Dreamvisions 7 Radio & TV Network

When You’re Doing the Healing Work—but Still Don’t Feel Safe After Betrayal

With Anne Blythe, M.Ed., Founder of Betrayal Trauma Recovery

After betrayal, women are often told to heal. Regulate your nervous system. Stop obsessing. Work on your triggers. Communicate better. Go to therapy. Learn to trust again. So you do…

But what happens when you've read the books, done the therapy, practiced the tools, and worked incredibly hard—and your body still doesn't feel safe?

Maybe the problem isn't that you're failing at healing. Maybe your nervous system is responding to something that is still happening.

In this episode, Lora Cheadle talks with Anne Blythe, M.Ed., founder of Betrayal Trauma Recovery, host of The Betrayal Trauma Recovery Podcast, and creator of the Clarity After Betrayal Workshop, about one of the most confusing parts of betrayal recovery: learning to distinguish between the trauma of what happened in the past and harm that may still be occurring in the present.

Anne challenges conventional betrayal-recovery models by asking women to consider whether what they've been treating solely as a relationship problem may also involve patterns of control, coercion, exploitation, or emotional and psychological abuse.

Drawing from Anne's lived experience and her extensive interviews with betrayed women, Lora and Anne explore gaslighting, intimate deception, sexual coercion, and why certain approaches to couples therapy can sometimes make an already confusing situation even harder to see clearly.

They also tackle the question so many women desperately want answered:

How do I know if he's really changing—or simply getting better at saying and doing the right things?

Words can sound wonderful. Promises can bring tremendous relief. A partner may appear calmer, more attentive, more remorseful, or more committed to recovery.

But genuine change isn't something you should have to manufacture for him—or manage with a checklist.

The goal is to become grounded enough in yourself that you can step back, observe what is actually happening, protect your emotional and psychological safety, and make decisions based on reality rather than fear, hope, pressure, or someone else's instructions.

And importantly, this conversation is not about telling women to stay or leave.

Recognizing harmful behavior does not automatically dictate divorce. Likewise, choosing to stay does not mean tolerating behavior that is unsafe or unacceptable.

The goal is clarity, safety, strategy, and trusting yourself enough to determine what is right for your own life.

Top 3 Takeaways

If you're doing the healing work but still don't feel safe, don't automatically assume you're doing something wrong.
After betrayal, women can become so focused on regulating themselves and becoming "less reactive" that they interpret every continued nervous-system response as evidence they haven't healed enough. But if deception, manipulation, coercion, or other harmful behavior is ongoing, your body may be responding to what is happening in the present—not simply reacting to the past.

Don't evaluate change by words alone. Create enough emotional space to observe what is actually happening.
Anne recommends giving yourself small breaks from the pain so your entire day isn't consumed by betrayal. From a more regulated place, you can begin observing your partner's behavior rather than relying solely on reassurance or promises. Genuine change becomes something you witness over time—not something you have to coach, manage, or convince yourself is happening.

You don't have to decide "stay or leave" before you learn how to protect yourself. Emotional and psychological safety strategies can matter whether you remain married, separate, reconcile, or eventually divorce. The goal isn't for someone else to tell you what you "have to" do. It's to understand what you're dealing with, gather the legal, financial, emotional, and practical information you need, and develop a strategy that allows you to make decisions from clarity instead of coercion or fear.

Favorite Quotes

“You can't heal inside ongoing trauma.” — Lora Cheadle

“Trusting that women know what the right thing for them is is part of what we do at BTR.” — Anne Blythe

“They can heal or not, and I'm still in charge of me.” — Lora Cheadle

About Anne Blythe, M.Ed.

Anne Blythe, M.Ed., is the founder and executive director of Betrayal Trauma Recovery, producer and host of The Betrayal Trauma Recovery Podcast, author of Trauma Mama Husband Drama, and creator of the Clarity After Betrayal Workshop.

Anne brings both professional expertise and lived experience to her work. After experiencing betrayal trauma during her marriage and for years following her divorce, she developed a trauma-informed, victim-centered approach designed to help women recognize harmful patterns, understand what is actually happening in their relationships, and respond with greater clarity, safety, and strategy.

Her work is informed by extensive qualitative research, including more than 220 in-depth interviews with women who have experienced marital betrayal.

Learn more about Anne and Betrayal Trauma Recovery

LOVE THE SHOW? TAKE THE NEXT STEP

Don’t just listen—start healing.

Get your free downloadable guide on the “The Top Three Ways You Betray Yourself Every Day, and How to Stop” at www.burnoutorbetrayal.com. https://workplace-burnout.com/the-top-3-ways-you-betray-yourself-every-day-and-how-to-stop/

If you’re ready to Rise Up & Reign as the creator and queen of your life, let’s talk. I will walk by your side and give you the perspective, permission, and wisdom needed to turn your betrayal experience into something constructive, empowering, and transformative in all the right ways. 

Learn more at www.loracheadle.com and follow me across all social!

Download your Sparkle After Betrayal Recovery Guide at www.BetrayalRecoveryGuide.com, a guide designed to help you take the first steps in feeling better, so you can reclaim your power, own your worth, and start putting yourself, and your life, back together again.

About Lora:

Lora Cheadle, JD, CHt is a betrayal recovery coach, attorney, TEDx speaker, and author of FLAUNT! and It’s Not Burnout, It’s Betrayal.

After uncovering her husband’s 15-year affair, she turned her own pain into purpose—helping high-achieving women reclaim their identity, power, and joy.

A trauma-aware coach, somatic therapist, and former attorney, Lora blends legal insight with emotional and spiritual healing for full-spectrum recovery.

She is the author of FLAUNT! Drop Your Cover and Reveal Your Smart, Sexy, & Spiritual Self (an International Book Awards Finalist and Tattered Cover Bestseller) and It’s Not Burnout, It’s Betrayal: 5 Tools to FUEL UP & Thrive. She also hosts the podcast FLAUNT! Create a Life You Love After Infidelity and Betrayal. Learn more at www.loracheadle.com and follow me across all social!

Get the support you need to find your footing, begin making sense of it all, and feel better fast. As an attorney, betrayal recovery expert, and survivor of infidelity I can help you find the clarity and confidence to create a life that you love on the other side of betrayal. Book Your Session Here: https://calendly.com/loras-schedule/coaching-session

Thank you to BetterHelp for sponsoring this podcast! Take charge of your mental health and get 10% off your first month of therapy at https://BetterHelp.com/FLAUNT 

READY TO START A BETTER CHAPTER? Step into the future you’ve always dreamed of with the power of transformative rituals with the Mindful Subscription Box. Get a monthly box full of crystals, aromatherapy, and other spiritual tools worth $120. You deserve high-quality gems, crystals, oils, and mindfulness tools for self-care that truly work. It’s a monthly dose of self-love delivered right to your door! Go to www.Mindfulsouls.com  and use Discount Code LORA25 for 25% off your order!

Gaea Star Crystal Radio Hour #686 is an hour of dynamic, visionary acoustic improvised music and songs by Mariam Massaro played by The Gaea Star Band with Mariam Massaro on vocals, 4- and 8-string ukulele, acoustic guitar, crystal bowl, Celtic harp, harmonica and mandolin, Bob Sherwood on piano and Craig Harris on congas and Native drum. Recorded live at Singing Brook Studio in Worthington, Massachusetts in mid-September of 2026, today’s show begins with the intense, powerful “Oh Holy Ground” before easing into the classically-inflected folk of “Many Seeds Have Fallen”, a charmingly formal song with a beautifully simple and uncolored vocal from Mariam. “Thunderbeings” is a powerful, driving storm song with throbbing Native drum and chiming acoustic guitar and “Restore” is a rich, sacred love song to the Earth and a powerful prayer to sustainability. “Spirit Of Fire” is a powerfully spiritual song from Mariam that reveres the elements with a dancing, energized rhythm built around Mariam’s driving ukulele strums and reverent, soaring vocal and featuring a gorgeous coda decorated with Mariam’s evocative Native flute. “Let’s Open To Our Own Majesty” opens as an exotic, psychedelic excursion that shifts into a pretty, peaceful song with lovely chord motifs and a lilting vocal from Mariam. Mariam strums her evocatively flowing Celtic harp over heartbeat Native drum and minimalist piano for the rich, affecting “Goodbye Forest We Love You” and “Mighty Are The Wings Of Love” is made exotic and mysterious by the minor chord figurations of Mariam’s tart, rhythmic mandolin and Bob’s modal piano work. “We Call In The Wind” is another powerful prayer to the elements originally recorded for Mariam’s “Vision Quest” LP and the band presents it with precision and power. “I Am The Mother Earth” is another “Vision Quest” track that the ensemble expands and stretches in intriguing, imaginative ways before closing today’s show with the tight, groovy blues rocker “Oh The Magical”, a driving Ray Charles-like workout with throbbing drums and chiming ukulele.

Learn more about Mariam here: http://www.mariammassaro.com

Sheryl Glick host of Healing From Within Interviews Suzanne McQueen author of 4 Seasons in 4 Weeks, who describes a remarkable system within each woman for understanding their own rhythmic nature. Suzanne coaches women on how to track the energies of their own hormonal rhythm using symbolism, archetypes and an easy to follow system which helps make sense of the emotional and physical effects of these changing cycles.

Learn more about Sheryl here: http://www.sherylglick.com/

Sheryl Glick host of Healing From Within Interviews author of The Living Spirit: Answers for Healing and Infinite Love welcomes Sandra Champlain author of We Don’t Die. Sandra also a medium to share their ideas of energy and life which will hopefully dispel your fears of death and dying and shed light on the creative beings of Spirit and Eternal Life that we really are. This miraculous knowledge can show you how to live an empowered fearless and focused joyful life experience. Sandra will share her fear of dying and the skepticism that led her on a journey of discovery through the disciplines of science and medicine to uncover the clear undeniable truth that we don’t die. https://www.wedontdie.com/

Learn more about Sheryl here: http://www.sherylglick.com/

Born Aware: Stories & Insights from Those Spiritually Aware Since Birth with Diane Brandon

Diane Brandon facilitates, teaches, reaches, encourages, and inspires others, often helping others transform their lives in positive ways.  She works with others one-on-one and in groups via classes, workshops, and seminars, and is an expert on Intuition, Dreams, and the Born Aware Phenomenon, a term she coined.  Diane infuses her work with enthusiasm, her signature humor, and thought-provoking insights.

Born and raised in New Orleans, Diane has been spiritually aware since birth (literally), has had a lifelong interest in metaphysics, and has been an avid student of it for over 45 years. She has been a member of Intelligentsia Metaphysica, Mensa, and Institute of Noetic Sciences.

She is an alum of a high school for academically gifted in New Orleans (Benjamin Franklin Senior High School), has an A.B. in French from Duke University, did Master’s work at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in Radio, Television, and Motion Pictures, and attended TUTOR, a language institute in Geneva, Switzerland for French studies.

Diane hosted “Naturally Vibrant Living with Diane Brandon” on Web Talk Radio and Blogtalkradio.com and “Vibrantly Green with Diane Brandon” on Ecology.com, in addition to appearing as a guest on several radio and TV shows nationally. She regularly appeared as a guest dream interpreter on the syndicated radio show, “Your Time with Kim.”  She formerly hosted “Living Your Power” on the Health & Wellness Channel of VoiceAmerica.com. Diane has facilitated a seminar on Business Intuition at the Rhine Research Center, in addition to speaking on dreams there, and has spoken on Intuition at the Mensa Annual Gathering.

Diane’s Intuitive Counseling work led to writing.  She’s cited in “The 10 Most Common Nightmares Interpreted” in Business Insider and has contributed articles to Connexions (“Wholism and the New Age,” “Guided Meditation and Regression,” and “Paths to Empowerment”), Innerchange Magazine (“The Dance of Personal and Spiritual Growth:  Syncing Up the Levels,” “Experiential Spirituality and Contemporary Gnosis,”  “Shamar’s Journey of Love,” a children’s story, “Heart-Centeredness:  A Healthy and ‘Whole’some Meeting of Science and Spirituality,”  “Unwrapping the Wonderful Gift of Dreams,” “Musings On Ghosts, Apparitions & the Veil Between Realities,” “The Misguided Imperative to Be Positive,”  “Intuition – An Intuitive’s View,” “Befriending Your Other Self — Plumbing Your Depths and Amplifying Self,” and “The Loss of Two Beloved Giants”), to The Art of WellBeing (“Exploring Your Dreams for Wellness”),and The Journal of Tar Heel Tellers (“Vocal Tips for Storytellers”), and is a Contributing Author to The Long Way Around: How 34 Women Found the Lives They Love (© 2000, Carolina Women’s Press) and Speaking Out! (© 2005, Insight Publishing).

She’s the author of four books: Born Aware – Stories and Insights from Those Spiritually Aware Since Birth (which endorsements called “brilliant” and “groundbreaking”), Dream Interpretation for Beginners — Understand the Wisdom of Your Sleeping Mind, Intuition for Beginners — Easy Ways to Awaken Your Natural Abilities, and Invisible Blueprints: Intuitive Insights for Fulfillment.  She has also written insight pieces on “The Aftermath of Hurricane Katrina,” “Choosing Hope—Some Thoughts on September 11, 2001,” and “Disasters in Myanmar/Burma and China — Thoughts and Lessons.”

Diane is also a Corporate Consultant, as well as an Actor, Singer, Voice-Over Artist, and Voice Teacher and is included in the 1997-1998 Silver 25th edition of Who’s Who in the South and Southwest.   https://www.dianebrandon.com/

Call In and Chat with Deborah during Live Show: 833-220-1200 or 319-527-2638

Learn more about Deborah here:  www.lovebyintuition.com