Gemma Speck

One of my favorite books, literally, The Secret History, is essentially just a psychological deep dive into

into betrayal and the reason we see it so often is because we are drawn to depictions like this the same way that we are drawn to horror movies you know betrayal is one of those things that scares us but also fascinates us the most because of how how much it is perceived as as such a threat emotionally and psychologically it terrifies us

So let's examine this a little bit further.

If you are currently reeling from somebody in your life doing something absolutely terrible to you, why does it hurt?

so much.

What I wish more people knew is that being betrayed does and can leave long-term psychological wounds that have been shown, that have been examined in study after study, and they don't just manifest in your emotional life, they manifest physically as well.

So to understand that, we have to look at what happens

I guess, biologically, but also neurologically when you experience betrayal, like what is happening to the network in your brain?

First things first, when you experience a betrayal, like your brain's threat system activates like crazy.

The discovery of betrayal is literally seen as like a threat to your safety, a threat to your survival.

It's going to cost you socially, financially, in terms of safety.

That triggers the amygdala.

The amygdala is just going to flood your body with adrenaline.

And it's just going to try and get us to realize through whatever means possible, like something is going wrong.

Often that means pushing you into like fight, flight or freeze.

Essentially, your body is just like, this is painful.

This is a threat.

How are we going to live through this?

That is why, like when people first learn about betrayal, they'll often talk about how they just felt this terrible rush.

They felt shaky, numb.