Difficulty Trusting After Trauma: An Atlanta Trauma Therapist on How to Heal After Betrayal
If you’re reading this, you may already know what it’s like to look at someone who says they love you and still feel your guard tighten. You want to be able to trust others. You want to exhale. You want to believe that others can be trusted. But your body doesn’t buy it.
Instead of safety, you feel a familiar emptiness—the tightening in your chest, the second-guessing, the instinct to pull back before you get hurt again.
If that’s you, take a breath. You’re not broken. You’re not being dramatic. You’re responding exactly how a nervous system responds when it’s been betrayed.
As a trauma therapist in Atlanta, I sit with so many people who feel defeated by their inability to trust—people who desperately want relationships that feel steady, supportive, and safe, yet can’t seem to stop bracing for the next emotional blow. What you’re experiencing isn’t a personal flaw. It’s trauma’s imprint.
In this blog, I want to help you understand why trauma shatters trust and how therapy can help you slowly rebuild a sense of safety—first within the therapy relationship, and then with the people who matter most.
Why Trauma Breaks Your Ability to Trust
Trauma—especially betrayal trauma, childhood emotional neglect, or relationships marked by unpredictability—doesn’t just wound your heart. It rewires your nervous system.
You learn:
People who are supposed to love me hurt me the most.
I have to protect myself from everyone to stay safe.
I’m not safe with anyone.
When someone has broken your trust, your brain stores that experience as evidence. And because trauma is stored in the body—not just the mind—you don’t think “I shouldn’t trust.” You feel it. Automatically. Instinctively. Viscerally.
Here are a few reasons trust becomes so hard after trauma:
1. Your nervous system stays in protection mode.
After betrayal, your body becomes wired to anticipate danger. You may feel hyperaware of changes in tone, facial expressions, pauses, or inconsistencies. You’re scanning, interpreting, and bracing—not because you want to—but because your body believes it must.
2. You’ve learned that closeness equals risk.
If the people who were supposed to care for you were also the ones who hurt you, your nervous system pairs intimacy with danger. Vulnerability feels unsafe. Everything in you wants connection, yet everything in you also fears the cost of it.
3. You were taught—directly or indirectly—that your needs don’t matter.
Many trauma survivors grew up minimizing their feelings, suppressing their voice, or walking on eggshells. When trust was broken early in life, you internalized the message like: Don’t rely on anyone. Don’t need too much. Don’t show too much.
Those lessons don’t disappear with age. They show up in adult relationships as self-protection, emotional distance, people-pleasing, or choosing partners who feel familiar but unsafe.
4. You stopped trusting yourself.
After trauma, people often say, “Why didn’t I see it?” or “Why did I let this happen?” Self-trust fractures right alongside relational trust. You doubt your intuition. You question your judgment. You worry you’ll make the same mistakes again.
Trust doesn’t just break with others—it breaks internally too.
How Trauma Therapy Helps You Rebuild Trust (Starting in the Therapy Room)
One of the most healing parts of trauma therapy—and one many clients don’t expect—is that trust begins to repair inside the relationship you build with your therapist.
Not because the therapist is perfect. Not because we move fast. But because the therapy relationship becomes an emotionally corrective experience.
1. You experience what consistent safety feels like.
In trauma therapy, you’re met with warmth, presence, and steadiness. You get to show the parts of yourself that were ignored, dismissed, or punished—and instead of being judged, you’re understood. Over time, your nervous system learns a new association: Closeness can feel safe. Being seen doesn’t always lead to pain.
This kind of consistency slowly rewires the threat response trauma left behind.
2. You learn to trust your own internal signals
Therapy isn’t just about trusting others—it’s about learning how to trust yourself again: your instincts, your voice, and your body’s cues.
We explore where doubt came from, how self-blame formed, and how to rebuild a relationship with the part of you that always knew when something felt off but wasn’t allowed to speak. When you begin trusting yourself, trusting others becomes far less terrifying.
3. You repair attachment wounds in real time
Attachment-focused trauma therapy creates a safe relational space where old patterns show up—but this time, you’re not alone in them.
You might:
pull back when you’re overwhelmed
fear disappointing your therapist
expect judgment
or wait for the moment everything falls apart
But unlike past relationships, we slow down, name the internal messages, and work through them with gentleness. This is how attachment heals—through new experiences of connection.
4. You learn boundaries that protect your heart instead of hardening it
Trauma often pushes people into extremes: trusting too quickly or not trusting at all. In therapy, you learn to build realistic, healthy boundaries that help you feel safe without shutting down emotionally.
Boundaries allow trust to grow at a pace that feels tolerable—not rushed, not avoided.
5. You practice receiving care without earning it
For many trauma survivors, love once came with conditions. You had to behave a certain way, stay quiet, keep the peace, or sacrifice your needs to remain connected.
Therapy disrupts that old pattern. Healing happens when you experience care that isn’t transactional—care that doesn’t require you to shrink yourself.
This alone can transform what trust feels like.
Practical Ways to Start Trusting Again
You can begin gently—alongside therapy—by practicing the following:
Move slowly. Trust is built in small, consistent moments.
Listen to your instincts. If something doesn’t feel right, your nervous system may be asking you to pay attention—not panic.
Name what scares you. Speaking fear out loud reduces its power.
Let people show you who they are over time. Trust is something you observe, not force.
Start with self-trust. Ask yourself often: What do I need? What feels safe? What feels too fast?
You deserve relationships where your heart doesn’t have to stay on high alert.
You Can Heal from Betrayal—Even If Trust Feels Impossible Right Now
Trauma may have taught you that people aren’t safe, that you have to do everything alone, or that letting someone in is too dangerous. But those messages came from pain—not truth.
You can learn to trust again. You can create relationships that feel safe, steady, and nourishing. Your nervous system can heal. And you don’t have to do it alone.
If you’re ready to explore trauma therapy in Atlanta—whether you’re healing from childhood wounds, relationship betrayal, or long-standing attachment patterns—I’m here to walk with you gently, at your pace, with care that honors the parts of you that have worked so hard to survive.
You don’t have to stay guarded forever. Safety is possible. Trust is possible. Healing is possible. Change is possible.
Kristy Brewer is a therapist Atlanta offering online therapy in Georgia helping people find peace amidst the chaos. Her specialties include trauma therapy, attachment therapy for trauma within toxic relationships, anxiety therapy, depression therapy, and parents raising a traumatized child.
Request a free 15-minute phone consultation today by clicking here.
