, and I'll put that video link in the description as well. So go check that out. The Cartman Drama Triangle is gonna be incredibly helpful to you to know what the reality is of what's going on if you're experiencing toxic people. In additionally, those who suffer from personality disorders or problems of character, like not rooting or not protecting your own child as a problem of character, they're engaged in drama switches that can be highly patronized.
And I usually find that betrayal in adulthood. Like siding with your abusive ex is not new to the parent's character or to the system. Usually a toxic family is deeply rooted in these roles. Scapegoat, golden child, hero, surrogate spouse. And when a client is going through their parent taking the side of an abusive ex, there is usually old narratives about you.
And this is what I mean about. Where a parent might be siding with your ex to finally teach you a lesson that they've been trying to tell you for years, which is that you've always been difficult, that your expectations are way too off, that you've never been easy ever since you were born, never been easy, always thinking of yourself.
This is a scapegoat role, or being identified as the family pain in the ass when there is. The toxicity in actual the parents or character flaws or personality disorders. It's just a sign that I want you to be aware of. And these roles never really go away unless the parent really gets help and really changes, which is probably unlike likely.
So moving on to triggers and issues where the conditioning of these things stay with us and we take them into our non-family life. So parental betrayal creates wounds and issues around things like. Justice, loyalty, fairness. Raise your hand out there if you have an overdeveloped. Sense of fairness from your toxic family and being able to voice the need for help due to the trauma.
Our body or our inner child, or whichever entity you like, remembers not being advocated for, and there was a triggering pattern to issues in the present. That can really muck things up for you can really like make your life reactive and a bit chaotic. In other words, the parental betrayal runs us long with other issues and we can be highly reactive or avoidant or run on a certain belief that isn't really good for us.
In all these examples about how we get triggered in the present, this is super important. I'm not saying there is not a present issue, like an issue with your boss or your coworker, or your friend or your partner. I am saying that our trauma conditioning can make the present issues worse if we're not aware and we're not working on it.
So some examples, some survivors get extremely upset if their partner struggles. I mean, I, I would get upset too. Struggles to validate or plays devil's advocate. We can have huge reactions to that. Again, the past trauma amps this up if we're not aware of it and we're not breast. Self. Some survivors go out of her way to not come in between people in an extreme way for fear of having to maybe take sides.
Like taking sides is the worst thing for us. And if you grew up with this, sometimes we actually have to take sides. It's not always bad. Another trigger, a big one here is, is. Getting massively triggered when a boss doesn't check or reprimand a dysfunctional or nasty coworker. This was a huge one for me.
I couldn't see that my childhood upset was amping that up, amping that present, upset up, and I would just be driven crazy with that stuff. Some survivors feel compelled to win over their siblings who are. Indifference kind of when mom took your abusive ex side. And again, the trigger there is complicated, but it's like needing someone from the family on our team.
And again, there's a huge present issue going on, but that issue of not having a family member on our side. Probably isn't all that new and it's getting amped up again. And with that one, the inner child still needs protection from family that is horrifically indifferent to you. And the trigger work there from the inner adult to work on is stop setting ourselves up to try to get that protection from family who is disinterested or abandoning and we remove ourselves, we disconnected, we kind of emotionally not go there with them as a self-protective mechanism.
So moving on to some factors about parental betrayal, like the mechanics of it. So nailing these factors or reframing the betrayal is going to be helpful in working with our inner child in terms of moving on or finishing business or protecting ourselves. This is kind of the why of the parent off behavior here.
These factors. Aren't about getting you to a place of acceptance or compassion for the abusive parent that comes way down the road. But naming these factors is going to be helpful for you to not remain foggy or confused or engaging in self-blame or self-doubt. So some potential factors about why a parent takes the side of the abuser.
These are issues that a toxic parent puts a lot of energy into Avoiding. Uh, or seeking help around. I find that the parental betrayal is a dramatic distraction. Usually a lot of things in the toxic family are from underlying dysfunctional issues going on within the parent. A big one here is mental health issues centered on the dramatic, like lack of empathy, disconnection from parental responsibility.
I find that that's the most common factor here in parental betrayal, which is kind of parental some really, a lot of narcissistic behaviors and beliefs. Another factor is unresolved. C-P-T-S-D, shame, rage, black and white thinking, perfectionism avoidance. Another issue is codependency. Um, runs so many childhood trauma survivors in a way that can actually be very damaging.
We don't tend to think about it like that, but it is substance abuse. We all know how damaging that can be. Having a parent engaged in substances or alcohol, the the mental inability to know and. See their child as good and worthy of protection, that's gonna fall into the realm of roles, drama, character, flaws.
So it's really a kind of a, probably a parent with a lot of C-P-T-S-D and, and personality issues. That's acting something out. With their childhood with you or another is parenting the way that they were parented. And again, that's not about compassion or acceptance for them. And as you know, I love to look at issues on a spectrum.
Here is a graphic about where to place, how to think about it. A betraying parent. Onto kind of a process and get a sense about the accountability to hold them to. So let's spell out three hypotheticals that I've seen in client stories. All the way to the left is muted. Betrayal, something I'm calling muted Betrayal.
Notice the C-P-T-S-D term underneath muted betrayal. It's like. Say the paradigm of the Unprotective father. That's an appropriate hypothetical here where he acts like a soldier for toxic women in his life. This is way more common that we actually kind of know about. Say in a divorce, he started dating a perpetrator who quickly went after his children emotionally, and he took her side.
He is shut down. He thinks in black and white terms, and he is limited in that. He chooses to betray the. More vulnerable, which is his children and not upset the aggressor. This isn't just with men. This is all over the place, but just stay with me on this. He just doesn't want to hear it and expects compliance and even coaches his kids on how to not upset the toxic girlfriend.
In this muted betrayal, there can be extreme codependency from the parent's kind of own childhood trauma. There's cowardice there. Maybe there's some intense shame around conflict or drama, and is it incredibly shut down to the point of being just like a shell? Extremely black and white thinking. This type of parental betrayal doesn't have that kind of, I'm gonna get you kind of sentiment that the other sadistic side of the spectrum has, this could be a parent who shuts down around any kind of conflict due to their own child, to trauma, like they, that might even play out in their work environments where they're super compliant and don't say boo about anything, and that they refuse to acknowledge or address.
Anything going on at their children's expense. Now, let's look over the other side, the more dramatic betrayal side. Here is a parent that engages in those roles like scapegoating with their children. This is a highly toxic parent with probably character problems, which is actually an old code word from the psych world about personality disorders.
This character logically challenged is, I believe the term this parent lives for. Pointing out how their child just doesn't get it, can't do anything, right? Always needs to be taught a lesson. This is the parent that calls your abusive ex to console them and get into cahoots with them to try to take you down somehow.
Kinda see what's kind of going on there. It's different. The sadistic piece here is a lot like a sentiment like, well, you've always been difficult and I think you should be ashamed for how you treated us and treated your ex. We're all just trying to help you because you're so outta control and you need to be checked.
You can kind of get the vibe there. I don't think my acting's too good on that one, but anyway, I'm not saying. That these are the only two types going on in this. There are, these are a spectrum of these in severity. You can simply might have a busy body mother-in-law who crosses the line and tries to contact your own estranged parents to get the band back together, but it doesn't come with that statistic kind of part.
The middle part of the spectrum could be seen as the alcoholic or the substance addicted parent where there is high drama. Coming from addiction, but perhaps maybe not personality issues. This is very hard to figure out until say the addict would become sober and maybe has a better chance at Insight, which could never come.
There's also parents that did become sober and they never. Got around their kind of like selfish or narcissistic traits that can happen too. The alcoholic parent can betray by, say, siding with a fellow drinking partner or fellow drug addict because they don't wanna lose that connection or kind of source for them.
They could side with a teacher who is abusive to you because they don't wanna seem like they're been an outer touch parent. They're trying to pretend to be in the role, like they're a Johnny on the spot parent, which isn't true. And lastly. How to reframe, how to process and how to reparent the inner child around parental betrayal.
All of these examples that I've talked about are horrific. They don't lessen severity in these types of factors that I've kind of walked through, but they do help us in reframing away from the kids being the problem, to reframing that to the adults being the problem. How specifically in finishing business with our abusive parents, we hold them accountable in therapy, or at least the therapy that I do RRP, or we hold them accountable in our minds from a place of, look what was done to me instead of remaining foggy, confused, or worse thinking that they're right and you deserved it in some way.
That's the reframe. Look what was done to me as opposed to, I don't know, maybe they have a point. The father in the muted betrayal avoided his responsibility as a parent and made terrible choices that cause incredible damage to the relationship he had with his children. Really damaged his children, like avoiding making the right choice.
He avoided being honest with himself that he needed therapy, that he needed help, probably about his own childhood or divorce, or how he deals with his feelings. The dramatic parent avoided decency because most likely their whole consciousness is wrapped up in or rooted in how they are appearing to others appearing.
This is, again, the triangle. A victim, rescuer perpetrator appearing like a savior to the abusive ex is the choice they make over realizing that what they're doing to the relationship with their own children. And they are probably never gonna look at that. But for us in that reframe about do they have a point to reframe it as they just wanted to look good or look a certain way that's important.
In the substance addicted parent, this is hard, but they sold their kids out to their addiction in either by covering it up or keeping it going. What they didn't choose was honesty or recovery or talking to someone about their use or that they didn't stay in services or resources. Out of being selfish.
That's the reframe as opposed to it being about you in some way. And as a side note to everything that I just said, I often get the accusation from people in, in comments or whatever, that my method or RRP or this kind of talk about parenting or childhood trauma is just us being self-entitled and me.
And I think that there's this thing in human nature that is against giving the abused voice. And this is a common argument that I hear. I think that our parents probably had childhood trauma. Not probably they had childhood trauma too. It's not wrong, but it's not the point. Blame is blind. You are. The reason I'm like this accountability is who is in charge of an important responsibility and what was their attitude about it?
That's accountability. We're not blaming, we're not misguided, selfish, kind of blaming or kind of like having a tantrum about, about not getting the the tippity top best parenting out there. That's bs. I'd also challenge you for those who feel that way to say something like that to an emotionally and physically abused 7-year-old.
That they are just blaming their parents about why they're in foster care. You probably wouldn't do that. I hope you wouldn't do that. And accountability is about looking how the child got there and what that experience is like for them. What were the choices that the parents made? That landed the kid in foster care.
That's accountability. So processing parental betrayal is what my mentor Amanda Curtin says is like having your emotional day in court, in therapy, in my healing community, I encourage members to have a support of. Peers or a therapist, and do this exercise of writing a three to five page letter to the abusive parent about those situations and in childhood in general.
And I suggest they read this letter to an empty chair and visualize their abusive parents sitting in the chair. When I do this with clients, I'll ask them, what is the parent's body language like? What are they? What are they? What's their vibe? What you know, what's their attitude? And usually the client may say something like, there.
Mortified that I'm telling the truth or they're like, you know, like they're scowling at me, or that, you know, or they're just like being nasty or they're being incredibly shut down and kind of a victim, and it's important to do this kind of thing. This exercise doesn't really work if you do it alone.
It's really important to have somebody like a witness, a friend of yours, a peer who has been through childhood trauma too, or a therapist who can support you, and a part of the exercise is having that person. Also talk to the parent and let them know like what it was like hearing your letter, how disappointed they are and how abusive they were that they chose sides or they, they didn't protect all that kind of stuff.
It makes a huge difference for the person who is processing to have that person who gets it because the rest of the world, it's usually indifferent to what happened or wanting to just humanize the parent. Um. That comes for a long time down the road after healing and re, you know, in reparenting, usually the inner child is stuck on if the parent was right about them to betray them intellectually from our inner adult place.
We can name that or think of the toxic parent as abusive a. The inner child who is still longing to be seen or longing to have family is still caught up in that. Maybe they were right about me. That needs a lot of help. It's like, it's like undoing some brainwashing. Here are some journal prompts to how to work on parental betrayal.
Um, hopefully they're helpful to you. So the first journal, prompt, general prompt number one, is. Write about scenarios, big or small, past or present where parents or family took the side of abusers. This can be like in a list form to really spell out how this happened to you in big ways and small ways. In journal prompt number two, in the context of the list of scenarios that you just wrote down, what does your inner child believe about them?
What did they think was going on at the time? Does your inner child still believe that it was okay to not. Bring up something hard with the, with the weird uncle who was staying with you at the time. And the last journal, prompt, journal, prompt number three is from your inner adult. Do some reframing writing about the truth, about the parenting you experienced or you are experiencing.
Healthy parents are invested and their children matter to them. Pick several scenarios from your story, from your list and write about these two ideas. What would a healthy parent have done? What is the truth about your parents in that scenario, like with that dad from the muted betrayal or the other parent from the more sadistic betrayal?
If you would like more extensive prompts, courses, and connecting in with me in live q and as, as well as connecting with other childhood trauma survivors who are struggling with similar things, So some final thoughts I can't reiterate enough about both the damage and the out-of-body experience that we go through when parents side with abusers over their own child.
As horrific as those moments are in either childhood or our adulthood, they are actually glaring signs that we probably need to protect ourselves and our inner child who doesn't see the toxicity and maybe wants to keep giving the family chances or worse. Believes that the family is right about them when it's just abusive and it's helpful to be able to find support when this is happening and have a healthy sounding board because the self-doubt and the confusion when these things are going on is such a common and actually.
Kind of an appropriate reaction when a parent or family member betrays us. But we need a lot of help bouncing things off of somebody to check our own reality. If you can find a good therapist, if you can find one. If you can get one, great. Um, other survivors who have been through the same thing, friends that.
Get it, or even finding a forum that you can run something by is even sort of the best, might be the best that you can do. I get that. Or you can consider signing up for the Monthly Healing community and have that resource as a healthy sounding board as well. So I hope that this was helpful,
