Episode 51: Betrayal Trauma with Lindsay Poelman

You are listening to the Overcome Pornography for Good podcast episode 51, Betrayal Trauma with Lindsay Poelman.

Welcome to the Overcome Pornography For Good podcast where we take a research-based, trauma informed and results focused approach to quitting porn. This approach has been revolutionary and changed thousands and thousands of lives. I’m your host, Sara Brewer.

Hey, you guys, welcome to the podcast episode this week. I am so excited to introduce you to Lindsay Poelman. If you haven't heard her before, I had her come on in the previous podcast episode that you can go and listen to. She is going to be doing marriage calls, marriage and pornography calls in Overcome Pornography For Good every single month for the rest of 2022.

That call is going to be completely free to you if you are a member of Overcome Pornography For Good. And it's not just a call for you, it's also a call for your spouse. You can invite your spouse, you can attend together, or you can just send your spouse.

Now, Lindsay specializes in marriage and relationships, but also specifically specializes in trauma and betrayal trauma. So that's what she coaches on in her own coaching practice, is betrayal trauma for spouses of people who struggle with pornography.

Now, as you listen to our conversation I really hope you enjoy it and love it. I know you will, she is awesome. In the episode we talk about betrayal trauma. Now, betrayal trauma isn't something that every single spouse experiences. Of course, it's not every single spouse that experiences this, there are many who don't. But there are many who do and it's not something that we talk about often.

So she's going to give us some tips, some tricks on how to handle that when we see it, how to get support through it, how to recognize it.

Listening back to our interview, I sound sick. I was a little bit sick. I am a little bit sick right now recording this intro and was sick when I recorded the interview. So thanks for bearing with me with my little stuffy sounding dialogue. Okay, all right, you guys, enjoy this interview.

Sara: Welcome to the podcast episode this week. I'm so excited to have Lindsay on our podcast again. Yes, we're so happy. I'm so happy, we did another episode with her, gosh, a while ago, just all about marriage and pornography and how to help your spouse who is struggling with porn. Actually, Lindsay, I’ll have you tell us a little bit about you and your story and what you do and why I'm having you here.

Lindsay: Yeah, no, it's great. So my story is basically I grew up in the LDS church. My husband and I both grew up in the LDS church and just learned certain things about pornography that were really scary to us and whatnot.

And basically, we met– And I'm not even sure if that's relevant, but we'll just leave that there. But basically we met and got married and kind of did all the checkbox things that you do when you get married. And when we got married, we decided we wanted to have a marriage without pornography, just kind of in accordance with certain principles and teachings of the Church.

And my husband, our first year of marriage, he looked at porn and told me about it. And I had like a total freak out response. And he felt so bad. He told me about it, but he also felt really bad. And this was before we knew anything about coaching. I don't even have coaching– I mean, I know coaching existed 15 years ago, but it wasn't what it is today.

So he just felt so bad that he was like, “I can't do that to her again.” And he didn't look at porn for years. And then when he was in dental school, he had an injury and I was gone working all the time for an accounting firm in downtown LA. And I think he was alone a lot and he was really depressed, he couldn't go to school with his injury. And for other reasons he started coping with pornography again and not telling me about it.

And then fast forward three kids, living in Utah, I felt like we'd kind of done all the things to not have to bigger problems for life. And he texted me one day from work and just said, “Hey, can we talk?” And I said, “Sure.” And I thought I was in trouble, like I'd done something wrong.

And he came home and proceeded to tell me that he'd been looking at porn and lying to me about it. And, Sara, it hurt. It hurts and it literally felt like– and this isn't to scare anybody but just to validate the women out there, it felt like a dagger had gone into my heart and just kind of twisted a little bit. It just really, really hurt.

And a lot of the hurt came because of just things that I was scared or worried about or like, “Well, this must mean this about me or something wrong with me.” Right? And my brain kind of started freaking out about all the things that I hadn't done or the ways I didn't look and things like that. We just had our third baby and whatnot.

And so I kind of started spiraling a little bit there. But then within a week he started having panic attacks. And looking back, what happened was he had some childhood trauma that was coming to a head and it was kind of manifesting in anxiety and depression. He’d been coping with porn and he thought telling me about the porn would help him feel better.

And it did, it gave him a quick reprieve. But then all of this anxiety and depression came to a head, panic attacks, shaky hands, and he stopped working because of it, you know, as a dentist. So it was a lot for me to take on and it was a lot for him too. And we were just like what is even happening?

And so, in the beginning, the porn took a backseat because it was literally like let's keep this person alive. What does he need right now to regulate, self-regulate and stuff like that? And so we focused on that for a little while. And then what we saw is that he had some childhood sexual abuse that hadn't been addressed and that he didn't even know. He started getting flashbacks and things like that.

And so from there it was like we were working with the anxiety and depression. And then we learned about the abuse and we were working through that and learning how to grieve, like there was a lot of grief there because it's people that we knew. It was a person that we knew and so a lot of stuff happening there.

But then, basically, it's interesting the way I tell the story, Sara, because I'm talking all about him. This is all stuff going on with him and at that point in my life it was all focused on him. But what I was doing, I was also kind of ignoring my own trauma symptoms and trauma responses and things like that. Because I thought that's what you're supposed to do, is just like pour everything into your spouse and forget about yourself.

And so basically with time he was able to work through a lot of his stuff, a lot of his trauma through coaching and therapy, and a blend of a bunch of different modalities. He's doing really great now and he's now a life coach. But for me, it was just a lot.

And the reason I'm telling this story, I guess, is for the spouses, your wives to feel just some validation like, “Oh, yeah.” Because for everybody there's different moving parts and different things, different complications and those were just some of the specific ones for us.

But I obviously became really fascinated about trauma and betrayal trauma because there weren't a lot of resources for me at the time. And so I just remember thinking once I found the tools and found everything that I found, I just remember thinking like, “What would I have given to have a guide? To have someone helping me back then without the shame and everything there.” So that's kind of what why I do what I do now.

Sara: Yeah, cool. Which what you do now is you work with spouses of people who are trying to heal from pornography.

Lindsay: Yes. Yeah, sorry, I probably wasn't clear about that. So yeah, I work with spouses of men who look at porn. And a lot of them are experiencing different types of trauma, betrayal trauma, and older stuff there. And then I'm also kind of in this space where I want, like I just feel so passionately about how important it is for the entire world to become trauma informed, that I'm also training coaches to be trauma informed as well.

Because if you think of your men, how different would it be if the world, we all understood what trauma is, trauma responses, if they started reaching out for help. I just think the way that people needing help would be received, I think it would be like a total 180 degree shift. Because sometimes that can even be traumatizing to be coping with porn or be numbing out in certain ways, and then when you reach out for help, not getting what you need. And that's really hard too.

Sara: Yes. Yeah, so Lindsay is our trauma expert. She’s awesome. She's awesome, you guys, and we're so lucky to have her. Anyways, one thing she's going to be doing, she's going to be coming and coaching in the program once a month for 2022. And she's doing this trauma certification that she just talked about, that I will be going through and that all the coaches in my program are going to be going through.

So we're going to have all of these amazing resources and be a little bit more trauma informed, which I think we need to talk about. What even is trauma, Lindsay? I think it's really important we start there because sometimes we hear trauma and we think, oh, sexual abuse or oh, you know, whatever. So tell me, what is it?

Lindsay: Yeah. So I mean, like layman's terms, well I shouldn't say layman. Well, just like a short answer would be a negative event that causes separation from self, others, and society. It can shake your core identity, how you see yourself and others. And a lot of times we stop feeling safe in the world.

But you bring up a really good point, Sara, because I think just if we think about social constructs of how we talk about trauma, we talk about it as these big life events, big natural disasters, war and things like that. When there are EMDR therapists who say that you can develop trauma from not making the high school volleyball team.

And then what are you thinking about that? What are the core beliefs behind that? And how is that getting compound? Because you haven't learned how to manage your mind around that.

And so it can come from little things too, especially like in relationships it's interesting because we think of like little tiny things that we say, things that are said and done in relationships like it doesn't matter. But when it becomes chronic, over time those little tiny things that we call like little T trauma can actually have equal or greater impact than “big T trauma,” which we said are like the natural disasters.

So it's very prevalent, it matters. I really do think a lot of us are carrying it to some extent. I think it's part of the human experience. And I say that not in a scary way. It's just something to kind of just accept, like, “Oh, this is here. How can we set ourselves up to support ourselves and support society?”

Sara: Yeah, and as we're learning more about it and as we're learning in ourselves, we have the choice now to go and work through it and heal it. Or you know, maybe like generations before us not really worry about it, not pay attention to it, and it just kind of festers and whatever.

Can you tell us how do you know if you are experiencing trauma or if you do have some trauma? How would you know?

Lindsay: Okay, so this is like the best question because it looks so differently for everybody, but it's really– But I think that's an important thing to think about and consider is like, you know, I think sometimes when we think about a trauma response we think of how you would respond to a big huge thing.

But I think for women it might look a lot more like a freeze response, which might be just kind of feeling– And men too. So just so you know, every trauma response can be applied to both genders. But I will say for me, when my husband told me about his porn use, I went into like more of a shock. Like a shock state that was totally my state, right? I shut down a little bit, I wanted to hide out from the world.

Some interesting shut down, kind of freeze trauma responses might also look like procrastination, inability to make small decisions, endless social media scrolling, potentially looking at porn, confusion over what's real or unreal, and maybe some confusion, right? So that's an interesting response.

And then I think for my women, what I see is more of a fawn response. Which could look like people pleasing, going on with someone's perspective, beliefs, or values without checking with your own. Dissociating, overriding yourself and your needs in the name of keeping things calm. Avoiding conflict, afraid of saying no, being overly polite, agreeable, and hyper aware of other people's emotions and needs while betraying your own. That's something that I see a lot.

And I think for guys, and again, I'm not trying to be super gender specific, so this definitely applies to both genders. But just when I think about different people feeling trapped, trying to over plan was kind of an interesting thing to think about. Energy spent micromanaging people and situations around them. Feeling uncomfortable when still.

So it's kind of endless, but the point is, I guess what you could ask yourself if you're sitting there being like, “Well, that's all of me.” As humans we can all probably relate to some extent. So if you experience some of this stuff, some of the time, it might be like, “Oh, yeah, there's something here.”

But I think typically where the line might be is when we start using mindset work and we start trying to redirect and we're just not getting anywhere. Like someone might say, you know, I work with a lot of coaches and someone might say, “Just post. Just post a picture on social media, it's nothing.”

And then if you're spending like four months trying to just put your words out there and it's not happening. And you’re a coach and you know there's mindset work, it might be worth questioning. Like, “Hmm, what's here? What's keeping me back?”

And with porn, I'm trying to think of an example it might be, but if you want you can ask me. I'm just thinking, like I think with porn there's usually more of like an attachment. There's some attachment stuff going on there too. And so there's just like a myriad of different things that could be happening there.

And I like to approach all of this with the foundation of this is all here and there's so much we can do. And there's so much you can do to learn more about yourself curiously. We want to be curious and open and not cut off and scared. But if you feel that, it's totally normal too.

Sara: Yeah. Yeah, and correct me if I'm wrong, but a definition in a way I’ve heard trauma explained is just your body experiences something or is just unable to process things, big or small, right? And stuff will come up and kind of trigger it and it just wants to keep you safe. And so that's why you have your fight, flight, freeze, or fawn response and it’s a reaction to that. Is that correct? 

Lindsay: So I guess the examples that I was giving are examples of what it might look like if we are carrying some trauma. So they're like the different responses that we have. And I like the examples of responses that I offer because they're like very every day.

But the actual trauma is basically when there is a negative event or something that creates separation of self and we don't get that worked through. We don't complete the stress response cycle around it or we don't get that process to move through, that can actually be carried physically in our body.

Which some people might be like, “Really? What are you talking about?” But some of like the trauma gods of the world have worked in psych wards where they have actually seen how oddly uncoordinated people in psych wards– Not current day psych wards, but like way back, like 30 years ago, how oddly uncoordinated people were. And he realized it actually had to do with what they were carrying.

So basically, simply working through events and negative events as they happen using the mindset work that you do have can really minimize the chances of developing any PTSD like symptoms or things like that, or kind of like staying stuck. Does that makes sense?

Sara: Yeah, that makes sense. And tell us too, because something I hear a lot is, oh, trauma, it's just one of those words that we use now and it's overused. And it's just like trigger happy when it comes to saying trauma. And everyone has trauma now. And that's not really true. That's just something we're using because we're soft. You know?

Lindsay: Yeah.

Sara: Can you talk about that?

Lindsay: And what I like to think about is how great is it that we live in a world that we're finally becoming aware of how much trauma and how much trauma people have carried and how people have been run and led by their nervous systems. And I think we're just becoming more aware of it.

And I think trying to say, “Oh, that's not trauma,” I think it can be reductionistic and I think it can be dangerous because we just don't know the unique triggers that someone is experiencing, right?

Like, I might go dip my toes in cold water, and just to me that's like, oh, yeah, that's uncomfortable, I don't want to get wet. And for someone else, it really could trigger some prior stuff, prior conditioning based on prior experiences or things like that, that go way back to the like lower limbic system stuff that actually does bring up things. And so we just don't know.

And so, I guess my colleague and I that are doing our program, we've talked about how the thing is, is like approaching everything as if it were that isn't hurting anybody.

Sara: Yeah, totally.

Lindsay: Creating safety, an environment of safety, making sure people are safe and regulated before anything else, why wouldn't we want to have that be just a given in any environment, institution, school, anywhere we go?

Sara: Yeah, that's a fabulous point. Yeah, absolutely. And sometimes, like you said, discounting the trauma and saying, “No, that's not really there. That's not really real,” just makes symptoms worse. Just makes you a little more panicky, makes you feel like there's something wrong with you, which creates multiple other–

Lindsay: Yeah, and you can actually be re-traumatized when you reach out for help and the very people you reach out for or reach out to are discounting your experience. There's a term for it, and it is something that people experience all the time. My husband experienced it when he started talking about being sexually abused. There was push back, and that has to get worked through too.

And so I say everything just because, like everything that I am saying, I really want it to be clear that I think education is just really, really important so we can empower ourselves with the awareness that we have. Because I see so much potential for a continual shift in the way that we treat each other, accept each other, and take seriously people who are suffering, and hurting, and need help.

Sara: Yeah, yeah, so good. So good. And I'm just going to mention again, because I think it's important, just that trauma doesn't necessarily have to mean some big event in your life.

Lindsay: Yeah.

Sara: It's not like, oh, we have something, not all the time. Sometimes, right, like with your husband, but not all the time where it's like we have something hidden that needs to be healed, and that we have a thought about, and that's been repressed. It's not always, always that way. But it can have really deep effects.

Lindsay: Right, and actually I'm so glad you bring that up, Sara, because I could see for a lot of the people that you are serving, a lot of people being like, “Oh, well, I wasn't sexually abused, or that didn't happen to me and I'm coping with porn.” And then we kind of gaslight ourselves. And so just be really– A lot of times we don't know that we are carrying it, that we've experienced it.

And so for all your listeners out there, please give yourselves grace because there's a reason that we do things. There's a reason that we are driven to do things that we don't want to do. And so the more we can just approach ourselves with love, and compassion, and understanding, the more we can get answers.

Sara: Yeah, yeah. And I love what you say about it, like there is no downside in us treating and talking about trauma and teaching how to heal trauma. It's not going to hurt you. It’s a really beautiful and good thing.

In fact, actually, I heard– I don't know if you've heard of them, have you heard of the Givens? Fiona and Terryl Givens, do you know them?

Lindsay: I don't know if I have, maybe a while ago, but yeah.

Sara: They're in the LDS scholar community.

Lindsay: How cool.

Sara: And they have this awesome book called All Things New and I love it. And I'm trying to remember exactly how they said it, but they just kind of were redefining sin and looking at sin and talked about how sin is just a result of healing that needs to happen in the world and just a result of traumatized people.

And we sin when we're acting from this wounded spot. And so the like healing balm of sin– Not healing balm, the way to change sin is to heal. It's not to gaslight yourself, or be angry at yourself, or shame yourself. If the reason we sin is because we're wounded, trauma, whatever that is, how we fix it is we heal.

Lindsay: Yeah, that's really interesting. I've also heard some theologians offer that sin is more like a separation from self too.

Sara: Yeah.

Lindsay: And so it could be interesting, like when we're thinking about that, it's like what if we're approaching our recovery from this place of like, “Hey, let's reconnect here. I want to just be connected to you.” And for people listening, I'm just kind of talking about reconnecting to our bodies, right. What if it's more of a reconnecting to the divinity within us?

Sara: Yeah. And that's something a lot of people struggling with porn experience, they feel like they just disconnect with their bodies. Like they just kind of escape it for a minute, and then whatever happens happens, and then you come back into it.

Lindsay: Yeah, yeah. And there's so much compassion to be had for that too, right? Because there's people that don't know how to get out of pain.

Sara: Yeah. Yeah, so tell us because you're coming and you're going to be coaching once a month in our program, tell us because it's going to be a marriage call. So you are invited to bring your spouses every single time or just send your spouses. Talk to us about betrayal trauma and what that would look like for someone who is in a relationship with someone who's looking at porn.

Lindsay: Yeah, so betrayal trauma occurs when people or institutions in which a person depends on for support significantly violate trust. So specifically to your clientele, or to the people that I work with, when you're in a deep intimate relationship of trust with a spouse, and then there's a betrayal there, there's lies there, that can be traumatic for people.

And I know for some people, they might be like, “No, it's just a lie.” But there's so much data and research supporting this. And I really do feel like betrayed partners are a hugely underserved community because a lot of times the focus is on the person who's coping or looking at the things. And so basically, that's kind of the gist of what it is.

And the point of me kind of saying it the way that I do is just to really validate for the women, like if it's feeling like a lot it actually makes sense. And things can get better. If you have the desire for things to get better, they can always get better.

Sara: Yeah, thank you. And what would you say to the men or the women, I have both men and women who struggle with porn, who listen. And actually, I have a lot of women who struggle to because I get messages often. And so I need to do a specific episode just to the women, I don't want you guys to feel left out.

But I can feel the like anxiety rising for the people listening that are like, “Oh my gosh, what if I've traumatized my partner? Now I really can't tell them.” Especially for people who are struggling to tell people. What would you say to them?

Lindsay: That’s such a good question because I just have so much compassion for both sides. I have so much love for the people who are coping, and then so much love and protective energy for the women who are being lied to, right?

I think the thing is the porn, usually for the women, it's really hard for them to work through the idea that their husband is looking at porn. It can bring up past things they did or didn't believe about themselves, so there's a lot there. But when they work through it, once they work through it, what they usually end up working through after that, porn is more of the surface level, and then after that, they get to this space where they're like, “It was the lies. It was the lies, that's what really bothers me now.”

And so, again, I think the sooner you can get back into trust with your spouse and make sure, please make sure you both have support, especially her because she's going to think, “No, let's just funnel all the money to you.”

Sara: That’s a good point, yeah.

Lindsay: Absolutely not true, she could be going through– I think that's another thing too, I think sometimes there's kind of a social hierarchy of what's a bigger problem. And I think sometimes in certain religions, it's like well, porn is obviously up at the top. But women's pain is pain. And that's just it, it doesn't mean she's in less pain because she's not the one looking at porn.

And so for women, I just want you to know that everything you're feeling is real and it doesn't need to be discounted or made smaller because it's not porn or it's not something “big.”

But basically the sooner we can get back into trust, with support, make sure you have support. But if you choose not to get support, I still highly, highly recommend getting into trust. I do think it can kind of minimize the extent of the trauma. So she may still–

And the thing is too, if she gets support right away, that actually can minimize the chances of any PTSD like symptoms and things like that. So making sure she gets supported can really, really help with acute experiences like this.

But either way, the amount of her trusting and questioning things, the sooner we tell her, hopefully the less they'll have to question. Right? So for me, he'd been hiding it for years and that felt like a lot to me. Versus like, “Hey, the last six months have been horrible for work.”

And I'm not disparaging my spouse at all, he's a rock star. And we're really open about this. But six months of hiding it versus six years, it's different because it creates a power dynamic in the marriage where what she thinks the marriage is, isn't the same.

And so it really is important to just be willing to go there. But also trust yourself and trust what you need to have set up around you to support yourself when you tell her. Was that helpful?

Sara: Yes, that's super helpful. Now, when you say having support, you mean support in the form of a therapist or a coach, or someone to help you process through this.

Lindsay: Yeah, and I mean advanced recovery, to me, looks like supporting your spouse and what she needs too. So having no expectation for how she should or should not respond based on you lying to her. But yeah, coach or just anything. Like if you were to go into Sara's portal, there's probably a lot of great stuff on calming yourself down when blank, blank, blank.

And so just knowing that you can get yourself grounded somehow, you don't have to have all the answers. You don't have to know how it's all going to work out or not going to work out, but just knowing that you have some support there. But also, if you decide that you're not going to get any support, I still think that every partner in a marriage has a right to know if they're being lied to.

And the interesting thing is, is in Christian culture porn is usually a thing. And there's like, with my clients, we're seeing similar stuff, no matter what their religion is. But it's not a problem in other religions, and it's not a problem– Sorry, it's not a problem in certain cultures where they just don't think about porn. And it's not a problem where couples approach the marriage where they’ve both decided that's a thing for them.

But I think for the most part, especially like in an LDS marriage it's usually assumed or decided that that's not going to be a thing. And so I think it is important to be honest about what you have decided. And if you are wanting to change things, it might make sense for her to be able to be aware of that, right?

Sara: Yeah, I love that. I love all of that answer. One thing that I think I said this on my Instagram recently, is one of the most loving things that you can do for someone, and in this case your spouse or your partner, whoever it is you want to tell about your porn habit. The most loving thing you can do for them is just let them have their emotions. And let them have their reactions and their healing and just love them through that, instead of hiding it.

Sometimes we think the most loving thing we could do is hide it and keep them from that. But what you’re saying is that usually makes things worse.

Lindsay: Yeah.

Sara: And there's so much beauty in just being there for someone while they experience all that. And even if they're pissed, even if they have rage towards you, and all this stuff, just allowing space for them to feel that. And if you follow me, if you're in my program, you know how to do that for yourself. And now we're just going to try to do that for other people
too.

Lindsay: Right, and there's a way to do that for other people while taking care of yourself too. Because we don't have to be told horrible, horrible, horrible things. I think there's a space for us to hold space for our spouse to, like Sara said, be pissed and enraged, and all the things.

And we can also decide what is my line? What am I not willing to? What am I not really interested in hearing? Right? Because yes, I did lie, but that doesn't mean I have to turn into this dog to get kicked around either.

Sara: Yeah.

Lindsay: And there's a place for both for sure. So I'm sure in Sara’s program there's a lot of good stuff in there for you to support yourself in that way, or just be aware, like have more understanding for how you can still take care of yourself in those conversations.

Sara: Yeah, that's a really great point and I really appreciate you saying that. Yeah, so there is help in the program and it's also going to be help with Lindsay coming in once a month. And tell us, Lindsay, how can they find you? Because there are probably people who are like, “Oh, yeah, but I want to meet with her private instead.” Or I want to meet with her more than once a month. How can they find you and how can they get some more support from you?

Lindsay: Yes. Oh, so great, so I have a website. It's lindsaypoelmancoaching.com, and that's P-O-E-L. I always say that, but I think if you spell it wrong you’ll find it. And on that website you'll see different links, you know, links to my Instagram. You can find me on Instagram at Lindsay Poelman Coaching as well. And right now, I'm still offering coaching for women whose husbands look at porn. And then I'm also offering group coaching for coaches who want to be more trauma informed. So yeah.

Sara: Very cool. Awesome, thank you so, so, so much for being here.,

Lindsay: Of course.

Sara: Lindsay is in France, you guys. And so I set up our interview for early this morning. And I didn't even wake up to my alarm. And so she was so nice to still come on, even though we’re about half an hour late starting.

So thank you for being here. So, so grateful for you and we'll see you around.

Lindsay: Okay, thanks, Sara.

I want to invite you to come and listen to my free training called How to Quit Viewing Pornography Even if You've Tried in the Past. If you like the podcast, you will love this free training. We talk about, number one, how to not rely on willpower or phone filters so that you can actually stop wanting pornography.

Number two, how to guarantee that you won't fail no matter how many times you've tried in the past. And number three, how to feel good about yourself while becoming someone who doesn't struggle with pornography. You can access this training at sarabrewer.com/masterclass.