In this episode of The Evolution of Medicine, host James Maskell interviews Debbie Silber, PhD, founder of the Post Betrayal Transformation Institute and author of Unstuck.
The conversation explores why betrayal is a distinct and often overlooked root cause of chronic physical and mental health conditions. Dr. Silber shares her groundbreaking research on Post-Betrayal Syndrome (PBS), the predictable 5 stages of healing, and why so many patients remain “stuck” despite functional or conventional care.
This episode reframes betrayal not as an emotional inconvenience – but as a physiological event that reshapes the brain, nervous system, immune function, and digestive health.
About the Guest:
Debbie Silber, PhD is the founder of the Post Betrayal Transformation Institute and creator of the PBT® (Post-Betrayal Transformation) Certification Program. After experiencing multiple betrayals herself, she completed a PhD study on how betrayal impacts health, work, and relationships. Her research identified Post-Betrayal Syndrome and the 5 stages of healing. She is the author of Unstuck and works with both individuals and healthcare practitioners worldwide.
Website: https://thepbtinstitute.com/about-debi-6/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/debisilber/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/InspireEmpowerTransform/
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/debisilber/
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/DebiSilber
James Maskell is a healthcare entrepreneur and founder of The Evolution of Medicine. For over 20 years, he has worked to scale functional medicine through community-driven models, group visits, and practitioner infrastructure. His work focuses on moving medicine upstream—toward prevention, lifestyle intervention, and systems-based care.
Website: https://www.jamesmaskell.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mrjamesmaskell
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jamesedwardmaskell/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamesmaskell
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Transcript:
Nervous System is so completely dysregulated, the mind has been hijacked. We think PTSD is reserved for war vets. You know, they hear a car backfire, they’re back there in war, but it’s very common for someone who’s been betrayed to experience those those same symptoms. We need to settle the nervous system. We need to become more regulated.
Hello and welcome to the podcast. This week, we are going to talk about betrayal, the brain and your practice, and I’m here with Dr Debbie Silber. She is a leader in helping us understand the role of betrayal, and traditionally, she’s spoken to patients, she’s written books, she’s had programs speaking to the end user, but uniquely, she has a new book that is directed at practitioners. And I think if we’re going to build the health centers of the future, build the team of the future, we have to get into some of that.
She’s going to share some credible statistics, and she’s also going to share some of the tools that you can start to apply in your practice. And if this is resonant for you, some further educational opportunities. So this is a really incredible half an hour. Enjoy. Dr. Debbie Silber, welcome, Doc, yeah, thanks so much. Looking forward to our conversation. It’s been a long time. It’s been a long time.
Yeah, and I look the last time we were hanging out, I remember you giving me feedback on a short talk that I was giving, and really appreciated that it came out really well. And you know, at that point, I was really focused on trying to understand the power of group dynamics in medicine. That’s been a great journey.
But I’m particularly the reason why I wanted to get you on the podcast here is that I know you know, traditionally, or for the last 10 years, I know you’ve been speaking mainly to the end user about topics like betrayal and understanding that. But now I know you have a new book called unstuck, and it’s really focused on speaking to practitioners.
So tell us a little bit about the journey, how you ended up being on this topic, and then why you’ve decided to, you know, focus this new book speaking to health professionals. Oh, you don’t think I just like the topic of betrayal? No, you study because you have to. And I’ve had two really painful betrayals. Thought I did everything I needed to do to heal from the first one then the second one hit. This time it was my husband, and you know, that was the deal breaker.
And looked at the two experiences that got him out of the house, and I was like, what’s happening here? You know, is it? Is it me? And, you know, so I’m one of those people that believes, if nothing changes, nothing changes. So here it was four kids, six dogs, of business, and usually I would find a book, of course, a mentor to help me learn my way through something. There wasn’t anything available, so I enrolled in a PhD program, not what people would often do coming off of betrayal.
But this was so big, I had to study it so big, and it was time to do a study. So I studied betrayal, and honestly, I did it to help me heal so I’d be there for my kids, my clients and but I remember saying to myself, if I can find a way to heal from this, I’m taking everybody with me. Anyway, I did a study. It led to three discoveries, which changed my health, my work, my family, my life. So to answer your question, in a very long way, here I was just helping the end user, the client who’s been betrayed.
But I realized these studies were so profound that the more practitioners we certify, the more people that can regain their life, their relationships, their work, their confidence, their trust, all of it. Yeah, well, it’s interesting that journey, and I guess I’d love to just share something that I see from the industry. So you know, I guess over 20 years of being in this world and seeing practitioners go from generally allopathic medicine to functional medicine, right?
That’s the sort of journey that we’ve taken them on. I think when they first come into the medicine, their focus is really on the things that they know how to measure, right? So they have the blood tests, and they have the lab tests, and they can see the scores, and they can make the scores go in the right direction, and that’s where the sort of the leverage is, is they know how to affect the physiology, and they have all the protocols and so forth.
But then, you know, as I would see practitioners mature, and I would meet practitioners who’d be doing this for a long time, a lot of times it was just sitting back with people, and rather than getting into the lab tests, just saying, what’s going on with you, like what’s happening in your life right now, and that was more what the intake looked like, rather than gathering the labs and getting all the details. And I wasn’t sure what sent them on that journey, but I could see the journey.
And so, you know, I’d love to get your take on that, because it seems like what’s happening is they’re realizing the leverage points are actually in understanding their life and their environment and their triggers and their so forth, as opposed to just looking at the downstream consequences in the labs. You’re so right? You know, I’m going to answer your question in the form of a client that we had.
45% of everyone betrayed has a digestive issue of some kind, Crohn’s, IBS, diverticulitis, constipation, diarrhea, you name it, we’ve tested over 100,000 people, and happy to share some of those statistics with you. Anyway, 45% of everyone betrayed has a gut issue. There was a woman that was in our program. She was in her mid 80s. She had a 70 plus year digestive issue from a family betrayal. She was adopted. They didn’t tell her. It was like something like that.
So you can imagine 70 plus years, the protocols, the medicine, the different, you know, herbs, whatever, everything she was doing two weeks in our program, she healed from a 70 plus year digestive issue. That’s what happens when you deal with the root cause, which is the betrayal. And so often, you know, here’s the betrayal, and then we have symptoms of weight issues, immune suppression, sleep problems, anxiety, and we wind up medicating and suppressing all of those symptoms, where, if the root is the betrayal, we heal the betrayal, the rest naturally heals.
And happy to share some of those statistics, if that would serve no, I love that. I mean, I think that definitely resonates for me, and I’d love to understand one like, how do you understand that there is betrayal? And then second, tell me about the study and how you how you executed it? Yeah, sure. So you know, with the betrayal, first of all, I define it as the breaking of a spoken or unspoken rule. Every relationship has them, and the way it works is, the closer we are, the more we depend on that person, the deeper the betrayal.
So, for example, a child who’s totally dependent on their parent, and the parent does something awful that’s going to have a different impact than, let’s say, your coworker taking credit for your idea. Still, betrayal is different level of diff. But the study, like I said, it led to three discoveries. One, betrayal is a different type of trauma that needs a different way to heal. And so many people think trauma is trauma. No, it’s not. Betrayal not only shatters life as you’ve known it, it shatters the you that you knew as well.
That was the first, happy to get into that one, the second, the post betrayal syndrome, statistics and the third, those were the five stages that we move through if we fully heal and happy to share the stages, but to answer your question about the statistics, So now imagine over 100,000 people, men, women, just about every country is represented as much as I’m going to share the symptoms. Hear these numbers ready? 78% constantly revisit their experience. 81% feel a loss of personal power.
So think of what a loss of personal power would do with who you spend your time with, the work you do, the decisions you make. 80% are hyper vigilant. Think about what that’s doing to your nervous system. 94% deal with painful triggers. Are the most common physical symptoms. 71% have low energy. 68% have sleep issues. 63% have extreme fatigue. Sleep all night, you wake up, you’re exhausted. Your adrenals have tanked. I mentioned digestive issues. 45% have weight changes.
So in the beginning, maybe you can hold food down. Later on, you’re using food for comfort. You’re emotionally eating. So common the most common mental symptoms, 78% are overwhelmed. 70% are walking around in a state of disbelief. Let’s see, 62% can’t concentrate. So just imagine that you can’t concentrate. Let’s say you have a gut issue. You’re exhausted, you still have to go to work and take care of your kids and deal with elderly parents, whatever else you have going on that’s not even emotionally penalty.
88% experience extreme sadness. 83% are very angry. Think about what that would do as you bounce around between those two emotions all day long. What will that do to your health? I’ll just read a few more. This one killed me. 84% have an inability to trust. If you can’t trust, think about what that does to in your work and your health and your relationships. 67% prevent themselves from forming deep relationships because they’re afraid of being hurt again. They put the big wall up.
Keep out the bad ones, but keep out the good ones too. The two find a percent find it hard to move forward. 90% want to move forward, but they don’t know how even more staggering about those numbers. First of all, you didn’t hear me say 20% 30% these numbers are super high. They’re also not necessarily representative of a recent betrayal. This could be from the parent who did something awful when you were a kid, or you’re a partner who broke your heart in high school.
So think about this, that person may not know or remember, they may not even be alive, and here we are, decades later, with these symptoms because it was left unhealed. The good news is you could heal from all of it. That was the third discovery. Well, that’s wonderful. You know? It’s it’s connecting to something that I wrote about in the book, which was sort of like the intention to break a social bond. And it was sort of, I remember there was a statistic where if you were part of, like a team at work that were all let go, you’d have a two times risk of depression.
Whereas if there was a, like a very personal where it was just you and you were sort of now ostracized from the group or from that person, it was like a 22x risk of depression. So it sounds like what you’re saying is like, the deeper, the more intimate relationship you had, the more it affects you. Exactly, you know. Think about it. It’s like when you This is why betrayal is a different type of trauma, like, let’s say, death of a loved one, or disease, natural disaster. You grieve, you mourn, you. Your life is not the same, but you don’t necessarily look back and question that relationship.
You don’t question your ability to trust. You don’t question your sanity, right? That all with betrayal, the person you trusted the most proved untrustworthy. The run you one you run to when other people are causing harm has become. The one causing the harm. So it is such a shattering of the body, the mind, the heart, very different than other traumas. Yeah, I’d love to know that. So let me ask you this. Let’s say I’m a practitioner, and I’m dealing with these range of chronic illnesses that people are coming with, and they’ve tried medication and it hasn’t worked, and now they’re coming to the functional medicine doctor because they heard that that’s good for these chronic issues that are that haven’t responded to medication.
As an example, what should, what should a practitioner be looking for in the intake to raise the red flag that this may be, you know, a psychosocial driver from betrayal. Just wanted to take a moment to thank our mission partners for helping bring this podcast to you. As you know, we are in the business of building a network of clinics that can reverse cognitive decline, and our partners in that are organizations.
You can find out more if you go to goevomed.com and look at the mission partners, but first and foremost, Truneura. If you go to truneura.com you can get a demo. This is the underlying software that will connect this network of clinics. And we have an incredible mastermind session, a lot of cool stuff coming out of that company. You can see here Fullscript, thanks to Fullscript, with Fullscript, where we’re going to help you take advantage of the tools that they have to compete with things like ChatGPT and function, health, it’s going to be awesome.
Go to goevomed.com/fullscript. Bigboost.marketing, if you need patience for your clinic, or if you have any marketing needs, goevomed.com/bigboost is premier supporter in that world. And then please also check out freedom practice coaching. Seth conga is going to be on the podcast very soon, built and scaled a very successful brain health practice and has been instrumental in helping practitioners with the non clinical aspects of running a practice doing this. These are our mission partners.
These are people that I know well. These are people at the top of their sphere and really excited to bring you the rest of the podcast. Enjoy. It’s such a great question. Some of those symptoms, if they’re presenting with those symptoms, there’s that collection together that’s common to betrayal. So if they know there’s a betrayal at the root of it, they have amazing tools, but those amazing tools at the wrong stage in that in that person’s healing will backfire every single time.
It all has to do with what stage they’re in, as far as the five stages from betrayal to breakthrough. So like, let’s say, when someone’s in shock and trauma, and then a well meaning, incredible practitioner will give them some sort of tools to move forward. So it’s like they’re training for a marathon on a broken leg. They just absolutely cannot do it. So understanding what stage someone is in, even as far as the shattering of trust, let’s just say it’s so common for again, well meaning, incredible practitioners to help that client rebuild trust.
And say, Okay, let’s start small. You know, let’s start with someone that isn’t as big of a threat, a low stakes sort of thing. Betrayal is so shattering to the self. You know, our method of determining if someone is trustworthy, we create that, and then we deem this person is trustworthy based on my assessment, and then someone betrays us. It’s like our system of determining trustworthiness is fundamentally flawed, so we can’t trust in others.
There’s so much that has to be rebuilt within ourselves. And when the practitioner knows where that person is at in their betrayal recovery, they’ll they’ll work with them, the work will be exponentially better, like a classic. This is so classic. There are the five stages. Stage three is where most people land again, happy to share them. And a stage three classic line will be, I’m fine. I think I’m okay here. So the practitioner thinks, Okay, our work is done. And meanwhile, fine doesn’t mean transformed.
They’ve built a functional life, but it’s behind walls. There’s a flatness to it. They’re not they’re not experiencing that range of emotions. There’s so much fear that they figure fine is better than taking that risk and being vulnerable again. So the symptoms may be managed, their life is okay, but they haven’t even experienced the transformation when they move out of that so knowing the stages absolutely helps them realize what protocols will help best stages, sure, so, and I do a deep dive of it in, in unstuck.
I’ll give you a boiled down version here. So stage one, this is actually before it happens. And if you can imagine four legs of a table, the four legs being physical, mental, emotional and spiritual. And I saw this with everybody me too. It was a heavy lean on the physical and mental thinking and doing and kind of neglecting or ignoring the emotional and the spiritual feeling and being. And if this is so common, we don’t we’re not wired to scan for betrayal. We’re in a trusting, what we assume is a trusting relationship.
We’re just we’re on autopilot. Right? And so we get betrayed, not saying when you’re just busy doing you will be betrayed. But it was a typical profile I saw, which we see in hindsight, everything that we turned down in order to just do what we had to do, stage two, shock trauma D, day, Discovery day. This is the scariest of all of the stages, and it’s the breakdown of the body, the mind and the worldview right here, we’ve ignited the stress response we are headed for every single stress related symptom, illness, condition, disease.
The mind is in a state of chaos and overwhelm. We cannot understand what just happened, and our worldview has just been shattered. Our worldviews, our mental model, the rules that govern us, that prevent chaos, don’t, you know, don’t go here. Trust this person. These are the rules, and in one earth shattering moment, every rule we’ve been following is no longer true. The bottom has bottomed out on us, and a new bottom hasn’t been formed yet. Here’s where symptoms begin. Not likely, not likely.
Will the client come your way just yet? Here’s where they’re going to conventional approaches, yeah. But if the bottom were to bottom out on you, what would you do? You grab hold of anything or anyone in order to stay safe and stay alive. That’s stage three. Survival Instincts emerge. It’s the most practical out of all of the stages. If you can’t help me, Get out of my way. How do I survive this? Who can I trust? Here’s the trap, though. This is the stage by far that most people get stuck in. And here’s why.
Once we figured out how to survive our experience, because it feels so much better than the shock and trauma we just came from. We think it’s good, and because we don’t know there’s anywhere else to go, we don’t know about stages four and five, we play roots here. We’re not supposed to. And four things start to happen. We start to get that secondary gain, small self benefits. We get to be right. We get a target for our anger. We get someone to blame. We get sympathy from everybody.
So we take it now, because we’re here longer than we should be. The mind starts doing things like, you know, maybe, maybe you’re not that great. Maybe, maybe it’s you, you know, maybe this, maybe that we plant deeper roots, and now, because these are the thoughts we’re thinking, this is the energy we put out. Well, like energy attracts like energy. So now we start attracting people and circumstances and even new relationships to confirm. This is where we belong, right?
Here’s where we join that lame support group and we will actually sabotage our healing because we found our people. Here’s where we see a well meaning therapist who unintentionally isn’t is keeping someone stuck because they’re feeling heard and validated and understood actually gluing their spot to stage three. Here’s where we see the most well meaning practitioners to manage and suppress symptoms.
And because it’s so miserable and we don’t know there’s anywhere else to go right here, we start using food, drugs, alcohol, work, TV, you know, to numb, avoid distract. So we do it for a day a week, a month. Now to have it a year, 10 years, 20 years, James, I could see someone 20 years out and say that emotional eating you’re doing a drinking Do you think that has anything to do with your betrayal? And they’d say it happened 20 years ago. Like, are you crazy?
All they did was put themselves in stage three and stay there. Does that make sense? Yeah, it makes total sense. Yeah. I’m thinking thinking about the people who listen to this podcast and how they might experience in that I’m thinking about myself, you know, I’d love to ask you, and I’d love to talk about the brain specifically, because that’s our focus. You know, I in my world. You know, I grew up in a spiritual community and had a very like idyllic situation, I would say, up until I was sort of 11 or 12.
And you know, when my parents split up and my my my dad, my dad left, and they, they got divorced, my life changed into this whole different world where, like, now I’m in boarding school, and, like, this is a, like, an Anglican boarding school, and I had all this spiritual education this other way. And I guess the reason I mentioned that is because I think about that in sort of a betrayal of, like, the worldview. And the reason why I think it’s interesting is I feel like a lot of people are probably having that right now.
You know, whether it be the Epstein files or America’s foreign policy, or the stuff that’s in the food or the like, unraveling of the, you know, the way in which we thought about public health. I’m sure everyone, to whatever degree, and whatever, you know, whatever your your your political views are, are experiencing some sort of like social betrayal, where the America they thought, the world they thought, is not the way that it is.
And I’m just wondering if that’s a thing. And if so, what to do? You know? How do you how do you protect yourself? Create, Create a structure where you know that’s not going to be sabotaging you have Yeah, and I still want to get you to stages four and five. But to answer your question, you’re absolutely right. We feel duped, we feel blindsided, we feel betrayed, because the people we’ve been we’ve put our trust in, we’re finding they’re lying to us, whether it’s the food or government or whatever, you know,
we could look at every big institution and really feel, what in, you know, what in the world is going on? Do these people have our best interests in mind? You know, I remember doing my study and reading about all kinds of betrayals, and one was even in products. There’s. They called like, love turns to hate principle. We, let’s say we love a product, and we love a product we feel it’s in our best interest, and they are trying to take care of us like, let’s say, a sunscreen, for example.
And when we learn that the ingredients in there are actually causing harm, we will turn on a product so quickly we would rather knowingly walk into something we know is not in our best interest, then be told something is, and then it isn’t. We do not, not like being duped. So as a society, we’re feeling this on so many levels, and we’re looking at it saying, Who in the world can I trust in? I put my trust in the people closest to me, and they sort of pulled the mask off the people I don’t feel close to, but I put my sense of safety, safety and security in assuming they had my best interest in mind they don’t.
So what it really calls for is your greater strengthening of our own intuition, self trust. It’s huge, our own discernment, our own self trust, and I think that’s a big part of this. We turn it down because it makes life easier. You know, we’re we’re doing more and to think and to feel, take some time, so we turn it down to get more done. But I think it’s really a time that we’re being called to trust in our intuition, trust in our wise guide, trust in our gut. It never lies before. So is that part of stage four and five is to start to build that muscle.
It’s part of it stage four is, is just building a new worldview, finding and adjusting to a new worldview. So here you would you have to grieve more in the last bunch of things you need to do to leave stage three. But here’s this sort of hopeful excitement. It’s like, if you’ve ever moved, if you ever moved to a new house, office, condo, whatever, your stuff’s not there. It’s not quite cozy yet, but it’s this hopeful excitement, like we got this. It sort of feels like that.
But think about it, if you were to move, you don’t take everything with you. You don’t take the things that don’t represent who you’re now ready to become. And what I found was there’s this one spot, as people leave stage three and enter into stage four. If your friends weren’t there for you, they’re not coming along. That support group that’s keeping you stuck, you’re done. That therapist who unknowingly and unintentionally is keeping you stuck, you’re done. And people ask me all the time, is it me? Yes, it is.
You’re undergoing a transformation, and if they don’t rise, they don’t come. This is the classic, The caterpillar goes into the cocoon stage anyway, when we’ve made this sort of mentally home comfortable, we move into the fifth most beautiful stage, and this is healing, rebirth and a new worldview. The body starts to heal, self love, self care, eating, well, exercise. We didn’t have the bandwidth for that earlier. Now we do.
The mind is healing, new rules, new boundaries, based on the road we just traveled, and we have a whole new worldview based on everything we see so clearly now, and the four legs of that table. In the beginning, it was all about the physical and the mental. By this point, we’re so solidly grounded because we’re focused on the emotional and the spiritual too. Those are the five stages Wonderful. Well, let’s talk a little bit about the brain, because I’d love to just see how you think about it.
Ultimately, we’re focused on that this year in the podcast, is the year of the brain. And I’d love to when I when I thought about interviewing you and your work, I was just thinking like, I’d love to understand how you feel about how betrayal affects our brains. You know what the mechanisms are there? And sort of like, how you see the process that you’re sharing as as part of a process to heal the brain, heal the nervous system.
Yeah, you know the nervous system, especially after that shot. The nervous system is so completely dysregulated the mind has been hijacked. Anyone who’s ever had a trigger knows their mind is completely offline. You know, they know. Let’s say even we think PTSD is reserved for war vets. You know, they hear a car backfire, they’re back there in war, but it’s very common for someone who’s been betrayed to experience those same symptoms.
So to get the brain back, we need to settle the nervous system. We need to become more regulated. And the mind is so busy trying to make sense out of this disruption of reality, this complete disruption so so often someone may say, you know, you keep going over the details. You keep going over the details you need to move on. Well, yes, they do. But that rumination, this difference between ruminating and marinating, you know?
But the rumination is really important, because if we can find out, this is when we go back and we’re like, Wait, what did I miss? What did I What was I not looking for? How did I not see? How did I not know whether this is in business, whether this is personal, we kind of assess if I can see what I missed, I can learn to trust in my own ability to and trust my own brain again, so that that needs to happen. And then what’s so interesting is we have to rewire a lot of our beliefs.
And you know, I’ve had a saying in the 34 years I’ve been in business. It holds true for I haven’t found a topic. It doesn’t work for yet. Part now. Now easy, later, easy, now hard, later. Take your pick. It’s going to be one of those two. When it comes to healing from betrayal, this is all about hard now, easy, later. And what I mean by that is when a thought comes in our head, which is so common, right?
We have these thoughts all day long, when, when we truly are rebuilding in stages four and five, a thought comes in, if it is not healthy, supportive, loving, a part of who we are ready to create. We do not bring it with us, you know, and we’re intentionally and deliberately creating a version of ourselves that otherwise wouldn’t exist. So when you’re in stages four and five, your brain is different. You’ve rewired yourself.
You’re thinking differently because of that, you’re acting differently. You’ve become someone different. And it sounds like you also mentioned there’s sort of like, that strong physical aspect, right? Of exercising, eating, right, taking care of yourself. And ultimately, you know, that’s going to be the foundation for the physical, you know, manifestation of the health as well, long term, right?
Absolutely, it is so common in stages four and five, we’ll see new levels of health, new passion projects, new businesses. We didn’t, you know, we didn’t have the bandwidth for that earlier. Now we do, you know, new relationships, either with the person who hurt you in a very different way, or someone new. You’re someone new, so you attract a very different type of person you didn’t have access to when you were stuck in stage three. Interesting.
All right. Well, look, I’d love to ask you a question, because I’ve been, you know, I think one of the things that we’ve been successful at here at the evolution of medicine over the last 12 years is helping think through what the health center of the future looks like, right? And And originally, in functional medicine, we were sort of involved in, in popularizing the sort of Doctor coach dyad, right?
So you have someone who’s clinically there to run the situation the practitioner, you have the coach who’s there to help implement a couple of weeks ago, on the podcast, we spoke to Ashley cough, and she was really talking about the key role of the dietitian and why that maybe needs to be separated from the practitioner, and sort of the value of of organizing yourself like that. I’m just wondering, from your perspective, you know, what’s what needs, who needs to be on the team to get into this?
Or what, what kind of training and support do they need? Because ultimately, it seems that this will delay healing at the very best, if not, you know, stop it all together, unless it’s dealt with. But ultimately, this may not be in the comfort zone of the of the regular physician or nurse practitioner or someone leading a clinical team. Yeah. You know, this is the kind of thing, our betrayal recovery certification. It’s become the number one betrayal recovery certification for life, business, health and leadership coaches.
And I think that’s because you don’t necessarily need to specialize in betrayal recovery at all, but betrayal clients are coming your way, and the idea is this, if you know what stage someone is in, you know what type of trust has been shattered, self trust, trust in others, whatever, you can help them so much more effectively. You just have these tools in your tool belt to use when you need to. It’s not to turn off what you’ve been doing. It’s like a like, you know, an MD, right?
There’s an amazing doctor, and then there’s a heart surgeon. Sometimes you you’re the MD, and sometimes you need those specialized tools. This is just when that client comes your way, and they don’t even know that they’re not coming to you for this, because it may have happened 20 years ago. They’re not at the same starting point because they’re starting in stage three. They’re not at the same starting point as someone who’s just coming to you for, you know, a health symptom.
They’re coming from a very different starting place. So what it’s doing is it’s so it’s just, it’s just supporting the great work you’re doing, you’re already doing with something that just isn’t taught anywhere, and we’re working to change that. This I’ve been part of a men’s group for the last six years, and it’s been very helpful for me. And I guess I’m just wondering, how can you tell whether someone’s group is actually supporting them in the transformation to stage five or actually part of the problem and keeping them stuck.
You know, one of the classic ways is, how do you feel when you’re with them? Do you feel energized, expanded, better for having spent time with them? Or do you feel tired, depleted, spent? Right? Your body is always speaking with you, but we override it, and we listen to the mind. Well, this is good for me. I’ve been here a long time must be okay, maybe not. You know, everything has a reason to season a lifetime.
So check in with your body and see and also check in if it’s six years and you’re in the same place. Well, you know, what’s that? Say? It may just be that you love the connection with these people, but if you’re not growing, if you’re not expanding, you’re not better for it, something needs a little bit of a shift or a shift or a shakeup? Interesting? Yeah, well, that’s definitely, definitely interesting. And I will, I’ll let you know if I’m thinking about it in real time.
I mean, I recognize that I’m a very different man than I was when this came into it. And part of coming into that group was, you know, that a sort of a minimum viable. Level of personal and ongoing integrity in order to participate. And that’s been, you know, something that was aspirational to me, and has, like appeared in my mind at moments when, you know, when I needed that is that like to be part of that group, this is what was needed.
So I think there’s a lot of support, you know, that it’s added a lot of value, I would say, as I’ve gone from being sort of like the newbie in the group and learning what this was all about, learning, processing, understanding, bringing back my ability to actually feel emotion, and to name those emotions and be clear, you know, that’s been really been powerful for me in the group now, like sort of an elder, and someone who has been in part it for a while, and, you know, supporting other men in that, and there’s,
there’s value to that too, because it allows me to continue to grow. But I certainly been, you know, an accelerant for healthy things in my life. But you know, when you mentioned that, when you when you said something along the lines of, you know that being in the group, allowing you to speak your truth, actually stunts your ability to go through that journey of transformation. And I’m paraphrasing, but I different examples of that in my, you know, show up in my mind from men who have been in the group for a long time and who came and left men who are in the group currently.
You know, that’s where my head went to, because I want to make sure that I’m a custodian of everyone’s transformation, and not just I don’t want to stop anyone’s healing process by them feeling now that they have community and that that’s all that they needed. Because ultimately, I think the five steps that you’re talking about is very powerful. You know, I think one of the biggest things to look for, too, is you need to feel a little uncomfortable. I think we get kind of complacent.
We get we get very comfortable. And the growth is never in the comfort ever. So even if you’re in a position of being that elder, you know, we’re always learning right? The idea and the hope is to keep growing, to keep evolving in some way, and then sharing that to make the group even better, to make who you’re with even better. So the growth, I think, is a big piece of this, and that’s, that’s, that’s a sign that, you know, you’re moving out of that stage three, because in stage four and stage five, it’s a very different experience. There’s a growth is always welcome, yeah.
Well, Debbie, tell us a little bit more about how practitioners, if they were very interested in following this thread, you know, maybe we can, you know, share with them. You know, some of the resources. I know, the book is called unstuck. Where can you get that? We can you could just get that. We’re actually in the pre launch stage, but if you go to the site, we have all kinds of amazing bonuses and everything. So the site is the PBT, as in, post betrayal transformation, the PBT institute.com, great.
Well, thanks so much for being part of it. I’ve learned a lot. I think this is a really valuable conversation. And I think that you know, this is timely, like the whole thesis of the functional medicine operating system is finding the root cause. And from some of the statistics that you shared earlier, I feel like this is driving a lot of pathology, a lot of people, and we need to understand that root cause of building a team that is capable of solving both biochemical and biopsychosocial phenomenon is something that we’ve been talking about for 10 years.
That’s why I wrote a book on group visits, because I feel like there are things that the group can do that a one on one relationship can’t do, but this is even revitalizing my mind about what has to be necessary for the group to be effective. Thank you so much for your time, energy and effort. Thanks for doubling down into this area, and I know it’s already helping a lot of people. It’s going to help a lot more.
Thank you so much. I just want to say one last thing, your most resistant client, the client that you dread seeing, the client you can’t find the right protocol for very likely it’s an unhealed betrayal. That’s a great tip. All right, I’ve been here with Dr Debbie silbo. We’ll be talking about betrayal and the brain. This is the evolution of medicine podcast. Thanks so much for tuning in, and we’ll see you next time. So that was the podcast.
What an epic session, and just a reminder that coming up in April, we will have version two of our reversing Alzheimer’s Summit, and we’re gonna have updates on some of the new studies from Dr Bredesen, and be charting a path forward for the reversal of Alzheimer’s and cognitive decline. Thank you so much for tuning in to the evolution of medicine podcast. We’ll be back again next week, and thanks so much for tuning in, and we’ll see you next time.
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