JAY: People give us pain, but we give ourselves suffering. You often put your hands on the shoulder of the person in front of you to help lead the way, and the person in front of you is the person you love and trust the most. Maybe you didn't get your “happily ever after”, but with a lot of work and time, you can certainly get your “happily even after”. People think we get our purpose from our passions. We don't. We get our purpose from our pain.

MARTIN: Well. Hello everyone, this is Martin Pytela for the Life Enthusiast podcast and with being Life enthusiast, come the four categories. The toxicity, malnutrition, stagnation and trauma. And we don't do enough about trauma. And I want to have you experience this with our guest today, not the trauma, how to get over trauma. Mr. Jay, welcome to the Life Enthusiast show.

JAY: Thank you. Martin, I appreciate your time.

MARTIN: Yeah, absolutely. So I think in this case, it would make a huge sense for you to just tell the story and don't spare us the details. You know, what's it feel like to be looking down at a gunpoint against you?

JAY: Oh, jeez. Well, your life certainly flashes before your eyes, but let me just say this, because I think what a lot of people really want to know is: number one, have you been in my shoes? But more importantly, can you get me out of them into a new pair?

MARTIN: Right.

JAY: And first, let me just, for the listeners, I'll say trauma, very, very basic, trauma is too much too soon. That is trauma in basic terms, too much too soon. My specialty is in betrayal trauma. So what I specialize in is trauma at the hands of somebody that you have a primary attachment with. So, whether that be a parent, a child, a boss, certainly your significant other. It could also be yourself or God. I work with plenty of people who say: "Mr. Jay, I've done the exercising and I've drank my healthy shakes, and I've meditated. And I was still diagnosed with cancer. Breast cancer, what have you, and I feel like my body betrayed me. Or I feel like my creator betrayed me."

MARTIN: Right.

JAY: A good majority of my clients are people that have encountered or are enduring building trust after broken trust in a relationship, infidelity, cheating, broken trust, things like that. So betrayal trauma, I just want to say, is slightly different from trauma itself for a couple of reasons. Number one, betrayal trauma is different in that,I hate saying regular trauma, but somebody with trauma, it affects the here and now and the future, somebody with betrayal trauma, it not only affects the here and now and the future, but it also affects the past. Because once, hypothetically speaking, let's just say you find numbers under your mattress of your spouse or significant other calling prostitutes or meeting up with somebody at the gym or what have you. Now you're questioning, well, wait a minute, when we're on vacation last month and you're on the phone in the bathroom, was that who you were with? And now you can't drive by certain restaurants anymore or certain places. So it not only affects the here and now, it affects the future and it affects …

MARTIN: That's a very helpful distinction for sure. There certainly is no lack of opportunity for being let down in a minor or a major or a catastrophic way by somebody. Right?

JAY: Absolutely. Oh, no. Absolutely. The second way that it's different is that it's personal. If you have a family member pass away, that is tragic. That is sad. And that can cause trauma. But when you have somebody that you are close to betray you, now it's personal. You're not personalizing it. God forbid somebody in your family, close family passes away, that's trauma, but you don't question your own self-worth.

MARTIN: Yeah

JAY: With betrayal trauma, you start questioning your self-worth. Well, was I not good enough? Was I not handsome enough? Was I not bustier enough? You know, should my pecs have been bigger? Should I have had more sex? You start questioning your own self worth. Another way that betrayal trauma is slightly different, in that betrayal trauma is a secret society. So again, I'll use the example of let's just say your parent passes away. Well, you can call your boss and say, listen, my parent just passed away. I need some bereavement time. And next thing you know, you have people sending you flowers, people bringing you meals, people saying I'm sorry, people bringing cards. You don't want to call your boss and say: "Hey, listen, I just found out my husband's having an affair with me or my wife is cheating on me with the guy at the gym." That's embarrassment. There's shame there. So it's a secret society. And if you do call your boss and you ask for time off, well, then that's time off that you need to heal. And you don't want to tell people because it's a shame and embarrassment. So you're not going to have people bringing you food trays and meals and flowers. So it's a very secret society. It's lonely. So betrayal trauma is slightly different from trauma for various reasons, just to name a few.

MARTIN: Yeah, I can just see how it marks you, or at least gives you the sense of being a marked person. Because when you, it's a sign of weakness. Not necessarily that it was your fault, but it sure can appear that way. Right?

JAY: 100%. Yeah. We question our own self when someone, which is funny because I tell my clients a lot of times, listen: "Usually people get into affairs because they want to numb, distract, avoid, or cope with something." So this is a weakness within themselves. So you are going to question your self-worth based on somebody else's decisions from a place of weakness. It just doesn't make sense. Now we do it. Of course we do it. But it doesn't make sense. And that's one of the processes that we have to work through that you cannot personalize it. You cannot attach their decisions based on a weakness to your self-worth.

MARTIN: Yeah. And then there's the psychological makeup. Some of us have great attachment to variety, like loving change, whereas others have more preference for stability and intimacy. And so I'm speculating that the folks that have a higher preference for intimacy and stability are the ones who are the faithful ones. And in the change in variety-loving ones would be the ones that are doing the relationships with outside of the committed couples. Right.

JAY: Well, this is what's interesting. I'm going to tell you, this is what's interesting. You might be a little surprised to know a lot of people that believe in secure attachments and they want that one intimate partner. They actually do a lot of stepping out. But that's because one of the many reasons is because want to attach to a partner. They want to be somebody's one and only. They want to be somebody main, but they have, let's just say, emotional vulnerability issues. So they have intimacy issues. So when I say intimacy I don't mean sex. I mean being vulnerable to somebody else because think about it, a lot of times, especially when we're having physical or sexual affairs, it's very transactional. I'm going to give you this, I'm going to give you what you want because you give me what I need. Or vice versa.

MARTIN: Yeah. Okay.

JAY: However, love is not that. Love is I'm going to give you something because I love you, because I want to. That's not an affair, which is why, and I'm going on a tangent now, I try to tell people a lot of times, do not give any weight to affair talk. Because Mr. Jay, I read where my husband said: "Oh, you're the light of my life," to his affair partner. An: "I love you." No, no, no, no. Affair talk is, there's no substance there because it's transactional. I'm going to give you what you want to hear, because you give me what I need. And what I need is a fix.

MARTIN: Right. Okay. I have not spent a whole lot of time thinking about all of this, but I can certainly see how getting into a deep hole is, it's so easy, right? So something happens. A Tragedy outside of us happens. And you're so right about saying, well, somebody's dying. Your parent dying is just no guilt. It just is. That's how it goes. It's a final thing. We will miss them. But you didn't cause it. Anyway, you don't become a victim of your parent dying, but you can so easily become a victim of your partner betraying the trust. Yeah, that's the big distinction. I can just see that.

JAY: Absolutely.

MARTIN: And then.

JAY: Go ahead.

MARTIN: Yeah. And then the decision comes. It's not what happens. It's how we respond to that. Right. Am I going to be a victim or am I going to turn it into, I don't know, propellant for a better life?

JAY: Yeah. Well, a couple of things I want to say real quick, betrayal trauma is not about you at all. It's not about you, but it certainly affects you. That's number one. Number two, I say all the time, people give us pain, but we give ourselves suffering.

MARTIN: Well, that's an interesting distinction, too.

JAY: Yeah. So, and one of the reasons, one of the many, many, many reasons is because betrayal trauma often wakes up the sleeping giants within. It wakes up those wounds that we never dealt with. Which is why, now there's no studies that back this up. This is my own thoughts. Let me put that out there. In my own opinion, when we discover a betrayal with a primary attachment, I'm just going to use the example of a partner, a spouse, a significant other. When we discover the betrayal of somebody that we loved and trusted the most, what happens is it wakes up the insecurities that we never dealt with in our past. And that's why, in my opinion, oftentimes we're only dealing with 40% that is the current trauma, but 60% that is the unhealed trauma that woke up with it. Which is why I'll often ask my clients, what did it say to you when you found the lipstick in your glove compartment? Or what did it say to you when you found your wife at Starbucks with somebody? And when we get to the core of something, people will tell me: "It says to me that I'm unlovable. I'm unworthy, I'm not." And then we do some work and I say: "Where did you get that from? Let's go deeper." And then with some work, this doesn't happen overnight, with some work, come to find out, they never felt loved by their mother. They never felt valued by their father. So basically, betrayal trauma wakes up the sleeping giant within. And so this is why people don't get that betrayal trauma is an internal volcano that just like lava, anything it touches is affected negatively. Every area of your life when it comes to betrayal trauma is affected. You are affected spiritually, emotionally, mentally, financially, intellectually.

MARTIN: Yeah, physically too.

JAY: Every area. People lack sleep. People gain weight. People's hair falls out physically. People start questioning God, that's spiritually. People start getting affected financially because now you got to find somebody to talk to. People start mentally, emotionally. People can't go to their job and work. All they want to do is be in the fetal position and cry because they're holding what they thought was real, they discovered was not. That screws with people.

MARTIN: Yeah, that goes to the root of it all because you trusted this partner with your everything, right? Your past and your future. And now you're questioning it.

JAY: And I'm going to tell you something now that you just said that, what happens is that, not only do we have to work on the hurt our partner gave us, but then we have to work on our own self. Why did I miss those pink and red signs? And why was I so out of touch with my intuition that I didn't sense this? Or why when I did sense something, I repressed it, why didn't I? So now, because we've not only, we are disengaged with our partner and we got to work on that if we're going to reconcile or whatever. But now we have to work on how we disengaged with ourselves.

MARTIN: Yeah, yeah. Essentially, I'd have to rebuild myself from the ground up, from childhood all the way through, because everything that I put here was false, or at least wrong. Oh, dear. Okay. You have a big job, Mr. Jay.

JAY: Yeah. One of the things I try to tell people is just to give you a visual of betrayal trauma, pretend there's a ridge a mile above land, a mile in the sky and the bridge across it is thin and it's a mile across it, okay. And on the other side of the bridge is safety.

MARTIN: Yes.

JAY: But under that bridge, let's just say there's volcanoes and fires and there's, it's very hot and there's smoke and whatever. And you're on one side of the bridge. Okay. You're on the beginning of the bridge, and you have to walk to get to the other side.

MARTIN: Right.

JAY: Now, I want you to just pretend, because the majority of people I talk to have young kids or kids. So pretend that you're here on that bridge and you got your children in your arms. You got one child in this arm and one child in this arm. And you have to walk to the other side of the bridge, and you can't fall, because if you fall, you're in imminent danger. You're going to fall into a volcano, lava, fire.

MARTIN: Crocodiles will eat you. Yeah.

JAY: Okay. But what happens is, when you're trying to walk, the smoke from the fire is so blinding you can't even see in front of you. So you often put your hands on the shoulder of the person in front of you to help lead the way, and the person in front of you is the person you love and trust the most. You trust that person more than you trust yourself. And so they're leading you across this bridge, because you can't even see, and you're holding on to your babies and all at once before you know it, the bridge collapses and you are falling, and you got the two things that mean the most to you your babies, your dogs, whatever it is, you're falling and you're looking around trying to grab on to whatever it is. But you can't grab onto anything because you're holding your babies. And you know, once you fall you can't support who you're holding, you can't support yourself. And then while you're falling, you look up, and the person you loved and trusted the most in life has a hammer. They're the ones that made the bridge collapse. Now your brain is hijacked and you're thinking, wait a minute, the very person I trusted with my whole life is the person who's destroyed me. You don't, then you fall and you don't die. That's where the healing begins.

MARTIN: Yeah. Sheesh. Okay, so how long does the relationship usually last between you and the client that you're working with? Is it a lifelong thing or is it a few months? How do you even work it?

JAY: All great questions. You know, like anything else, it really varies because I have some clients that will call me when they get a hold of me when they just found out. And I'm literally talking to them on the phone or zoom while they're hugging the toilet, vomiting because they can't believe what they just discovered. And they're vomiting in the toilet because they're sick to their stomach.

MARTIN: Oh, yeah.

JAY: Then I talk to people who are two months out, maybe two years out. I have a couple clients that are 30 years out of betrayal, but because they never properly healed, things are coming out in various ways now years later.

MARTIN: Yeah.

JAY: So really, it all depends on many, many, many factors.

MARTIN: Okay.

JAY: It depends. Are you reconciling with the person who hurt you? Are you separating from the person who hurt you? Are you divorcing the person who hurt you? How is this person? Also, what is your support system? Do you have a faith background? I mean, there's a lot that goes into the healing process.

MARTIN: Yeah. Your faith gets questioned hard on days like those.

JAY: Listen, listen, Martin, you know how many times I talk to people and they're like: "Mr. Jay, all my life I prayed for a husband or a wife or kids and a family, and I thought God finally answered my prayer."

MARTIN: They said they sent me this?

JAY: And then I find out they're cheating on me. It's like, God, you knew this was going to happen the whole time. So now I feel like there was a double betrayal. My spouse and my creator. So it could get pretty complex.

MARTIN: Yeah. No joke. I just recalled Bobby Kennedy sayin: "I prayed for 30 years on my knees to help save the children of this nation, and God sent me Donald J. Trump.” Right? And Trump is such a flawed hero. I mean, that man is contradictions all over. So it's just jelling in my head, right? That everybody can relate to this probably anyway. And so as you're saying this, I prayed for my husband and God sent me this. So this is a much greater test than I ever thought, right?

JAY: Yeah. And I'm going to tell you something, a couple things. I just want to give you a couple of stats with Betrayal Trauma. Number one, between 30% and 70% of all couples are faced with some type of betrayal trauma in the span of their relationship. Now, that does not mean that all those people get cheated on. It just means there's some type of betrayal.

MARTIN: Yeah. Financial, gambling. Who knows what else?

JAY: Yeah. But number two, about 70%, give or take. 70% of all couples that go through betrayal trauma actually reconcile and have better relationships afterwards than they did before the betrayal came on.

MARTIN: Yeah. Now that the flaw is out, it takes two people getting better, right?

JAY: 100%. Because it's like this, if you ever talk to somebody who let's just say they had a heart attack, right? Let's just say they had a heart attack, and now you're talking to them two years out and they're like: "Let me tell you something. When I had a heart attack, I learned that I was eating the wrong things, thinking the wrong things. My schedule was off, my body was off. Now two years out of my heart attack, if I go to the doctor now my physical is spot on. It is almost perfect because I am doing all the, I've learned from this catastrophe what was wrong, and I've righted all of those wrongs and excelled at them." And the same thing can happen with a couple that experiences a relationship heart attack. If you learn what was wrong and what wasn't being fed and why this and that, along with a lot of other things, I'm talking patience and kindness and love and understanding. Maybe some forgiveness. Whatever. You can have a relationship you never dreamed possible even after. And I say all the time, listen, maybe you didn't get your happily ever after, but with a lot of work and time, you can certainly get your happily even after.

MARTIN: Oh that's nice. Happily even after. That actually is a very beautiful language for that. Yeah. Yeah. Beautiful. Well, okay. So anybody can start with you any time. As soon as they figure out that they could probably do better. So this is the advocacy for getting a coach, because somebody like you with a lot of experience on that path can help guide this person on their path toward better mental health or better emotional health, better outcomes. Because stewing in this situation by ourselves alone is way harder than having some guide for this.

JAY: Oh, yeah. Listen, I say this, you would not get on a plane right now and go to another country without a tour guide, without a map, without a GPS, without doing some research. And it's the same thing. You cannot heal after betrayal trauma. You cannot heal, without somebody that can be your guide. You can't do it. Now, let me make it very clear, and I tell all my clients whether I'm talking to somebody as an individual, whether I'm talking to a couple, or whether I'm coaching a family because infidelity or betrayal affects the entire family.

MARTIN: Yeah.

JAY: One of the things that I will tell everybody, and they make it clear Mr. Jay cannot heal your marriage. Mr. Jay cannot fix you. I wish I could. I can't. What I can do is get your boat and steer you into calmer waters. You're the one that's going to have to row. And what I mean, row, I mean row until you think your arms are ready to fall off. That's where the work actually begins. None of this is fun, fair or easy, but absolutely, it's worth it.

MARTIN: Yeah. Well, just like in anything in life, growth comes with effort. Yeah. You don't develop muscles without exercise?

JAY: No.

MARTIN: You don't get the beautiful vista without climbing the mountain.

JAY: 100%. And listen, very few people love struggling with the weight in the gym. But we all love the results afterwards. So, yeah, I tell people, hey, talking to me is like going to the gym. You're not going to necessarily love the whole process. But you're going to really appreciate the outcome. It's like, I think when anytime somebody talks to a coach or counselor or something like this, it's very similar to when people mined for gold. When you're mining for gold, a little bit of gold comes out of the cave or whatever.

MARTIN: Find the vein.

JAY: But it's got dirt and debris and twigs and all kinds of junk in there. And then you got to kind of put that in like this liquid fire. And what happens is that all that liquid fire takes the dirt and debris, and then real gold comes to the top, and then you, all the dirt and debris and yuck comes to the top, and then you wipe it away. And then a little bit more, a little bit more. More dirt debris comes up, you wipe it. Eventually, all that's left is just pure gold. And that's what coaching or counseling does. It doesn't feel good a lot of times to sit in session and work these things out. But what's happening is that you're getting rid of all that gunk so that the authentic, pure, sincere self emerges.

MARTIN: Yeah. I tried to explain my business to somebody and I said, well, it's a lot like being a small farmer. I have a cow. First thing in the morning it wakes up and it needs me to come in and milk it, and I need to take out the manure and I need to bring in the hay. And yeah, we enjoy having the cow because we have the cheese and whatever, but it's work and I have to do that. I have to look after the cow. You're describing the process really well where, you're essentially processing and processing and processing until all that's left is the good that should have been kept, and all the stuff that should have been discarded is taken away.

JAY: Yeah, and I'll tell you something, a lot of people, actually, I shouldn't say this, and I don't want a stereotype, but I find it more men are a little bit more resistant to coaching or counseling than females. And not to mention a lot of men will be like: "Well, I don't want to spend money, you know, on this." And I'll be like "Well, you know, you can't afford not to, because not only will your relationship or marriage suffer if you don't, but you will." Because, and I'm going to give you a quick example, hypothetically speaking, let's just say there's a male female couple. They're in a relationship, and the male steps out. Right? Let's just say the male was a doctor and he had an affair with the nurse.

MARTIN: Okay.

JAY: This is what winds up happening if you don't fix this, what winds up happening is the wife will start hating everybody with that doctor's name. So let's just say his name was Ed, now she hates all Eds. If she doesn't do the work, eventually she's going to start hating all doctors. If she doesn't do the work, eventually she's going to start hating all hospitals. If she doesn't do the work, eventually she's going to start hating all nurses and all medical staff, okay? If she doesn't do the work, eventually she's going to start hating the color blue and green because that's what hospital staff wear blue and green. So what happens is if you don't do the work, your world gets smaller and smaller.

MARTIN: Oh yeah. The poison spreads.

JAY: You suffocate yourself.

MARTIN: Yeah, yeah.

JAY: So people can't say, I can't afford this. They should say I can't afford not to.

MARTIN: Yeah, yeah. I'm looking at it from the man's perspective. And I'm thinking, well, you take your car to the mechanic, right? And you pay him for the service. Well, you have a broken relationship, take it to a relationship mechanic, so to speak. Right.

JAY: 100%.

MARTIN: Yeah. All right. So this probably doesn't easily yield itself to a group session. This probably needs to be one on one.

JAY: No. Well yes and no. As far as sessions go, I have clients where they're just individual clients. I have a lot of couples. And then I also work with families because like I say, the kids get affected.

MARTIN: Oh, yeah. The whole family. Yeah.

JAY: Kids get affected. The whole families get affected because I say, I hate saying this, but it's that if one family member has something like PTSD, cancer, whatever, the whole family has it.

MARTIN: Yes. Of course. Always.

JAY: It's the same thing. If one family member stepped out. It has branches with all the family members. So there's many times I'm doing a family session where I'll talk and say, listen, how do you feel when your parents are yelling and screaming because A, B and C? And I'll tell the parents, do you know that because you're not doing certain work that it's spilling over on your kids? And so we have to have a, … Absolutely this sometimes is individual, sometimes it's couples, sometimes it's family.

MARTIN: Okay. Well, so we didn't get to tell your story, but you sure have made an awesome point for people seeing you. Well, how do they find you? How can we send them your way?

JAY: So, listen, this is what I'll say. My website, Mrjayrelationshipcoach.com is the best way to find me. And like I said, I have various sessions where half an hour, hour, family sessions, you name it. All kinds of options. But I'll just say this, and I mean this in all sincerity. Even if nobody ever wants to talk to me, hear me, see me, nothing. Just go to my website because I have free resources there. And people need resources. People need things they don't even realize they need after betrayal trauma. So again, even if nobody ever wants to contact me, ever, just go to the website MrJayrelationshipcoach.com and just take advantage of the free sessions.

And one of the last things I just want to say is I mentioned this before, others give us pain. We give ourselves suffering. One of the things that happens after betrayal trauma is we allow all kinds of negative stuff to come and live in our brain. Rent free. And it's like this, you're walking down the street and you get bit by a rattlesnake or a poisonous snake, right? What you need to do is you need to stop that venom from getting to your heart and affecting your body. But what do we do? We pick that snake up and then we inject it into our body a thousand more times. We're giving ourselves suffering. But that's because we don't know how to get out of our suffering. Those are the tools we need to learn.

MARTIN: Yeah, and the good thing about this, not that it's good, but the good thing about this is that you can pick it up any time. Doesn't matter if your trauma is fresh or if it's old. As long as it's still festering and hasn't been cleared, it's time to clear it. Because if you don't, you're going to die with it.

JAY: 100%. And here's real quick, people often don't even know that it is festering. So that's another trick. But it is, if you haven't dealt with it, it's there. It's a ball of fire inside your body, affecting everywhere it goes until you work that ball out of your body.

MARTIN: Man, I feel so lucky I didn't have to do that in my life.

JAY: You are. Yes. You're blessed because it forever changes a person. Betrayal trauma forever changes a person. Now, the silver lining from that is a lot of people, if they're willing to do the work, they actually can become a more aware person. I call it the 2.0 person, so if you do the work, you could really become an amazing, strong, courageous person. But yes, I'm glad you are spared that because,

MARTIN: Yeah, I have a business associate who spent time in jail, and he says to me, it's the best thing that happened to me. And it was totally disruptive. But having come out of it, I’m a much better person now.

JAY: Yeah. I say all the time, listen, we don't get our purpose from our passions. People think we get our purpose from our passions. We don't. We get our purpose from our pain. And sometimes some of the worst pain in life is what eventually gives us our purpose. So there are blessings, as I say all the time, there are lessons of the blessings. Blessings of the lessons.

MARTIN: All right. Very good. Yeah. I don't know, we could keep talking, but I think you really wrapped it beautifully into a simple, straightforward package. If you're packing it around betrayal trauma, take yourselves to Mr. Jay. And that's MrJayrelationshipcoach.com. And we'll put that link in here. But if you're listening to it, write it down. It's worth your time.

JAY: Thank you. And again I appreciate you having me on and your time. I very much appreciate your time.

MARTIN: Thank you very much. It's been so insightful. I learned more than you imagine.

JAY: Good.

JAY: Thank you, Mr. Jay Relationship Coach and Martin Pytela at Life Enthusiast. Thank you so very much.