Most people are never the victims of family betrayal, but know this: when you are stabbed in the back by a family member, you are not alone. You’re not the only one who’s been betrayed by family, though there is nothing more surprising, because
If you can’t trust your family?
Who can you trust?
These are the people with whom you share a sacred biological hereditary and familial bond. You share the same family tree, yet here you are face to face with someone you were closer to than anyone else, should be able to trust more than anyone else, who would give the devil a run for his money.
So, the wounds you suffer when you’ve been betrayed by family cut deeper than any other type of emotional of physiological wound you could suffer at the hands of any perpetrator or evildoer you could ever encounter in your life.
And I know something about the pain you’re going through.
My name is David M Masters, the author of Trust Betrayal, transfiguration specialist, lead trainer and coach at St. Paul’s Free University. And this is my family. These priceless treasures are the reason I do what I do and continue to live and breathe every day. And I could not imagine betraying them in any way.
But “family” is more than blood.
Family is a relationship that surpasses the boundaries of blood, or even legal obligation. You are bonded by something sacred and trustworthy. That is until that bond has been violated by betrayal.
If you’ve read the bible, you may have noticed that the first family recorded depicts the worst of the worst circumstances in dysfunctional family dynamics where in this worst examples of sibling rivalry plays out with Abel’s being betrayed by family member, Cain, his own brother who killed Abel in cold blood.
So the propensity for violence and abuse from within the family unit is nothing new, and since then it’s only gotten worse.
How could this happen?
Well, there is this sociological mechanism that has been put into place to keep us separated and the whole world profits from family dysfunction and betrayal.
We’ve come a long way from life on the farm, in a time that you couldn’t live without reliance on your family, not for very long anyway, and if you did leave and strike out a path of your own, chances were very slim you would survive such a decision. So, trust was extremely important, because back then, families were not made up of individuals, a family was a cohesive solid relationship, necessary to be tended to in order to survive.
Today, family is like most things, where the trend is toward disposing of anything you don’t want or are done with. This does not just refer to packaging or disposable diapers. This thought process is permeating every system and function of our modern culture and is infiltrating the once-sacred family unit resulting in disposable families.
You are connected to your family and its natural to feel that connection. Your family is the first representation any of us experience in terms of love, and it creates a bond that is sometimes destructive. For instance,
If a social worker comes into a family to retrieve a child with bruises and broken bones to take the child into safety, the child will kick, scream, and violently resist in an attempt to remain with the abusive family member.
Is that you?
Look at you. You’re all grown up. You know now that if someone is pummeling you, you need to stop that activity and get yourself to a safe place, right now.
If someone in your family has betrayed you, ask yourself:
Is this family member toxic to me?
If the answer is yes, you need to take action to protect yourself. Why?
Because when you are being betrayed by a family member, someone you trusted more than anything – which you should be able to do – Right?
I mean, you wouldn’t do that to any member of your family.