Why Couples Need to Grieve and Mourn to Facilitate Betrayal Trauma Healing & Addiction Recovery w/ Jake Porter

In this episode, host Tara McCausland and guest expert Dr. Jake Porter discuss the significance of grief in the healing process for betrayed partners and how essential it is for both partners in a relationship to engage in the mourning process. He emphasizes the need for safety and stabilization before addressing grief and mourning, and provides insights on how couples can support each other through the healing journey. The episode also highlights the importance of seeking qualified therapy and creating personalized mourning rituals to cope with betrayal trauma. Connect with Dr. Porter at www.daringventures.com.

00:00 Introduction and Event Announcement
01:41 Meet Dr. Jake Porter
02:58 APSATS and Betrayal Trauma
04:13 Phases of Healing in APSATS Model
05:00 The Importance of Grief and Mourning
08:07 Challenges of Grieving Betrayal
11:09 Supporting the Betrayed Partner
14:00 Grief Work for the Betraying Partner
21:06 Creating Rituals for Mourning
22:21 The Role of Qualified Therapy
25:47 Justice in Betrayal Trauma Treatment
34:13 Phases of Grief Work
38:24 Final Thoughts and Advice

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction and Event Announcement
• 1:41 Meet Dr. Jake Porter
• 2:58 Understanding APSATS and Betrayal Trauma
• 4:13 Phases of Healing in APSATS Model
• 5:00 The Importance of Grief and Mourning
• 8:07 Challenges of Grieving Betrayal
• 11:09 Supporting the Betrayed Partner
• 14:00 Grief Work for the Betraying Partner
• 21:06 Creating Rituals for Mourning
• 22:21 The Role of Qualified Therapy
• 25:47 Justice in Betrayal Trauma Treatment
• 34:13 Phases of Grief Work
• 38:24 Final Thoughts and Advice

Transcript

Why Couples Need to Grieve and Mourn for Betrayal Trauma Healing and Addiction Recovery w/ Jake Porter

Introduction and Event Announcement

 [00:00:00] Hey friends before we get started, a couple of things. First, I'm so excited about our upcoming 2024 SA Lifeline Conference. This is a fully virtual event. It will take place from September 26th to the 28th via this platform called Whoova. And over these three days, we'll focus on healing from [00:01:00] unwanted sexual behavior, betrayal trauma, and also focus on healing couples and families. 

So there'll be 15 qualified speakers. You'll have a chance to participate on community boards, ask questions before and during [presentations], live Q & A's, worksheets and slides to download. You can fill out surveys, join in polls. It will be awesome. 

This isn't just an educational event, it's an interactive experience. It's designed to build a supportive community and really help propel you in your healing journey. So we hope you will go and register at salifeline.org. There you can see the full agenda along with the speakers and their presentation topics. And we hope to see you there. 

Meet Dr. Jake Porter

What's exciting is [that] our guest expert today is actually going to be one of our headliner speakers. His name is Jake Porter and Dr. Jake Porter is a board certified counselor. He's also a certified sex addiction therapist, supervisor, a certified multiple addiction therapist, APSATS certified, clinical partners specialist [00:02:00] and certified Daring Way facilitator.  

He is also the creator of a couple centered recovery model for treating attachment wounds of couples experiencing betrayal trauma. He's worked with couples from around the world who have traveled to Houston for treatment of severe attachment injuries and relational trauma. Jake lives in Houston with his wife, Kristen, and their daughters Magnolia Jane and Lottie Joe. 

Tara: Welcome to the Pathway to Recovery Podcast. I am your host Tara McCausland, and I'm really very excited to have here with me my new friend, Dr. Jake Porter. Thank you so much, Jake for coming on. 

Jake: Thank you for having me. I'm happy to be here, really glad to be here. 

Tara: I'm fangirling a little bit, I don't wanna make it an issue, but I've listened to a lot of Jake's stuff and [I’m] really grateful for the excellent work that you're doing in this field, especially for betrayed partners. 

Jake: Oh, thank you. It feels good to hear. It's great to be here and just get to give back as well, so thank you. 

Understanding APSATS and Betrayal Trauma

Tara: Well, you're very [00:03:00] involved with APSATS and we're big fans of APSTATS here at SA Lifeline. Do you want to just tell our listeners, what is APSATS? What does that stand for? 

Jake: Yeah, that long acronym, APSATS, is the Association for Partners of Sex Addict Trauma Specialists. It's a nonprofit that was formed back in, I want to say 08 or 09.

And yeah, I get to host the APSATS podcast, “Betrayal Recovery Radio”, and I'm on the board of APSATS and just a big supporter and promoter as well. 

Tara: And actually Barbara Steffens, who was the founder, right? She was one of our early guests and as kind of a fun side note [her episode] has the most downloads of all time I believe in our podcast.

Her episode is very popular and what we'll be discussing today goes right along the lines of what we have been discussing in a previous episode, which was when [00:04:00] we've discovered betrayal. The first thing we want to do is establish safety and stabilization, that's part of the APSATS model. If you don't mind sharing, what are the stages or phases of healing for the betrayed partner? 

Phases of Healing in APSATS Model

Jake: Yeah, so there are three phases of healing in the APSATS model. So APSATS calls its model the “Multidimensional Partner Trauma Model.” It was born from the research of Dr. Barb Steffens and is based on a wider frame used for trauma of various sorts first articulated, I think by Judith Herman.

So the three phases are first, safety and stability. So like you were just saying, beginning there, getting safety and stability. Once that is in place, the second phase is grief and mourning. And then the final phase is really about renewal [and] looking forward, it's really that phase where post traumatic growth begins to flourish.

Tara: Yeah.  Awesome. [00:05:00] 

The Importance of Grief and Mourning

Tara: And so what I wanted Jake to tell us a little bit more about today was this second stage or phase of grief and mourning. And I actually had another APSATS fellow, Dan Drake, on a previous episode. And he said that this is a stage that we often either pass over, like just skip entirely, or we just don't spend enough time there.

And I thought that was an interesting remark. And I was curious from your experience, why? Why is grief and mourning so important in our healing and what are maybe some of the consequences for not addressing this stage? 

Jake: Yeah. Well, I think it is so critical. The way I say it often, so people who have listened to me before, this is going to sound really familiar, is that grief is where the healing happens.

So the reason why it's critical is because it is the process whereby we are healing. To try to circumvent [00:06:00] that, to rush it, is to try to circumvent or rush the actual healing process itself, which is not going to pay off in the end. Clinically, grief is where we are basically reformulating something that's called our assumptive reality or our assumptive world, okay? The world as we assume it to be. 

That is a really difficult process. You know, we think about grief normally, we think about losing someone, right? Losing a loved one, a mother, a grandparent, a father, whatever, a child, God forbid. And, you know a few years ago, I lost my grandmother who I was very, very close to. And it was so difficult in the couple of months after her loss for us to go through the holidays. Cause it was like, how do we even do this? 

How do we do Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve and [00:07:00] Christmas and New Year's without grandmother, right? Who's going to make the crab rolls and who's going to make the pumpkin pie, right? It's not about the food. It's that for my whole life, she played such a part of that process, it's hard to imagine it without her, right? 

And so for someone who's been betrayed, what's been lost is my history, the storyline that I knew, the story of us as I understood it to be, my sense of security with you, my place with you. And now grief is going to mean I now need to actually figure out what this world is in light of this loss. I can't heal. I can't get to the other side of healing if I don't go through that process. 

Tara: I know you've likened experiencing betrayal to a [00:08:00] death, to a bereavement and something I was listening to, to prepare for this episode, you talked about something that I find very striking. 

Challenges of Grieving Betrayal

Tara: When we grieve a real loss, like the death of a loved one, or when we're dealing with a major hardship, like going through cancer, we have the benefit of being able to share with those closest to us and with our community, what we're going through. But betrayal is one of the most difficult things to go through because we often do it so isolated. 

Jake: Yes. 

Tara: Talk a little bit about that as a part of the grief stage, the challenges associated with that. 

Jake: Right. So I'm from the Houston area. Okay. Southeast Texas down in the south in the Bible belt. And there is a very clear, very well known, what we would call “cultural script” for when someone loses a loved one.

I was a pastor for 13 years and did a lot of funerals, attended a lot of funerals down here [00:09:00] in this part of the country, this neck of the woods, as we would say. You know, there's a clear cultural script for that.

Okay. The person dies. Within three to five days, usually, there's going to be a visitation [that’s what] we call it down here. It's usually in one evening. The next day is usually a funeral service followed by a graveside service, followed by a potluck meal back in the fellowship hall of the church.

It's something that we take for granted. It really is. But it's something that's so important because during this time when the loved ones are in shock, they're in bereavement, the grief has struck them, they don't have to decide what to do. There's a cultural script that carries them along in the community and moves them forward and it [00:10:00] carries all kinds of messages with it, all kinds of implications with it. And what it does is it really does initiate this grief process at that point. 

Well, there is no cultural script for the discovery of hidden betrayal. And there's actually a term for this, it's called disenfranchised grief. So disenfranchised grief is grief where there is no place for the public mourning process. And there's a lot of reasons for that, from shame and fear to ignorance. There's just, there's so many reasons.

Sometimes betrayed partners disenfranchise themselves because, if this comes out, my husband might lose his job. If this comes out, we might lose our friends in our faith community, right? It's a huge complicating factor because the grief is still real even if those [00:11:00] cultural scripts are not in place to help.

Tara: That makes perfect sense in recognizing that that's one of the challenges associated with betrayal. 

Supporting the Betrayed Partner

Tara: Hopefully if the couple is choosing to stay together, the person that did the betraying, I hope that there's, even where they're at as they're trying to work through their addiction, there can be some empathy. And an acceptance of my partner need[ing] support and allowing them to go and find that support system in family members, safe family members, in groups, 12 step, et cetera. 

But maybe before we go on, in fact, could you give some context for the betraying partner in all of this? Because if they're working on staying together in the relationship how does a betraying partner take part in or support this stage of healing because they're the one that inflicted the wound. 

Jake: Right.

Tara: What does that look like? 

Jake: Yeah, so that's a great question. I want to [00:12:00] answer that from two different angles, kind of looking at this through two different facets, if that's okay. The first one is really about looking at it just from the grief of the betrayed partner in which now the betraying partner is kind of on the outside. How can they come along?

Well, I do think everything you just mentioned is important. Support them in finding community. Support them in getting care, a therapist, a coach, a 12 step group, a partner support group, whatever that is. Rather than that reactive, self protective, don't tell because it's going to embarrass me. I don't want my dirty laundry out there. This is my story to tell, not yours, which is baloney. We can get in that if we want to. But it's very much the story of the betrayed partner as well. And so, yes, supporting that by being open and then [00:13:00] finding that community. 

But they can also be that support themselves, even though they cause the hurting, they can participate in the healing. And in fact, there might be even a way in which they can participate in the healing, that only they can do.

We could do a whole episode just on this question, but a few things that come up there around that is number one, they have to be able to be present with their partner's pain without it being a problem. It triggers their shame and then going into their own shame, they have to be able to stay regulated. They have to be open and curious and not argumentative about their partner's perspective. 

They have to be able to show compassion and empathy. Right? And I know that these things are difficult and I'm rattling it off, you know, like it's nothing. I'm not trying to imply that it's easy by any means because it's not. I know it's not. But it's [00:14:00] possible. It's possible.

Grief Work for the Betraying Partner

Jake: But I said I wanted to answer this from two different angles or facets. That second facet is, I want to almost challenge the premise of the question a little bit. Because it's suggesting that I'm saying, if she's the betrayed partner, is the one that's grieving and he is there to support her grief process. And the reality is [that] the betraying partner has their own process of grief.

Their assumptive world has also changed. Their reality has also changed. They too have to figure out, “How do I live in this world in light of this loss?” And it may be a loss that they welcome. They may find great relief sometimes in the fact that they've been found out or they've gotten through disclosure and they feel such a sense of integrity that maybe they've never felt before, in their entire lives because they're not holding any secrets like they have for decades and decades, and that's great.

They [00:15:00] still have their own grief process. I'm really the couple's guy on this scene in a lot of ways. And so as the couple's guy, what I want to say is, it's not just her grief, it's his as well and their shared grief. And if he can use her experience of grief to inform his awareness of his own, and I'll give an example of this.

I see this happen in my office all the time when I'm working with couples. You know, she writes an emotionally focused impact letter. And we help him stay grounded and present and really hear it and open himself to receive her words and to hear what she's saying. Suddenly he begins to recognize the depth of what his actions have done. And in that he actually begins to feel empathy and he expresses, we help him actually express that empathy for her. 

And the empathy helps. It doesn't take it all away. It doesn't magically heal it forever, but it helps. And he now has the felt [00:16:00] experience of emotional connection and empathy in such a way that it supports his wife. And that feels so good for him. And now guess what wells up next? “Wow, this is what I've been missing out on this whole time.”

And so it's his grief as well. It's not just hers. I mean, I don't want to say it's exactly the same because he has wronged her. I want to be super clear. There's been an injustice here. There's been a violation in one direction from the betrayer to the betrayed. So that is true, but it is also true that he has his own grief to deal with and they as a couple have a shared grief to deal with. What has this cost them together? 

Tara: Yeah, I love that. And you know, you're spot on. I mean, not that I'm surprised by that, Jake. But I think often we assume that the pain of the trauma and the [00:17:00] discovery is all being held by the betrayed partner.

But in reality we know that people who are suffering from addictive behaviors, that comes from a long history of likely trauma and other issues that are deep. So there's so much pain on both sides. So I really appreciate you speaking to that so clearly and I think it's good for the betrayed partner to recognize that as well.

And early on, it's hard to be able to acknowledge the pain for him. But as you said, that as we can see each other's pain that can inform the whole process and really expedite, I would imagine, the healing process for the couple. 

So if we can go a little bit more into some of the important terms and concepts to understand around grief and mourning, because I think we kind of culturally understand the concept of grief around death or what it looks like when we're [00:18:00] suffering a great loss. But put that in the context of a betrayal and addiction for us and help us understand again, the “why” behind why we need to mourn and grieve this.

Jake: Yeah, for sure. So there are several different terms that we can get into here. One place that I like to start is distinguishing between grief and bereavement. So bereavement is the objective act of the loss itself. It is the death itself, right? It is the discovery moment in which the story is lost for example, right? It's an objective act. 

Grief then becomes the process whereby we're reacting to the bereavement. Okay, the bereavement is the loss itself. So that moment of discovery when my timeline, [00:19:00] my history crumbles. And then I enter into grief as I begin to think that through and try to recognize “What does that mean?”

Now, mourning is a third term that's important. And here we have that cultural response to grief and bereavement and these are those rituals and these processes for coping, which we already mentioned earlier. So disenfranchised grief is where that mourning process isn't available for whatever reason. It either doesn't exist, or it would be too dangerous to engage, or some combination of that.

But the reason why I think it's helpful to understand the distinction between those things is because when a couple is going through this and they're in this messy middle, second phase of the healing process of grief and mourning, to [00:20:00] begin to have terms and labels that act as like containers.

Okay, so one thing I might do with a partner who's been betrayed or the one who's committed the betrayal is let's actually itemize the bereavements, plural, that have been encountered here. What are the objective acts, the objective losses that have occurred? And start naming those things. And just being able to put a label to that, to have a concept, have it written down, put a list to it - it begins to take this swirling chaos that's happening in this experience and bring a little order to it, right? 

Okay, and then with grief. Al right, if I know that grief is a process then it's not something I'm trying to do right now, today. I need to grieve, alright, check one, check two, check three, you know, here it is and I'm going to be done with it.  [00:21:00] But to understand, “I'm going to be in this for a while. I'm going to wander for a while.” 

Creating Rituals for Mourning

Jake: And then mourning, one of the things that I do with couples around this concept of mourning, because there aren't a lot of cultural scripts for grief around betrayal, is to create your own if you can't find a community. These scripts, and they do exist, there are good professionals out there and there are some groups out there and programs out there that have thought this through. But if you can't find one, and even if you do find one, you may still want to create your own, what would be a meaningful process for you?

Is it writing letters and burning them? Is it an art project? Is it finding a place? You know, I had one couple who would visit a graveyard. It was a graveyard where no one they knew was buried there or anything like that. It just became a symbolic place where they would go and they would have certain [00:22:00] conversations around what's been lost.

But creating these scripts, creating these rituals to help you cope and move along in the grief process can be a powerful way to continue moving forward in grief. 

The Role of Qualified Therapy

Tara: So, as a therapist, I'm curious if you think, I know you'll be biased here, but do you think that people can do this well without the instruction and direction of a therapist?

Jake: This might surprise you. I actually do think some people probably can, okay? Some can. I don't think that's the norm and there are a lot of reasons for that. One is that, to my knowledge, who [has been] taught how to deal with this? I wasn't. Right? I was taught how to grieve and deal, somewhat, with the loss of [00:23:00] someone I loved. I'm not saying someone sat me down and said, “Here's what you do,” but I observed it. I've seen others do it. There's a bit of common knowledge of it, I guess, but those things don't exist in this realm of grieving betrayal. So that's one reason why. 

The other reason why I think often people need support with this is because betrayal trauma is real. Okay, and this is a soapbox I've been finding myself on for probably the last eight to ten months. People are starting to catch on that betrayal is traumatic.

This is more than you know, a hard thing. This is trauma. Well, if we're going to call it trauma, trauma is a real thing, like actually doing damage to the brain. There's a real physical, neurobiological correlate to this. So this isn't just some convenient [00:24:00] concept, some convenient psychological this or that, whatever, right?

It's not, it's a real injury to the brain. If that's the case, then you probably need a qualified mental health worker coming alongside you for treatment. Again, I'm not going to say 100 percent of the time that's the case or that it's impossible to heal without it, because some people can and do.

Just because you can and do doesn't mean you don't deserve it because we might at least be able to help you get through it in less time with fewer errors, 

Tara: Well, great response there. And at SA Lifeline, we're huge advocates of qualified therapy and sometimes people are like, “Well, how do you qualify a therapist? What is a qualified therapist? And I like to remind people, if you go to our website, salifeline.org, we have a series of questions that you can download to ask a therapist. So you can make sure that they have some specialized training in this. 

And we often like to tell people that there are [00:25:00] people, APSATS, that we would recommend you start with them.  But yeah, so I agree that I think we tend to want to do things on our own for whatever reason, whether the reason be financial or we're just independent or we want to keep to ourselves and not spread our dirty laundry. But I think you're right. I can't imagine this being done well without the guidance of someone who understands trauma.

Jake: Right, right, right. 

Tara: And I don't want to go off the beaten path here. But are you seeing that we're backpedaling a little bit on an acceptance of betrayal trauma? How is that perhaps impacting how we're able to serve this population? 

Justice in Betrayal Trauma Treatment

Jake: I'm going to take one step back from this. This is really a matter of justice because by and large, this is not the case and there are always exceptions, but by and large, if you look [00:26:00] at the treatment that occurs after the discovery of betrayal, most of the resources, most of the time, and most of the attention go toward the one who is a sex addict or the one who committed the betrayal.

So, I mean, there are dozens and dozens of programs now for chronic betrayers or sex addicts. Dozens, right? Intensives and inpatient and residential and online programs and groups. I mean, so, so many. And though the number of programs available for betrayal trauma is increasing, it still pales in comparison.

And still the default automatic reaction is: whatever this man or woman needs to recover from their addiction and whatever they need to recover from these characterological issues that cause chronic betrayal, throw that there and what's left over, we’ll put that [00:27:00] toward what the betrayed partner can do.

My experience is that that actually ends up not being good for anybody. Because, number one, and here my bias is going to come out real, real strong and some of my colleagues aren't going to like what I'm about to say, but that's okay. 

Unfortunately, many of these programs for sex addicts or chronic betrayers, though they will now include a unit on betrayal trauma, or they will say, “Yeah, we're not going to pathologize the partner,” and they may not in a direct way. But they're still going to instill a recovery paradigm that is a my side of the street, your side of the street way of viewing the recovery process.

And what can happen then is now they've spent, [00:28:00] you know, 20, 000, 30,000, 60,000 on helping someone get sober, which is great, but also getting them entrenched in a model that actually is going to leave the betrayed partner isolated, on her own, on the outside of his recovery process because it's his, not hers.

They're going to say she needs to do her own work and all of this Well, guess what? They just dropped 60k over here. What's left for her to do her own work? So I don't think that's very helpful. And I see this so often. So here's a guy who's done good recovery work. He's done almost everything that he's been asked to do and he’s sober and has pretty solid recovery, but it was of that paradigm of “this is my individual recovery.” Now the betrayed partners over there, still reeling, still psychologically bleeding out, [00:29:00] still in trauma. They have very few resources left and guess what? Her distress continues. It goes up and up and up. What does that do for his recovery? 

Tara: Yeah, spiral.

Jake: Right, spiral. It's going to spiral and he's going to feel straight and now who's the problem? She seems like she's the problem. Well, guess what? If we believe betrayal trauma is real and she hasn't gotten the treatment she deserves, it's a matter of justice. It's the right thing to do. This is an ethical issue, as well as a biological issue, if trauma is real and it is affecting the brain. 

So all of that to say why can't it be dollar for dollar, day for day? I mean, if he's going away for two weeks, can't she? If he's dropping 20 K, can't she? Or whatever. I'm throwing out high numbers, but this happens on any scale, right? And so I'm just a fierce advocate that betrayed [00:30:00] partners deserve a quality of clinical care that is comparable to that of those with sex addiction or chronic betrayal issues. Sorry, I got a little passionate there.

Tara: No, you're great. You're great. And honestly, I love that passionate advocacy. We need more of that because the coupleship certainly won't heal unless they both get the care and treatment that they need. So, yeah, I'm with your brother. So with the few minutes that we have left, I wanted to talk a little bit about the stages or phases of grief work that we need to do in order to really move through this process. So that would be my first question. And then when are we ready to start even doing grief work? I don't know if you want to start with that. 

Jake: Let's start with that question. When are you ready to do grief work? Well, you cannot do grief work so long as safety and stabilization is not in place. I mean, [00:31:00] there is a reason why, it's phase two and not phase one. And I won't go into the depths of this. But basically, the way I say it is grief is a luxury for the brain that knows it's safe.

If my brain is in threat mode, the parts of the brain required to actually engage grief work are not even online. The metaphor I use is if I'm a soldier out on the battlefield and I've charged the enemy lines and my best buddy right next to me gets shot. I don't kneel down and grieve him while there are bullets flying by my head and bombs going off around me. 

So that’s safety and stabilization. First, to bring the betrayed partner out of the hypervigilance, out of the trauma, the constant trauma reactions, out of that threat, so that their whole brain can be online and actually engage the grief process is necessary. A lot of times partners are like, “Okay, [00:32:00] that sounds really great, Jake, but you know, what does that actually mean? What am I looking for here?”

So, what you look for is a  shift in the balance between trauma triggers and grief waves, and here's how I distinguish the two. Okay, a trauma trigger is where you are reliving the threat. It is about safety. It is about the threat right here, right now. It usually takes us out of our body. It makes us hyper vigilant, hyper aware. We're looking around, very externalizing, right? And so that is a trauma trigger. Out of nowhere. 

A grief wave also comes out of nowhere, but it's very body based. It's a wave of anger, or a wave of pain, or a wave of sadness, loss, a wave of, could be fear, but it's that deeper, long term fear. Will this ever end? Will I ever be better? It's not that “Am I safe right here, right now?” And [00:33:00] so that grief wave comes up, it's in the body, it's felt in the body. And those grief waves, they can start day one of discovery, but on balance, most of the time, betrayed partners, early on, they're going to experience a whole lot more trauma triggers than grief waves.

But as safety and stability increases, because safety and stability, it's not an all or nothing. It's not like, you know, once you cross this line, you go from zero to a hundred safety and stability. But as it increases, the balance will begin to shift such that eventually there are more grief waves than trauma triggers.

When that seems to be the case. Let's do grief work.That's generally what I would say. Now, the one exception would be if you're doing something intensive and you're in a laboratory setting, which is what I call my office. It's like a laboratory setting and you got a professional there. I might move someone into [00:34:00] some grief work earlier than I would suggest they do if they were on their own at their house. 

Okay. So that's the exception there. So that's, what I would say is first, how you know you're ready to start doing grief work. 

Phases of Grief Work

Jake: But then you mentioned phases of grief and there are phases. And so within this second phase of the overall recovery, there's sort of like three sub phases of the second phase. And I put it like this, “What's dead? What's new? What's next?” I know that's kind of crude and rough, but the reality is that every grief involves a death.

So what is dead here? That's phase one, getting really clear. What is gone? The old marriage is gone. The old storyline of our marriage is gone. Trust. 

I mean, I could keep going, but getting clear on that, and that's where a really good emotional impact letter process can help. There are other tools [00:35:00] as well out there, and exercises that can help people begin to name what has been lost here. And then the next question is, What's new? Because if there is a vacuum, something will fill it. 

Tara: Right. 

Jake: So, what's new? What is now present? Well, and it's not all good or bad. I would even try to suggest not thinking in terms of good or bad here. It just is. So, some examples. What's new? Well maybe there's a level of public humiliation that's new. That's new, right? So there's a loss of reputation. That's a loss. That's what's dead. My reputation is dead. What has filled that void? Some humiliation. 

Okay, what else is new? Ah, maybe the truth. Maybe the truth is new. And so what's been lost? The lies. The false [00:36:00] story. What's filled that void? Well, now I know the truth, painful as it is.

So working through and getting clear on what is new here, and you can't sit down and knock this out on a Sunday afternoon. This is a weeks and months long process. What's dead? What's new? What's gone? What's in its place now? Right? 

And then the third question is, what's next? So here's where I'm looking at, the delta, the change, the gap, between what's dead and what's new. And I'm looking at it and I go, okay, in light of this shift that's happened in my life, what's possible? My hope is at this point, people find a place of empowerment. to make choices to direct what will be next. And that's the difference between getting good therapy, good support, good coaching, or not.

Because what I often see is, we get a lot of hard cases at Daring Ventures [00:37:00] and people who've been in this process for a really, really long time and just stalled out or not found the healing they wanted. And a lot of times what's happened is look, your brain is going to go through the grief process. It has to, it will go through that. 

If you don't have the right help and the right internal resources to do it, you might find yourself moving in a new trajectory that is not where you want to go. And so the what's new, the answer to that question, what's new here in this next chapter might be really unpleasant, unwanted.

That's where we have to help people to be empowered to make choices to set that trajectory for themselves. You can't go back and make it as if this didn't happen. Given the reality of what's lost and what's new, I can now make choices from a place of reality about what's next. 

Tara: Wow. That makes sense. So good, Jake, [00:38:00] and very informative. I think this will be really helpful for a lot of our listeners and just recognizing, I think sometimes we really want to move through this process quickly. And I have to say, this is a marathon, not a sprint. We have to be very patient with this process and with grief and mourning and not bypass it, recognizing that there will be consequences if we try.

Jake: Absolutely. 

Final Thoughts and Advice

Tara: Well, we need to close up here, but my final question that I always ask our guests is this is a hard process and it can be long and exhausting. What might you tell a newcomer and maybe on the flip side, what would you tell somebody that's been walking this path for a while?

Jake: I think to the newcomer, I would say “You are not alone”, which sounds so trite, right? Like, “Oh, you're not alone.” But I really mean it because I think that's one of the biggest lies we can believe. One of the biggest sort of false cognitions that we can believe is that no one else is going through this. No one else would [00:39:00] understand it. No one else could possibly help me with this or understand this. 

And, my goodness, it's just not true. If you can be brave enough to find that community of support and do it early on in this process, that will save you mountains of misery along the way. You don't have to do it alone. You don't have to figure it out alone. You don't have to navigate all the questions and the unknowns by yourself. There are people that they don't just know about it, they've been through it, they've made it to the other side, they're passionate about it, they're trained, they're devoting their lives to it, and you deserve to find those people and not do it alone.

So that's what I would say to the person who's new to this and to the person who's been at it a really, really long time, what comes up for me right now around that [00:40:00] is, if you've been doing all the right things, if you've been doing everything you've been told to do and not getting where you want to go. What that means is if you've been told what to do and you're not doing it, well, that's on you.

But if you're doing everything you're told to do and you're not getting where you want to go, maybe you're not getting good help and you have the right to get good help. You know if following the instructions of whoever you've been working with isn't getting you the results you want, then it doesn't mean that they're a bad person or that they're they failed or they're wrong. But maybe it's just not a fit for you. 

I said this recently to clients of mine. “We're not getting the results you want. Maybe someone else will serve you better.” Okay, so I'm not above it. You deserve to [00:41:00] find someone to help you that can help you, because you're an individual, and your needs may be different than others. So if you're engaged in the process, you're doing everything you're told to do, and you're not getting what you want, try something different. Shake it up. 

Tara: Wonderful. Great counsel. Well, this has been so fun. I've enjoyed this so much. And if our listeners want to find you, do they just go to your website? Is that the best place to contact you? 

Jake: Absolutely. Dr.JakePorter.com, daringventures.com. I'm also on Instagram and Facebook as well, Dr. Jake Porter. So, you can find me any of those ways. 

Tara: Awesome. And we'll put that info in the show notes, but thank you again so much for your time. Really appreciate you, Dr. Jake. 

Jake: Thank you for having me. 

 [00:42:00]