I’ve been betrayed—severely. Thank God. Betrayal is such a defining experience—it lays your heart bare, and that’s a bloody, good thing. Bloody good.

Betrayal shows precisely where you are weak and where you are mighty—in one fell swoop.
Betrayal shows your loyalty.
Betrayal reveals the lies you’ve been telling yourself.

Being betrayed by another person is often (not always,) a reflection of how you were betraying yourself. It’s a lie looking back at you.

This is how it unfolds, starting with the pinnacle scene: You realize you’ve been deceived. <Insert dramatic soundtrack.> Then you realize that you’ve been a fool. <Camera close up on your face as astonishment, rage, and revelation surfaces.> How did I not see this coming? I didn’t want to see this coming. Uh… I kinda knew this was coming.

And that’s when we want to yell Cut! But the plot hasn’t been fully revealed. We need to find out: Why’d you play the fool? Why couldn’t you admit that betrayal was a possibility? Why the denial?

Denial masks our fear.

It might be this simple: You were a fool because you were scared. You played dumb to get what you thought you needed. You kept one eye closed so you wouldn’t have to face the pain of the situation. (How sh-tty it really was…selling yourself short. How you were using each other to numb out or get ahead [You’re never “really” getting ahead if you’re using someone else to do it.] How badly you wanted to fill the hole in your soul.)

So maybe you get blindsided. Then you see that, maybe, you had a part to play in the betrayal (which in no way whatsoever lets the betrayer off the hook for being, say, connivingly parasitic, long-term deceptive, or a manipulative ass face.) And then…you see that beneath the surface, you were afraid of something. Zoom in further.

Afraid of what? The answer to that is deeply personal. And that’s where you change your betrayed story. One of the most damaging aspects of being betrayed is that you question your ability to make good choices. When you see what you were scared of, you neutralize the fear, and when you do that, you can regain some trust in yourself.

All Love,

Danielle LaPorte is an invited member of Oprah’s SuperSoul 100, a group who, in Oprah Winfrey’s words, “is uniquely connecting the world together with a spiritual energy that matters.” She is author of White Hot Truth: Clarity for keeping it real on your spiritual path—from one seeker to another. The Fire Starter Sessions, and The Desire Map: A Guide To Creating Goals With Soul—the book that has been translated into 8 languages, evolved into a yearly day planner system, a top 10 iTunes app, and an international workshop program with licensed facilitators in 15 countries. Named one of the “Top 100 Websites for Women” by Forbes, millions of visitors go to DanielleLaPorte.com every month for her daily #Truthbombs and what’s been called “the best place online for kickass spirituality.” A speaker, a poet, a painter, and a former business strategist and Washington-DC think tank exec, Entrepreneur Magazine calls Danielle, “equal parts poet and entrepreneurial badass…edgy, contrarian…loving and inspired.” Her charities of choice are Eve Ensler’s VDay: a global movement to end violence against women and girls, and charity: water, setting out to bring safe drinking water to everyone in the world. She lives in Vancouver, BC with her favourite philosopher, her son. You can find her @daniellelaporte and just about everywhere on social media.