When someone you love and trust betrays you, it can make you doubt your sanity. Betrayal can be so traumatic you may even show early signs of PTSD. Think of the times a spouse discovers that their partner is cheating on them or into porn addiction. Or when a parent realizes a child is an alcoholic or drug addict. Such discoveries make you go through shock, denial, and other long-term emotional scars that strain the relationship. So, what is betrayal trauma? And, how can you manage and heal from it? Let’s have a detailed look.

Understanding Betrayal Trauma

Betrayal trauma occurs when people or systems we trust or rely on for survival violate that trust and emotional wellbeing. Ideally, we feel the urge to end a relationship with anyone who betrays us. Still, if you are in an attachment relationship where you rely on the betrayer to meet specific needs, walking away is not feasible.

It is this attachment to someone or an institution that you know is betraying you, that triggers deep emotional wounds. Typical examples of betrayal trauma include child neglect and abuse, sexual abuse, and infidelity between spouses.

6 Signs You Are Undergoing Betrayal Trauma

Betrayal trauma makes us question ourselves and our partners’ motives. It also triggers mood swings, irritability, memory loss, dissociation, isolation, lack of intimacy, and engaging in activities that distract us. Below are some additional tell-tale physiological, emotional, and mental signs of betrayal trauma: –

#1: Feeling Unsafe

When you identify the relationship with your spouse, friend, or workmates as a lie, the deception violates your trust. Moreover, you begin to question your judgment about other relationships you may have at the moment.

Emotional insecurity makes us: –

• Struggle to open up on hard topics
• Get defensive when criticized
• Snoop around for clues or anything suspicious
• Agreeing to everything
• Blaming a partner for everything
• Faking happy moments

#2: Gaslighting Partners

Now, partners living a double life will do all they can to keep their other relationships a secret. At times, they may gaslight their spouses to make them question their perception of reality. For example, they claim you are overreacting when you ask about the numerous withdrawals from the family bank account. Likewise, they may blame you for triggering their short tempers, saying you changed after having kids.

#3: Self-Blame

Now, betrayal trauma makes us look inwards for answers. In hindsight, we end up blaming ourselves for being too busy and overlooking the red flags. You know, your partner’s sudden controlling behavior, deceit, gaslighting, verbal or physical abuse, and concerns by your friends or family members.

But since you love and trust your partner, wishful thinking and infatuation make you overlook all these tell-tale signs that something is amiss. Consequently, we blame ourselves, saying if only we were more attractive, loving, or had more money, the betrayal wouldn’t have happened.

#4: Overwhelming Secondary Guilt or Shame

If you hold a reputable leadership position in your community, church, school, or place of work, betrayal comes with overwhelming shame. Letting those around you know that you’re going through a divorce, or your child is a drug addict, or your parent is facing theft charges ruins the picture-perfect reputation you have. In addition, your feel ashamed for crying or not being strong enough for your kids during this challenging phase.

#5: Physical Distress

Typical physical signs of betrayal trauma include: –

• Sudden panic attacks
• Stomach distress
• Sleep problems
• Anxiety & depression
• Easily prone to panic attacks by external triggers
• Nightmares
• Poor hygiene
• Tiredness

Some physiological effects of betrayal trauma like tiredness and stomach upsets may resolve after a few weeks. Others like anxiety and depression can escalate into mental health complications unless addressed early.  

#6: Self-Destructive Impulses

When undergoing betrayal trauma, you become vulnerable to negative impulses like: –

• Having suicidal thoughts or attempts
• Alcohol and drug misuse
• Excessive smoking
• Chronic self-injury like hair pulling, self-cutting, & nail-biting
• Compulsive gambling, gaming, or shopping
• Binge eating

Most victims know they are self-destructive. However, the urge to harm themselves is beyond their control.

Managing Betrayal Trauma

#1: Speak Up

Join community groups or online support forums and share your painful experiences with others. Doing so helps you know that you are not alone. Plus, you access valuable resources to help you cope with the trauma.

#2: Acknowledge Your Emotions

Start by forgiving yourself for being vulnerable to the abuser. Next, practice mindful meditation to help you release your negative emotions and begin your healing process. Journalizing how you feel each day will help you pinpoint the triggers in your self-harm behaviors or what you need to focus on in your healing journey.

#3: Practice Self-Love

Is your lifestyle self-destructive? Here are some self-love practices you can start right away: –

• Practice clean eating
• Quit smoking
• Join your local gym
• Go for a massage or forest bath
• Take up a new hobby

Self-love helps us rediscover ourselves, boosting our self-esteem.

#4: Set Boundaries

Setting healthy boundaries after your spouse, friend, or colleague hurts you helps to achieve a sense of safety when around them. It is a necessary coping mechanism when you have no way of ending the relationship. Hence, you can: –

• Review your expectations from the relationship
• State what you can and cannot tolerate in the relationship
• Discuss what you consider acceptable financial boundaries
• Redefine how much friends and extended family can interfere with the relationship
• Define what you consider as private

#5: Seek Professional Help

Betrayal trauma presents itself in a multilayer form that is best dealt with by an experienced professional. Indeed, an inexperienced family member may re-traumatize you by saying such things as “Did you stop getting intimate after having kids?” Also, talk to an experienced family therapist or counselor about how the trauma affects your quality of life.

Conclusion

What is betrayal trauma to you? Well, if you experience an attachment injury when a friend, spouse, or colleague breaks the mutual trust you have, you may develop deep wounds that take time to heal. If your gut feelings tell your partner or parent is gaslighting you, they could be doing so to distract you from their deception. Likewise, if you feel unsafe, struggle with guilt, self-blame, or self-harm behaviors, seek professional help to heal from the trauma. Also, share your experience, rediscover yourself, and set firm boundaries to give you some peace of mind in this challenging time.

Your inner child is the child that lives within you – the “part” of your personality that stores all your memories, feelings, needs, and attitudes towards yourself and others. When we are connected to our inner child, our life is filled with joy, playfulness, curiosity, inspiration, and happiness. And when we get disconnected from our inner child, we feel tired, depressed, bored with life, and sick. If you feel lost in life, tired, depressed, unhappy, or life doesn’t bring you joy anymore, it’s time to nurture and re-parent your inner child! In this article, I want to share with you the most powerful inner child affirmations that I’ve discovered throughout my practice of being a healer for over 20 years. I will also explain how these affirmations work and give you some helpful tips on how to use them most effectively.

Read on.

Inner Child Healing

Your inner child is the child that lives within your psyche. It is important that we stay connected with this sensitive part of ourselves. When we are connected to our inner child, we feel excited, enthusiastic, and inspired by life. 

If in childhood some of our important psychological needs were not met, then our inner child “gets stuck” and can not continue to grow and develop. Inner child healing can help us to face our fears and insecurities that were created in our childhood and heal these inner wounds.

Unfortunately, we live in a society that forces us to suppress our inner child. But the truth is that while most adults are physically “grown-up,” they never reach emotional and psychological maturity. In other words, most “adults” are not really adults from a maturity perspective. Instead, most people remain in a state of childish fears, anger, and trauma that has festered in the subconscious for decades.

The lack of a conscious attitude to our own inner child is one of the main causes of serious problems that we see in modern society. From environmental abuse to self-abuse, we have completely separated ourselves from our innocence and true nature.

Therefore, it will be right to say that inner child healing is an urgent matter for each and every person. It is through our inner healing that we can heal the world and mature as a society.

There are many different ways to do your inner child healing work. Here, in SOLANCHA Magazine, we published many different articles that can help you to understand how inner child healing works. Here are some of them:

6 Powerful Ways to Embrace, Heal and Re-parent Your Inner Child
Inner Child Healing: 4 Surprisingly Effective Practices
8 Signs You Have a Wounded Inner Child
Inner Child Quotes: 50 Powerful Sayings That’ll Remind You to Reparent Yours
Inner Child Healing Practice: 7 Questions to Ask Your Inner Child

In this article, I want to share with you one of the tools that you can use in your inner child healing work. This tool is inner child affirmations.

What are Inner Child Affirmations?

Inner child healing affirmations are short phrases containing a verbal inner child healing formula that, when repeated many times, activates the healing process in your subconscious, contributing to the improvement of your psycho-emotional background and stimulating positive changes in your life.

How Do Affirmations Work?

Every thought you think and every word you speak is an affirmation. All of your self-talk, your internal dialogue, is a stream of affirmations. You are using affirmations every moment whether you know it or not. You are affirming and creating your reality with every word you say and every thought you think.

To change our life, we need to change our thoughts. There is a link between the quality of our life and the thoughts we think daily. By repeating affirmations, you create positive vibrations in your subconscious mind which brings positive transformations into your body.

With a strong focus and concentration on positive thoughts, your mind can heal even the most serious diseases.

Affirmations are like seeds planted in soil. Poor soil provides poor growth. Rich soil gives abundant growth. The more you choose to think thoughts that make you feel good, the quicker the affirmations work.

50+ Inner Child Affirmations

Now let me share with you inner child affirmations. These affirmations will help you nurture and re-parent your inner child, activate healing processes, and become more joyful.

Here they are:

1. Today I comfort my inner child.
2. I am entering into a completely safe, healing space now.
3. I accompany my inner child through the healing process.
4. I love my inner child unconditionally.
5. I listen to my inner child’s needs and take care of them.
6. I trust my inner child.
7. My inner child deserves to have a voice and I listen to that voice.
8. I respect my childlike innicence.
9. I validate my inner child’s feelings.
10. The child in me is very much alive. It is a happy, joyous and fun loving child.
11. I re-parent my inner child with love, understanding and compassion.
12. I freely express my playfulness.
13. I love being playful and friendly.
14. I let go of pain and focus on my inner child healing.
15. My inner child helps me become more in alignment with my true self.
16. I create an atmosphere of peace and safety within myself.
17. __________(your name here), you are free to make your own choices. Live your own life.
18. I accept my childhood experiences/trauma and let it heal.
19. I receive love and kindness with ease.
20. Boundary setting helps me to create safety within my life.
21. I am ensuring my inner-child feels safe through my actions.
22. I release the feeling of isolation.
23. I deeply love and fully accept myself and all my experiences.
24. I release the feeling of guilt, hurt and shame.
25. I allow myself to accept positive thoughts and words about me.
26. I deserve to be respected and treated with love.
27. I ensure my inner-child of his/her safety by using words of love, compassion, and kindness.
28. A feeling of peace and tranquility comforts my being.
29. ___________, (your name here) I love you, I care about you and I accept you as you are.
30. I am protected and safe.
31. Along with my inner child, I am whole and complete.
32. I am well connecting with my inner child.
33. I am surrounded by the all-loving energy of the Universe and I am taken care of.
34. I am supported.
35. I am adored.
36. I am loved.
37. I am protected.
38. I am taken care of.
39. It is safe for me to express myself.
40. I am nurtured.
41. It is safe for me to be me.
42. I am nourished.
43. It is safe for me to feel.
44. It is safe for me to love and to be loved.
45. It is safe for me to play and to have fun.
46. It is safe for me to give and to receive.
47. It is safe for me to be happy and joyful.
48. It is safe for me to relax.
49. It is safe for me to be close to others.
50. It is safe for me to learn and grow.
51. I am loved no matter what.
52. I deserve to blossom and flourish.
53. I deserve to live a wonderful life.
54. I am now fully ‘me’.
55. I am healed.
56. I am now stepping forward into my new life – a happy life of abundance, peace, and joy!

How To Work With Inner Child Affirmations?

1. Write down or make a printout of all the inner child affirmations you’re going to work with.
2. Before starting to repeat your inner child affirmations, make sure to straighten your back, relax your shoulders, feel confident. You want to remove any pressure from your spine and make your energy flow freely and smoothly.
3. Say your inner child affirmations out loud one after another, slowly and confidently.
4. While saying the inner child affirmations look in the mirror or in the sky, or simply close your eyes and focus on your inner child image. Alternatively, you can use your childhood picture and look at it while saying the affirmations.
5. Say the affirmations at least 8 times each.
6. Do not use too many affirmations all at once in one session.
7. Be consistent: practice the inner child affirmations on a daily basis.

The Bottom Line

Inner child affirmations are a technique that contributes to our childhood trauma healing. When practiced daily along with other inner child healing practices, it helps you to re-parent and nourish your inner child, become whole again, and love yourself the way you are with all your experiences.

Childhood trauma arises when we go through overwhelming stress that exceeds our ability to cope during our formative years. It could be the death of a loved one or a pet, rejection by a close friend, or physical, sexual, and emotional abuse. Stress generates negative emotions that can distort the way you perceive yourself or others. These incorrect perceptions and shadow emotions linger on into our adult life unless you take steps to heal your inner child. So, what are the signs of childhood trauma? And, what can you do to heal and live a fulfilling adult life? Let’s discuss more below.

Common Signs that You Are Struggling with Childhood Trauma

#1: Dissociative Behavior

A childhood trauma survivor finds lots of things in their environment as triggers to re-experiencing the trauma. For example, the sound of a dog barking may remind you of an abusive parent who kept dogs. That sound will make you disconnect from others as your mind drifts back to the negative memories.

The dissociation and soul loss happen as a subconscious way for the survivor to cope. Mostly, it is those random moments when you are unable to connect to your thoughts, identity, memories, or feelings because, as the brain remembers how you felt, it triggers your body to freeze.

#2: Difficulty Concentrating

Do you find yourself asking those around you to repeat what they tell you? Your poor concentration or short attention span may come from your childhood traumatic experiences. Here, the trauma disrupts attention processes leading to gaps in your memory, blacking out, or difficulty maintaining your train of thought.

In turn, you struggle to keep a job, study, have conversations, or stay in a long-term relationship. Attention impairment can be frustrating. And, those around you may see you as arrogant. Yet, it is your mind crying out to you to deal with the unhealed childhood trauma.

#3: Extreme Desire to Stay in Control

Are you the type of person who plans for everything? And, do you get frustrated when things don’t go the way you expect? This extreme need for control is an indication of your distrust for yourself and the world in general. It stems from a childhood traumatic experience that left you feeling helpless and vulnerable.

Hence, over the years, you opt to micro-manage every aspect of your life and worry about things beyond your control.

#4: Extreme Fear of Failure

Having a certain degree of fear is healthy. It triggers your survival instincts, pushing you to make choices that get you out of danger. Often, childhood trauma can make you have a negative belief in yourself and internalize your shortcomings.

At this point, you develop unhealthy fear that outweighs your motivation to succeed. You will shy away from opportunities and stop being creative. Plus, it leads to perfectionism and insecurities.

#5: Fear of Success

Are you always holding yourself back from getting something you want? Is it that you fear what will happen once you get it? This fear of success is the fear of losing what you anticipate getting, even before you get it.

If this habit resonates with you, it could be an indication of your repressed childhood trauma. Think of it as a tendency to unconsciously sabotage your chances of success, originating from when a parent put you up for adoption or when you lost a loved one at a young age.

#6: Struggling To Ask for Help

After undergoing any form of mistreatment or abuse, many people struggle to ask for help. These individuals are too afraid to reach out to someone else, hence, preferring to suffer in silence. The fear of rejection, being seen as weak, or denied by those around them makes it impossible for the wounded person to speak out.

#7: Anger and Self-Harm

Do you lash out at people? And, when dealing with an issue, do you prefer isolating yourself from the rest of your family? Unhealed childhood trauma can cause you to become emotional, volatile, and overly sensitive. Further, you may take out the anger on yourself by abusing food, drugs, and alcohol or having suicidal tendencies.

Introspective & Spiritual Practices for Healing from Childhood Trauma

Identifying the above signs of childhood trauma is your first step towards getting the help you need to heal. Next, I share some practices you can pursue in your healing journey: –

#1: Acknowledge and recognize the trauma

Often, we tend to deny a traumatic experience, hoping it will disappear. Yet, it creates shadow emotions that disrupt your lives when we least expect it. Start your healing journey by accepting yourself as a former victim of childhood trauma. Acceptance is not about justifying the trauma. Instead, it is deciding that you want to deal with it.   

#2: Cry

If you are holding onto emotional pain and are struggling with anger or drug abuse, release these suppressed emotions through crying therapy. Emotional tears will soothe you and release feel-good chemicals that improve your moods instantly.

#3: Let go of your victim mentality

Here, you aim to reclaim control of your life by making choices based on who you are today, not your past pain.

#4: Ask for help

Here, you want to connect and share your experiences with other childhood trauma survivors. Build healthy relationships. Nurture healthy habits.

What bad habits do you have as your way to escape from your pain?

Start replacing them with good ones. Start by identifying the triggers. Keep yourself busy all the time. Also, decide on a substitute for the bad habit. Then, hold yourself accountable to a close friend or family member. Note that some habits like alcohol and drug abuse require professional intervention. For this, work with a therapist or your local support group to get the help you need.

#5: Give yourself time to heal

It takes time to let go and replace misconceptions, poor coping mechanisms, and shadow emotions from childhood. Journalize your healing journey and celebrate small wins.

Conclusion

Is childhood trauma holding you back from achieving your full potential? The out-of-control emotions, misconceptions about ourselves and those around us, or poor coping habits that leave us feeling helpless, ashamed, anxious, and depressed. If you recognize the tell-tale signs of childhood trauma in your life, it could be your inner child trying to tell you that all is not well. Then, make a conscious decision to seek help and start your healing journey.