Feeling Betrayed: Part 2 – How to Heal a Broken Heart

Leaking Grieving Heart,Drawing by Ingrid Cryns

Leaking Grieving Heart,
Drawing by Ingrid Cryns

Following on from my previous post – Feeling Betrayed: The Experience of Deception, in this blog we’ll talk about how to heal a broken heart.

The way to heal a betrayal experience is to first give yourself permission to fully feel your rage. Take the time to physically express it through your body with strong physical movement of your arms or legs or both.  Swinging a bat against a bed, swinging a stick against a concrete wall or a large tree in a forest, kicking a punching bag or stomping your feet up and down on the earth are all healthy ways to move the energy of anger through your body.  And, the more you can express your rage with your voice as well, such as through screaming or growling, the better as it will help move the energy through your body and out of your system.

When we hold in our anger, we suppress our life force energy and it can somatise it into our bodies with disease such as in bowl disorders, liver toxicity or even cancer can start to percolate.

Feeling betrayed can also set up a sense of powerlessness where you can start to feel like a victim.  Mobilizing your anger in healthy healing and proactive ways, is the way through this.  Take that anger and move it physically or write about it. Write in your journal, write a blog or an article, or write poetry about your rage. If you are comfortable with art, explore your anger through shapes and colours in drawing it out.  Find meaning in becoming an activist or a cause that can give meaning to what you think needs to change in the world. Find a therapist who can work with, handle and offer healing for your anger.  Who will stand with you, look you in the eyes and can say, “I am here, grounded and standing with you in the fullness of your anger with you in this moment”.

Anger needs to be acknowledged and seen to be healed. You will be surprised at how calming it can be, to be met in your anger. Then, once the anger is opened up and has moved through your system, the grief will have an opportunity to flow out and cleanse the wound, pain and initial break in the heart.  Again, this stage needs to be honoured and nurtured with gentleness.  There can be no time limits to healing a broken heart.  The anger and grief can also come and go in waves, back and forth, slowly becoming less if you don’t resist it or hold it back and give yourself permission to just be with each emotion.  It helps to know that you understand that this is a process and that you are allowing yourself the space and time your heart needs to heal and let go of what you thought you had or was real.  If you do find yourself lingering in some of these more negative stages, it is best then to get professional help.

The next stage is to find forgiveness with the betrayer.  This is a process that is about understanding a larger picture and choosing to let go of the hurt and pain that you are carrying so that you can move on and allow yourself to open up again for something else or new to come in again.  If you don’t let go and forgive, then a part of you closes off and stops being able to receive.  It is truly essential that you realize this and learn forgiveness at some point, but not before you are able to feel and go through the truth of your hurt and anger stages.  Forgiveness is not about saying what they did was OK.  It’s about letting go of your own hurt & anger that blocks you from opening up.  Again, professional help is out there to support you, but you have to reach for it to take it in.

It can also help if the other party can take responsibility for the betrayal and offer remorse or some form of amends for their actions.  If this is truly there, then it is possible to remain in a relationship with this person or collective group and continue a healing relationship that is an opportunity to grow into a new, healthier, form together.

Perhaps you need some support to heal a relationship where you felt betrayed.  I also work well with couples who are both ready to take responsibility for their actions and forge a new healthy and healing relationship.  Please contact me either by phone or email, or click the contact tab at the bottom of the screen if you are reading this post on the website and let’s find out if we might be a good match to work together.

I welcome your feedback. Please feel free to leave a link back to your own blog too via the commentluv feature here on the site.

Ingrid

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