Healing Betrayal Trauma with Accelerated Resolution Therapy

Show Notes

Betrayal in relationships, discovering cheating, or realizing the person is not who you thought they were. All of these are painful relational experiences that can take quite the journey to recover from, but it doesn’t have to be painful or long with the help of Accelerated Resolution Therapy.

Key takeaways from the episode:

• Learn what betrayal trauma is and how it shows up in relationships

• Discover the emotional impact of betrayal trauma on your own sense of trust

• Understand the role of “Protector” for future betrayal

• Find out how Accelerated Resolution Therapy (ART) can address the root wounds and relieve traumatic responses.

Katie K. May is a therapist, group practice owner, speaker, author, and consultant. As a Linehan Board-Certified Therapist and Master Accelerated Resolution Therapy Practitioner, her expertise shines in her work with depressed teens, the LGBTQ community, and parents dealing with the complex emotions surrounding their child's mental health challenges while reimagining their future. 

Katie's deep passion lies in helping "black sheep," neurodivergent individuals, and those with traumatic backgrounds, find their sense of belonging. Together, she collaborates with her clients to create personalized coping strategies that empower them to navigate overwhelming emotions and build a life of connection and purpose.

Noteworthy quotes from this episode:

[07:44] "I can help my clients regulate and  restructure their beliefs about who they can trust and how they can trust themselves and really activate that self trust again and decrease the self blame."

[31:00] "It is typical in betrayal trauma for your body to go into overdrive and to overcorrect. If you were trusting before, [you may] be completely untrusting as a way to protect yourself which is an extreme that is intended to protect you, but in fact, likely doesn't serve you at all."

Connect with Katie

Website: creativehealingphilly.com 

Instagram: @creative_healing

Facebook: facebook.com/creativehealingphilly

TikTok: @teensupportcenter

Connect with Paige Bond

Instagram: @paigebondcoaching

Facebook: @paigebondcoaching

TikTok: @paigebondcoaching

Website: https://paigebond.com

Paige Bond hosts the Stubborn Love podcast, is a Licensed Marriage Therapist, and a Polyamory Relationship Coach. Her mission is to help people-pleasing millennials navigate non-monogamy so they can tame their jealousy and love with ease. Her own journey from feeling lonely, insecure, and jealous to feeling empowered and reassured is what fuels her passion to help other people-pleasers to conquer jealousy and embrace love.

Free Jealousy Workbook:

⁠⁠⁠http://www.paigebond.com/calm-the-chaos-jealousy-workbook-download⁠⁠⁠

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Disclaimer: This podcast and communication through our email are not meant to serve as professional advice or therapy. If you are in need of mental health support, you are encouraged to connect with a licensed mental health professional to receive the support needed.

Mental Health Resources: National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255SAMHSA’s National Helpline: 1-800-662-HELP (4357)Crisis Text Line: Text HOME to 741741 for free, 24/7 crisis counseling.

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Transcript

(generated by AI - please excuse errors)

[00:01:00] Paige Bond: Welcome to another episode of Stubborn Love. I'm your host, Paige Bond. And today we have therapist, Katie May, who is a Linehan board certified therapist and a master accelerated resolution therapy practitioner. So I'm super excited to talk to her about all things ART, specifically talking about betrayal trauma, the wounds around that.

Uh, I'm just going to cut right to the chase, Katie thank you so much for being here today. Why don't you go ahead and introduce yourself to listeners, let them know how you became a therapist and specializing in what you do. 

[00:01:42] Katie May: Yeah. Thank you for having me, Paige. So like you said, my name is Katie May.

I am a group practice owner and a therapist. So I own a practice in the greater Philadelphia area where we specialize in teens and young adults specifically, mostly teens. And the majority of the work that I do is around suicidal and self harming teens who eventually become young adults so I've been working with some young adults as well.

And so. You know, it's been really cool to watch them grow and change and stabilize from these really life threatening behaviors, which led me to doing more deep trauma work and accelerated resolution therapy, like we're talking about today, to get to the root of some of those wounds that have been driving these bigger, more externalized behaviors, and allows me to do really deep and holistic work with them in an exciting way.

[00:02:28] Paige Bond: Oh, I'm so excited. It sounds really, really impactful. and I love how you talk about getting to the root of things because I sometimes feel like people can end up in therapy and you're in it for a long period of time before you get to the root of things. And from what I've understood as both a client of and a practitioner of ART, it helps you get there real, real fast to that root. 

[00:02:53] Katie May: Yeah. I would like to say that's one of my superpowers as a therapist is the ability to get to the root quickly. It's just the way that my brain works in, you know, patterns and assessment, but you're right with ART, once we get there, once we realize what it is, what's the trauma, what's the wound that's driving these behaviors or this dissatisfaction, like the resolution is super fast.

[00:03:15] Paige Bond: Yeah, beautiful. Well, why don't we get started by talking a little bit more about betrayal trauma? First, can you help define that for listeners? What is betrayal trauma? 

[00:03:27] Katie May: Betrayal trauma, the way that I see it and that I've been working with it, is when you've had this experience, in particular interpersonal or relational experience, when you've trusted someone, when you think you've known someone, when you've either trusted someone with information or within the context of a relationship, and then there's this moment when you find out that they are not who you thought they were.

Maybe they said something that they were supposed to keep secret. Maybe they've just presented as a completely different person than you thought they were when you started this relationship with them. So for my belief there's this moment of shock that you experience when this person in front of you is not the person that you thought that they were, and there's this whole radical shift in how you see yourself how you see others how you see the world because of that trauma.

[00:04:18] Paige Bond: Oh, I mean this is landing in a way for me and now that you're kind of explaining it in that way of defining it. It really doesn't, only have to be within like romantic relationships, which is what I usually specialize in. 

And that's really, really painful to not recognize the person that you were like coming to know for so long or for so short, you know, who knows how long that you were getting to know them. Right. And You know, what, what is usually happening when people like get that initial shock of the betrayal trauma?

Like, what is the aftermath? What's going on there for that person? 

[00:04:58] Katie May: Yeah, so this is something that I fell into just noticing patterns in the treatment that I was doing again looking at these young adults who are in relationships. And I just saw it happening over and over again what I started noticing is that it was romantic relationships but I can give examples otherwise as well but in these cases it was romantic relationships where they were with someone.

And then at some point in the relationship, they realized that this was not the person that they thought it was, whether they were demonstrating radically different behaviors, or there was a infidelity or something like that. So this moment of shock happens. The fallout from that really is like a version of PTSD.

There's a hyper vigilance. There's this high focus on scanning my environment and my relationships for danger. And sometimes what I've noticed is that that also leads to this paranoia dissociation, not being able to trust my surroundings and the other side of that. Not being able to trust myself. If I believed and trusted this person for six months, a year, two years, and they were not who I thought they were, how can I be a safe judge of character to engage in other relationships?

[00:06:07] Paige Bond: Ooh, that one hits me so hard because I'll see so many clients who even beat themselves up for, you know, being in relation with someone like that and kind of like are really mean to themselves about it. Like, how could I have trusted that person? Like, how did I not see the red flags? Actually, this was like the exact conversation I had with my therapist when I had some betrayal trauma about a friendship ending.

I was like, you know, I'm so confused. Like, I'm a therapist. I should be able to know these things. I should have saw the red flags or signs. And she was telling me, well, Paige, sometimes there really aren't red flags or signs because, you know, that's how sometimes people show up in relationship and you do believe it.

And there's really not a good reason to beat yourself up over trying to trust and create relation with someone else. What do you tell people who are hard on themselves after a betrayal like that? 

[00:07:05] Katie May: The way that I look at it is that self blame is such a strong symptom of trauma, right? So we tend to blame ourselves when we're having this traumatic experience and our body is holding all of these emotions.

So I tend to believe that I can't really tell them anything. I mean, we can check the facts. We can look for evidence in other relationships and other areas of life. But when you are in that heightened experience of the fallout of betrayal trauma, you're holding that trauma in your body. So that's where accelerated resolution therapy comes in that we're clearing out the body sensations, the emotions related to that betrayal, so that then we can help our clients or that I can help my clients regulate and restructure their beliefs about who they can trust and how they can trust themselves and really activate that self trust again and decrease the self blame.

So I don't think we could convince them otherwise when you're in that state, right? 

[00:07:59] Paige Bond: Yeah, it's kind of like, I imagine a deer in headlights and I'm trying to imagine saying like, Hey, calm down. There's not a car coming at you and there's like light shining in its eye. We cannot convince that deer in headlights otherwise, they are feeling a very visceral reaction to a rational or irrational trigger making them feel that way.

[00:08:20] Katie May: And I would imagine that it would be highly invalidating if someone was coming to me saying, look, I've been with this person for two years and I thought they were loving and attentive and trustworthy. And then I found out that they were out there doing drugs and sleeping with other people. I'm making up examples.

These aren't real examples, but you know, doing things like that. So, and I didn't have a clue. So how am I supposed to trust that I'm a good judge of character? How am I supposed to trust other people when they never showed that to me? If I were to say, well, let's look at evidence that that's not true.

Like, I don't know that I'd be able to build trust with my clients because I'd be another example of someone who wasn't showing up authentically for them. 

[00:08:55] Paige Bond: Yeah. You got to meet them where they're at. You know, one thing I was thinking of for people who are going through that period of betrayal trauma and wanting to work it out with that other person who betrayed them, who hurt them.

 I work with a lot of non monogamous clients and unbeknownst to one or both partners at some point in the relationship, one of them is bringing up the idea of Opening up their previously monogamous relationship. And so there will be often this feeling of betrayal and again, it's sometimes no harm to that partner.

You know, the, some people are just finding out more about themselves as they age and we evolve as people and that's how it comes out, but it can feel like a betrayal because they've been with that person. And now they're finding out this new news that their partner wants to shift into something else.

So I'm wondering, do you see people going through betrayal trauma and working through these things with you? Do you see people come out on the other side and heal these relationships with people to move forward in a way that is still connecting? 

[00:10:08] Katie May: I can speak to that in the context of the parent teen relationship because I have seen this play out, betrayal, mistrust, in the context of let's say a parent reading a teen's diary to try and get information because their teen is depressed or engaging in these you know, Um, life threatening behaviors, and they don't know what to do.

And so there is this huge breach of trust that happens in those situations that, of course, we have to work through because if you're 15, 16, 17, you're still living at home. So we need to figure it out. And in those cases, I think that it's more about the communication and the accurate expression, which is probably true for non monogamous couples as well, is that any relationship is transactional.

So When you do something when you're depressed and cutting and hiding things from me, it triggers my anxiety. And so I'm doing things to try and decrease my anxiety and to ensure your safety. And when I do that, it triggers your betrayal trauma. So we're going back and forth like this, right? And so to repair, we have to do the same thing, but in the opposite direction.

And so helping The one person repair harm. Hey, I was really scared. I was feeling insecure. I wasn't sure if you were safe and okay, what I did was wrong. And I broke your trust and here's where I was coming from. And then being able to demonstrate building trust again. And I would imagine that it's the same for, for a couple, because, you know, we do evolve and change over time.

And what we know about ourselves now, we didn't know about ourselves 10 years ago. And that doesn't mean that it's a betrayal if we're evolving, but if we're having that direct and open communication along the way, and if the other person has the space to be able to say, wow, I feel really insecure.

I'm afraid I'm going to lose you. What if you like someone better than me? And then the other person can hold that and receive that and respond to that. I think there's an opportunity there to repair any harm that's done rather than it end in a Break up all together.

[00:12:04] Paige Bond: I think that's such a beautiful way that you put that in these different scenarios of being able to approach repair after a betrayal.

So thank you for addressing that. 

[00:12:14] Katie May: Sure. 

[00:12:14] Paige Bond: so let's get started and talk a little bit more about ART. You know, you talked about how we can address the root wounds and you mentioned also addressing like these core beliefs that we have about ourselves. So can you kind of go into like what the process would look like using accelerated resolution therapy to help with betrayal trauma?

[00:12:35] Katie May: Yeah. So I will use the example of, because this has happened many times where someone, like I said, becomes hypervigilant there, they have a high focus on scanning their environment for danger and it becomes paranoia. Everyone is out to get me. Somebody is going to hurt me. So when someone's coming in with that presentation, what I tend to see is that our paranoia is a projection of our own shame.

It's something I learned in grad school, but I find it true again and again. And so when I see that pattern, we can step back. We need to zoom out a little bit. And I think that's the place where therapists and clients can get stuck is that they're coming in with a symptom as if that's the problem. But we need to zoom out a little bit.

We may be looking at a petal of the flower instead of the root. So really stepping back and looking at what's driving this, where is this coming from? Um, when was the first time that you may have remembered feeling this way? So being able to sit with how our body is telling us that we feel and then bridging to what is driving that behavior?

I feel like I'm getting lost in the weeds here, but you know, and then treating the trauma. That's the root of that. For example, it could be when I was seven years old my dad yelled at me because I didn't clean my room and I felt a lot of shame. And so, you know, things that don't seem attached sometimes are attached and we need to be willing to be open and flexible to that.

And sometimes it's our clients that. Need a little bit more support understanding the connection between those things. And sometimes it is the trauma or the betrayal itself that's the trauma. So being open to all, all avenues. 

[00:14:10] Paige Bond: Yeah, I think that's probably both the best thing that you can do as client and therapist providing the ART, because sometimes the brain just shows us things that are totally unexpected in these sessions, right?

Things that we don't think of that would apply or that would. Make these things, uh, more triggering for us, you know, for instance, I can think of, um, I, I used to have a really bad phobia of snakes, like not just in person, like watching something on the TV. I could not watch animal planet or planet earth whenever it was the desert scene and the snake would show up and it would pop out.

I would literally avert my eyes and like shield myself. I was deathly afraid of snakes and come to realize there wasn't necessarily an event that had happened between me and snakes itself, but there was an event where a person in my life in my close circle and snakeskin were involved in the two of those being involved together had really made like a visceral impact on my body of how I was perceiving, um, any association with snakes.

So I love that you brought up that it's important to just kind of be open to whatever shows up. 

[00:15:30] Katie May: Yeah, I think that at the core and I have my own phobia story like yours where it was related to being yelled at, you know, and the shame that I felt not related at all to stickers, which was the lifelong phobia that I cured in my ART practicum.

So it's so interesting how things are connected. And in the context of betrayal trauma, what I've found is a lot of times it's a deep core of feeling unlovable. And so when we've trusted someone and we've given them our heart and we've allowed them to love us. And then in some way they've showed us that what is deep at our core is our fear is actually true.

That's the shock to our system. 

[00:16:10] Paige Bond: Right, right. Now, I'm wondering if you get people who are skeptical about ART. I know that I've tried to explain it and people are like, huh, how are you supposed to feel good after that? And then they experience it and then they're like, whoa, what did you just do?

Um, but I'm wondering, For the people who may be skeptical hearing it or people you've talked to, how do you let them know a little bit more about the science behind ART or how it can just be really transformational for their healing work? 

[00:16:44] Katie May: Yeah. So I was skeptical and I'll disclose that to clients.

I mean, I am years and years trained DBT therapist, very behavioral, was skeptical of any kind of eye movement therapy and dismissed it as like, woo woo, whatever. And until I experienced it. And so when I describe ART to clients, I usually connect it with REM sleep and talk about how when we are asleep and our eyes are moving back and forth, our brain is processing using visual and metaphor, things that have happened in our day, and it's a way that we can resolve issues. And it's painless. And it's really helpful and impactful. And so I'll describe that to them. And I'll tell them how it helps them to you know, we use dbt terms like connect our emotional brain and our logical brain and really activate our wise mind, which is coming home to ourselves, finding our, our intuition, our truth, like who we are at our core.

And I think that's really appealing to people and most times I don't belabor it and I'm like, let's just dive in and see how it goes for you. And I try not to over promise which is the other thing because I think when we make it too magical, it often like has people push back. But if I say like, Hey, let's just give it a try. If it works, it works. Then I'm taking the pressure off myself and off of them and usually they're seeing this. WOW result at the end of it. 

[00:18:03] Paige Bond: Yeah. I love that. And sometimes the small little bites of ART are the best ways to get the buy in to whenever I see the client may be distressed.

I'm like, Hey, you want to try something new? Do you want to try some eye movements and just see what might feel different for you and then they do the eye movements and maybe their chest was really tight. They're like, Oh, I can breathe now. And I'm like, okay, so this might be a really good treatment option to discuss about like these certain areas in your life that you're really struggling with.

[00:18:32] Katie May: I found that people tend to choose something to work on. That's not their deepest need in their first ART session. And I also think that's similar is it's a, it's a toe in the water. It's it's less threatening and when they see the results, then they say fine I'm willing to work on my mother issues or whatever.

Like they go to the deeper level because now they know the process and they have a little bit more buy in and trust. 

[00:18:56] Paige Bond: And one thing I think that I've seen people struggle most with an ART sessions is maybe the creative aspect, which is my favorite part of about ART because you get to be so imaginative.

What would you say to a client who maybe has a bit of self doubt in that creative arena? Maybe thinking like, Oh gosh, I don't know if I can, you know, think of what to do to help me get through this set of eye movements. 

[00:19:24] Katie May: I don't know that I've experienced that on my end, um, and maybe I just haven't screened for it or asked it, and I just assume that we're ready, but I tend to give examples, and so because I work with a pretty standard population, like, very similar things come up, so I have a toolbox of very similar tools and examples and metaphors that I'll use, and that tends to be helpful, and so, you know, when we're at the point where they get to change things, me being able to say, some people have done this, Some people have done this and it can be comforting for them to have options and then also choose whatever they think is going to be helpful from there.

[00:19:59] Paige Bond: Yeah, I love that. I know there's a wide range of different types of betrayal, traumas, and very wide ranges of like the root source of it, but on average, how many sessions would you expect to see someone? For specifically one event of a betrayal trauma.

[00:20:18] Katie May: My average has been three. So we know accelerated resolution therapy. They say one to five sessions. And I typically do my whole education around like single incident, probably one session, car accident, one session. I can get you out of here. I've had some adults that I've seen with very complex trauma histories, and I've gone as high as seven sessions.

And then they were like, you know what? I'm good, I'm done. But for betrayal trauma, specifically, I've seen around three sessions to get to the different parts of it. So the actual finding out, you know, that's one trauma. Um, some of the fallout of that are reviewing the past of the relationship is another session.

And then typical like current day stressors related to maybe there's other relationships that were connected to that person. And so I've seen around three sessions in those general themes. 

[00:21:05] Paige Bond: Wow. Really fast results. I mean, when, when you think about average therapy that people are in, you know, weekly therapy three, six, 12 months, sometimes those amount of sessions add up and ART.

significantly can reduce all of that. Someone who comes in for like a betrayal trauma specifically to use ART, do they still need to have talk therapy after, or are they good? 

[00:21:35] Katie May: I think that's so person dependent. If somebody comes in specifically for a betrayal trauma, and they weren't experiencing any mood disorder type behaviors before they weren't anxious or depressed or, you know, having self esteem issues or anything like that.

Yeah, we can definitely get through the traumatic incident in that time period. But if you have other lingering things that you want to process or work on, then going back to or starting talk therapy beyond that might be helpful for you. I know I'm a person who puts myself in therapy when I have something to work on, but I don't want to be in weekly and ongoing therapy.

I actually traveled to New York to see an ART therapist. So I think for some people it works. I would say like caregivers, busy professionals, college students, you know, people that just want to get something done and then move on with life. But there are other people who really need a little bit more ongoing support or a container for that.

So I don't want to answer that there's one way. 

[00:22:33] Paige Bond: Yeah, I think that was beautifully put because everybody is different and at their own place in their own healing journey, wherever they are. So, um, I'm really curious with you being so involved in DBT and being a certified DBT therapist. I'm wondering, does that really influence the way you bring up ART?

Well, you talked about how it's the way you describe it, but is it the way you also present ART, like specific ways that influence your ART sessions at all? 

[00:23:05] Katie May: I would say that they complement each other very well. Some things that are similar between them, DBT uses a lot of metaphor, and so using metaphor throughout both of those modalities can be super helpful.

There's another element that I find really helpful is that typically in DBT, it takes us about two months to stabilize self harm or suicidal behaviors, and most therapists won't touch a trauma treatment until someone's been stabilized from those life threatening behaviors because a lot of other trauma treatments open things up and activate a person and make them more prone to more dangerous behaviors.

But because I'm ART trained, I will intersperse ART sessions within that period because I find that it actually helps to stabilize them rather than destabilize them. So we can work on first episode of self harm, first suicide attempt, things that are actually in themselves a trauma to the body and that will help to decrease those behaviors.

So they complement each other so nicely. And because that DBT element is so comprehensive, there's no fear of working on the trauma within that, that period of life threatening behaviors. Cause I'm able to wrap around the support and ensure that they have what they need. 

[00:24:20] Paige Bond: That is so amazing. And I feel like so many more people might need to be dbt certified and utilizing, right?

I mean, when I think about, you know, outpatient therapy, I think that is just such a perfect combination to be able to have that wraparound support, because especially with, you know, the younger generation growing up and the suicide rates just really soaring at this point, I mean, the, the world is just not doing okay right now.

I think that's just such a beautiful way to provide care and encompassing. Hey, I understand where you're at. I understand you're really struggling to the point of wanting to end your life or having these self harming behaviors. Let's continue working on that in Talk Therapy and utilize this other one to try to clear up some of those roots that really got you to where you're at.

Beautiful. 

[00:25:11] Katie May: It's a beautiful thing, and I feel so passionately about keeping folks out of the hospital if they don't need to be in the hospital, and I find that the combination is really effective with that. 

[00:25:24] Paige Bond: I love that so much. What other things should people know if they're maybe suffering from some sort of betrayal trauma and thinking about doing ART to clear that up for them?

[00:25:38] Katie May: I would say that if you've experienced a betrayal and you're questioning yourself and you're questioning your relationships and the world that you don't have to suffer and there is a way to get to some resolution and some peace more quickly. I think that part of what would be important about that is some radical acceptance in that

you may not be able or you won't be able to change the other person. So if the goal is I can't handle this and I want the other person to acknowledge what they've done or apologize to me, or tell me that I'm not crazy for thinking that they were one person and now they're another. Those are pieces that no therapist is going to be able to help you with because we can't change the other person.

And so I do think there's an element of acceptance that this was a betrayal. I am experiencing trauma symptoms and I didn't put myself here, but it's my responsibility to heal myself from here. 

[00:26:48] Paige Bond: I think that's some really solid. Open mindedness and way of thinking that a lot of us really struggle with doing. Right?

Because if someone does something to us, we can get in that victim mindset mentality. Um, and I'm wondering if you've seen that showing up in your practice, that kind of victim mindset. They did something to me. They hurt me. They should blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and that kind of like blocks them from that healing.

Could you kind of speak to that? Like what happens when you see that show up? 

[00:27:20] Katie May: Yeah, it absolutely shows up and it still shows up even in the sessions that I'm doing where we want the other person to acknowledge our pain. And we think that that's the road to healing. And, and so really what it is, is it comes down to options is you can choose to stay where you are and wait for them to come to you, or you can choose to move yourself forward.

And sometimes I'll, I'll throw out there, like, what's the best revenge. If that's your goal, if you want them to be hurting, is it going to hurt them more to see you stuck here waiting for them still keeping the power with them. Or for you to move forward and heal and for them to then notice you as this different person that's healed and in a better place.

And so that's, that can be really motivating for people to realize I can take my power back. I can really empower myself when I heal, but if I wait for them, they're still in the position of power. 

[00:28:08] Paige Bond: Yeah, I love how you brought up power in that because I think that can be such a really big shift in our way of healing because if we feel powerless, we're not going to feel very motivated or thinking that we have the ability to heal, that we might have to depend on somebody else to heal.

So thank you for touching on. I really appreciate that. 

[00:28:33] Katie May: Oh, I think that's where the victim mindset comes from, right? Is that we think we don't have power in the situation. So really highlighting where the power is and what we can do with it can shift that. 

[00:28:43] Paige Bond: Mm hmm. Mm hmm. You know, you've talked about some of the fast after effects of ART. Could you maybe speak to some of the long term standing effects that you've seen on people from just like the few sessions that they do, after maybe like a few months, six months or a year?

[00:29:03] Katie May: The biggest thing that I've seen both in myself and the clients that I've served with ART is stability of self. It's really getting to know yourself on this deeper level and, and trusting yourself on a deeper level. And whether that's betrayal, trauma, or something else, like knowing who you are, tuning into your body, being able to make decisions that are not about:

what I should do or what that person thinks or any outward feedback and being able to see here's how I feel, here's what I trust and know to be true is something that I see as a long term benefit of ART. And I think a big piece of that is because it is a somatic therapy it is tuning in so much with your body and recognizing the impact of your environment and relationships on your body and so.

I just think it's such a beautiful way to get to know yourself and to grow within yourself and trust yourself. And I've seen my clients report that same thing, too. 

[00:29:58] Paige Bond: Hmm. I mean, here, here, I can speak to that as well. I mean, I did three ART sessions for a breakup of mine and to see the own transformation in my inner self to be able to, and it's exactly what you just said, speaking to my inner truth, being able to voice that, doubting myself a lot less than I was previously.

And being like transformed into almost unrecognizable for what I quote should look like after a breakup. Cause I did ART probably within like two weeks after my breakup and it was just night and day what you would think seeing someone go through heartbreak because it's just shifted the perspective so much and you're not in the funk of it.

So yeah, I, I can speak to those long term standing effects too. 

[00:30:54] Katie May: And the ability to know yourself better in terms of when you're not okay, and to know what to do with that. So it is such a gift. 

[00:31:01] Paige Bond: Yeah, it truly is. Um, well, is there anything else that you have for listeners to know about before we wrap up here today?

[00:31:11] Katie May: I think the one final thought that I would say is that It is typical in betrayal trauma for your body to go into overdrive and to overcorrect, and so if you were trusting before to be completely untrusting as a way to protect yourself, so noticing the pendulum swing to the complete other side, an extreme that is intended to protect you, but in fact, likely doesn't serve you at all. And so just noticing the extremes that your body goes into in these experiences and knowing that it's there to protect you, but also it's not sustainable. 

[00:31:47] Paige Bond: Yeah. Thank you for shedding some light on that. So there's this protective mindset shift that happens for us whenever we've been hurt or betrayed.

Um, But we don't want to stay too far into that pendulum because we realize, okay, it's not going to sustainable. We're probably not going to have close relationships or fulfilling relationships if we stay in that place. How do we come back to center and be open to trusting? 

[00:32:16] Katie May: Yeah, well, I do some education with my clients that it is, it's your brain body part of you saying not anymore.

This is never going to happen again. Like, let's put this wall up or put a bubble around us so this doesn't happen anymore. And exactly what you said talking about well, if we're putting this wall up or this bubble around us, not only does it keep us safe, but it keeps everyone out. And we don't want that either.

A lot of times I'll use this really sad example, but I'll say it's like knowing that one day my dog is going to die before I die. But that doesn't mean that I don't want to experience hopefully 15 years of really fulfilling joy with this pet that I love. So we know we're going to be hurt again at some point, but we shouldn't, um, you know, remove ourself from life because of that. And so talking about the function is helpful. And then again, going back to the ART piece and clearing out the pain in the body can help bring the brain back to balance. So a lot of times I'm not trying to change my client's mind at all. I'm just clearing their body so they can change their own mind.

Because when your body is regulated, your brain is going to naturally fall into that same spot. 

[00:33:26] Paige Bond: Well, thank you for speaking to that. I really appreciate how you shed some light on, you know, this is just kind of a process and it's normal to feel this way in reaction to hurts, betrayals that happen in relationships with people, I think far too often we try to like, um, get in this mindset of, okay, well, if I'm going to protect myself, I can't really experience any joy in life.

And if you follow a bit of Brene Brown's work, she talks about how we try to protect ourselves from experiencing hurt and in the same breath we eradicate any room for joy to come in because vulnerability is two sides of the same coin. We experience both pain and pleasure. And so if, if we try to get rid of the one, we get rid of both.

So I'm really glad that you normalized that for, for people. 

[00:34:20] Katie May: Absolutely. 

[00:34:21] Paige Bond: Yeah. Um, okay. Well, let's wind down here. Thank you so much for having this conversation with me and really getting into talking about accelerated resolution therapy and how transformational it can be with betrayal trauma.

If people want to find you, learn more about you or connect with you, what do you have going on? 

[00:34:40] Katie May: If people are looking for treatment in the greater Philadelphia area, they can go to CreativeHealingPhilly.com. Again, we serve teens and young adults and caregivers, and I'd be excited to support anyone in their accelerated resolution therapy.

My team is trained as well, so we have a full team of ART therapists at our center. 

[00:34:59] Paige Bond: I love it. You're, you're building up an army of ART. 

[00:35:03] Katie May: We're ready for you. 

[00:35:05] Paige Bond: Very cool. And listeners, I'll make sure to have all the links to connect with Katie and the show notes. And you can also find her on Tik Tok, I'll put that in there. Is there anything you want to say a little bit about Tik Tok and what kind of content you post there. So people kind of know about that. 

[00:35:21] Katie May: TikTok is not therapy. That's number one. I post, uh, short videos about teens and parents mostly. I do have a book coming out for parenting teens with self destructive behaviors.

And so a lot of my content is centered around educating parents on how to best validate and support teens who are experiencing life threatening behaviors. 

[00:35:39] Paige Bond: Very cool. Love that. Love your mission and listeners go check everything out that Katie has to offer and we'll catch you on the next episode.