405. The psychology of betrayal
The Psychology of your 20s
iHeartPodcasts
4.8 • 1.7K Ratings
🗓️ 9 April 2026
⏱️ 44 minutes
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Summary
Betrayal doesn’t just ‘hurt your feelings.’ It shatters your nervous system, hijacks your sense of reality, and rewires your brain for fear and hypervigilance. We can be betrayed - or betray someone else - in a myriad of ways, with life-shattering results. In this episode, we explore the psychological impact of betrayal, delve into the reasons people betray us, and explore ways we can heal.
We explore:
- Why betrayal can appear in many forms
- How the act of being betrayed affects our brain
- Why someone might betray us
- Betrayal blindness and institutional betrayal
- Why the betrayal grief cycle is similar to losing a loved one
- How we can heal, move on, and learn to trust ourselves again
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello everybody, I'm Jemma Speak and welcome back to the psychology of your 20s, the podcast |
| 0:10.2 | where we talk through the biggest changes, moments and transitions of our 20s and what they mean |
| 0:16.7 | for our psychology. |
| 0:23.9 | Hello everybody. |
| 0:25.2 | Welcome back to the show. |
| 0:26.5 | Welcome back to the podcast. |
| 0:28.5 | It is so great to have you here back for another episode. |
| 0:32.1 | Today, we are talking about one of the most debilitating and painful experiences I think a person can go through. |
| 0:41.0 | Betrayal. Not just heartbreak, not just disappointment, not just a fight, but the moment someone |
| 0:47.2 | you trusted proves themselves capable of hurting you in a manner, in a way that you never imagined. The moment really that somebody |
| 0:57.0 | takes everything that you have given them. Time, kindness, energy, love, trust, and they say, |
| 1:06.6 | this means nothing to me, I'm going to go and do what I want anyways. It is a pain like no other, |
| 1:11.4 | because betrayal doesn't just change how you relate and how you see that person. It changes how |
| 1:16.5 | you see everyone. It changes how you approach all future relationships, platonic, familial, romantic, |
| 1:23.2 | or otherwise, and it changes how you see yourself. There is a science, a psychology to this pain |
| 1:30.1 | that really helps capture how earth-shattering moments like this can be and how they influence |
| 1:37.0 | our psychology and who we go forward as people. So today we're going to lay it all out there |
| 1:42.0 | from the response of your nervous system to betrayal trauma theory, betrayal blindness, the role of shattered assumptions, but then also the seven stages of healing from betrayal and the silver lining, the optimism that we're going to end with, that betrayal is something you can recover from. |
| 2:01.2 | So we have a lot to cover today. |
| 2:03.6 | If you have been through this, if you are struggling with the recent betrayal, I hope this episode |
| 2:08.1 | helps you, even in the tiniest of ways. |
| 2:11.4 | Without further ado, let's get into it. |
... |
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