How Betrayal Trauma Became a Movement That Heals Marriages

I'm a disruptor.

I am disrupting a whole industry.

It's a very uncomfortable topic.

“And so we're saving marriages all over the place.”

We're preventing divorce. - Beth Fisher is a betrayal trauma expert, educator, and the creator of the betrayal trauma healing method. She helps betrayed partners, unfaithful partners, and couples heal from infidelity

by providing a clear path toward recovery, trust, and lasting emotional healing. - I actually work with people. - Mostly couples, but sometimes it's just the individual one or the other partner,

because they've tried everything else. And it doesn't work. And then they come to us and they realize, oh, this works. When you find out about a betrayal, your whole world blows up.

And that sets your brain and your nervous system on a completely different path. So I just started diving into neuroscience. And I thought I have to spread this message. I have to start telling people about this

because it spans the globe. Like a super high school, internet Elvis. (indistinct) Today, Apple is going to reinvent the phone. It's not over, I'm telling how we're...

- The living your legacy podcast for those who live to leave a legacy. (indistinct) (indistinct) Oh, that is sensational.

(indistinct) - Check out what's going on here.

“- You said, "Oh, it's the boxes, not on the planet."”

- You can live your dreams. - Hey, and welcome back to another episode of Living Your Legacy Podcast. I'm your host again, Jay Slengon. And we're down here at Sunny Miami.

During the World Cup, craziness. - Crazyness. - Yeah sure. - We have a special guest today. Actually, my first guest on the show, Love Experts.

So I'm excited to kind of get into it. But what's the name, where did you come from, and what's your business? - So I'm Beth Fisher, and I'm coming from Orlando, Florida. So not too far away, and my business is healing families.

- All right, and how'd you end up in Orlando? Are you a Floridian originally? - Oh no, Detroit, Michigan. So I went cold, that's where I'm originally from. - All right.

- No, I left Detroit early, you know, kind of early 2007, lived in Brazil, lived in Mexico, came to Orlando, did a Stintin Singapore, and then back to Orlando. - Oh, okay.

- So a little travel in a round?

- Yeah, yeah, I've never lived in South America,

but I did spend about 16 years in Southeast Asia. - Yeah, yeah. - A few of those years were in Singapore. - Yeah, yeah. - He lived a fall.

I loved it there. - It was a beautiful fall. - I love it, basically, everywhere I go, you know. - Yeah. - I mean, it's hard to say, there's a bad place out there.

You know, kind of a track to what you put out also. - That's right. - Absolutely. - But Singapore is really special. It's very futuristic, it's very organized.

- Yes. - Good evening, right? Clean. - Very safe. - Yeah, so it's the first time we were like our daughter.

She was kind of high school age when we lived there, one of our daughters, and you know, when we started hearing people could go on the metro at like two in the morning. And there's no way. - Yeah.

- And then as soon as you live there, you're like, oh yeah, sure, okay. - Absolutely, yeah. - Yeah, so safe. - Makes you kind of jealous because there are public

transportation and it's so nice. It's like clean and it's on time to the... - Yeah, getting the most, right? - Yes. - And it's like, man, how come we can't have stuff like this,

you know? - It doesn't make sense. - Honestly, it doesn't matter. People aren't embarrassed to ride the bus. That was one thing I was like, you know,

when living in LA or living in, and actually New York is different, right? - Yeah. - But like in LA, it's like, I don't know, because there were some situations where I felt like

sketched out, right?

And you never get that in Singapore, right?

- Not at all. - Yeah, also in Thailand, there was like a, you know, like the low class ride the buses, you know? And there's no aircon and you're just like, yeah, but in Singapore, it's everyone.

- It was everyone. And it was great and efficient and it worked and clean, safe, all that stuff, yeah.

“- So you're here for the show, love experts, right?”

- Yeah, my first. - Yes, so what makes you a love expert? What, where are we going? - Well, when I saw this, this love experts, I thought, you know, I mean, this is where I need to be

because I'm doing something out in the world that's very unique. I'm a disruptor. - Okay. - I am disrupting a whole industry.

- All right. - And it's not a happy industry. It's not a fun industry. It's a very uncomfortable topic. - So the uncomfortable side of being a love expert

you're dealing with right? - Yes. - All right. So what is it, drum roll? What is it?

- Betrayal. - Oh, fatality. - Fatality. - Fatality. - Oh, yeah.

- AKA cheating. - cheating. - All right. - So it's not a fun side of the relationship, but there's the most potential for growth and change

- Yeah, yeah.

- And so that's what I do.

“I actually work with people, mostly couples,”

but sometimes it's just the individual one or the other partner, because they've tried everything else. And it doesn't work, and then they come to us, and they realize, oh, this works. - Yeah.

- And so we're saving marriages all over the place. We're preventing divorce. - And unfortunately, I'd have to ask you to be an expert in infidelity, you know, was, did you, unfortunately, experience out yourself?

- I did, but don't say unfortunately, and don't be apologetic. - Okay. - So I did, my husband ended up having, you know, some infidelitys in our marriage,

that, of course, I knew nothing about. And when I found out, I did what most people do, which is you start Googling, and you go to marriage counseling, and all of those things, all the articles.

- Now, what do you mean, you start Googling,

you start Googling what just infidelity? - Yeah, you start. - And cheating, okay, okay. - Why do people cheat and you start Googling like your symptoms?

Like, how come I can't sleep? - Gotcha. - You know, why am I obsessing? Why can't I stop thinking about it? Why do I keep having all these triggers?

“- And you're doing that while he's sleeping next to you, still?”

- So no, aren't a way like a baby. - Yeah, okay. - Oh yeah. - So I realized very early on that all the stuff that was out there, it was not helping.

- Yeah. - There might have been some pieces and a little tool here, or a little tool there, but nothing was like, I wasn't feeling better. And I wanted my marriage.

I couldn't imagine divorcing even with the horrible story that he had, I couldn't imagine divorcing and then like only seeing my kids every other weekend and sharing. - 'Cause at this time, you still love him.

- Yeah. - How long were you married before the infidelity happened? - Oh, 20 years, I don't even remember the... - Well, I was now, okay. - Yeah, a long time, a long time.

- Yeah, I don't even know where to start. I mean, it's, it's, most people don't. - Yeah, I got it, tell you. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And so you've created this business,

we like to say that the riches are in the niches and you've kind of found through this situation,

“hey, this is a place where these people need help, right?”

This kind of specific area and topic, it's a niche because it's very specific, right? - All right, so, yeah, how was it? When did you say, oh, I can turn this into a business and talk to people about it?

- Yeah, after about three years, I call it Betrayal Hell. I mean, it was just, we were fighting, we were doing this marriage counseling, nothing was working.

So I started going down different rabbit holes at some point. I started really focusing on healing. Like how, how do you actually heal? - Healing yourself and not the marriage. - Exactly, forget the marriage.

We were together, but, you know, well, when you start, again, this was before chat, she'd peaty, so I just had Google. And when you start using words like healing, you get all different kinds of results.

- Yeah. - So I started getting all these results for healing your nervous system. I healing my nervous system. What are they talking about?

- Yeah. - That led me down the biggest rabbit hole at all, which was my nervous system, was completely dysregulate. When you find out about a betrayal, your whole world blows up, your past completely changes.

Who you thought you were married to, gone? What you thought your marriage was? - Gone. - Yeah. - You know, who I thought I was?

- Gone. - I'm sure, like, you. - How could I be dupped? - Yeah, I'm sure you think about past moments and you're like, oh my God,

I don't think that's the way he was doing or how could I be just stupid, right? - It starts unraveling, right? - Yeah, it really does. Your whole past on...

- And if it's, and, or you question stuff for us. - Every thing, yeah. - Everything. And there's very few traumas. Other than, like, finding out you were adopted,

finding out, you know, maybe like an amnesia type case, but there's very few instances where your past changes in the blink of an eye. And with betrayal, that's what happens. And that sets your brain and your nervous system

on a completely different path. - Yeah. - That's what opened up for me.

And it was the first time that I didn't feel crazy.

Like, there's a reason why I'm stuck in detective mode. There's a reason why these triggers hit me like a Mac truck every hour. So, that's when I went, okay, I need to start learning about this.

I just started diving into neuroscience, which is the connection between the brain

And everything, like, literally was like, the sky's open, the sea's parted,

and I felt seen and heard for the first time.

- Wow, okay. - And I thought I have to spread this message. I have to start telling people about this, because marriage counselors don't know it. They're not studying neuroscience.

They're not studying betrayal trauma. - Yeah. - That talking to people, either partner, about the nervous system and the brain, and how everything operates, they're not doing it.

So, that's literally how it began. - Yeah, I would say the another thing that kind of makes your past completely change would be, I guess, experiencing a narcissist and their mask, right?

- Not letting off. - And then their mask falls off. And then, wow, everything from that point of view,

“before is like, you know, that truth is revealed, right?”

- That's right. - Yeah, the only difference would be there was no blatant lies. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, when we're dealing with the fairs, there's right in your eye.

No, I was at work all night, right? So, we have to process that. And then everything becomes into questions, every picture, every video, every conversation, every text comes into play as a lie.

- Yeah, and so, what did you do before this? Where are you, like, professionally? - Yeah, professionally. I went to college to be a teacher. So, I was a teacher for six years.

Then from there, I got a master's degree in counseling. - All right, there you go. - Yeah, exactly. - Yeah.

- I never went down the counseling route.

- Yeah. - Like, like, one-to-one therapy route. I ended up becoming a principal of the school that I was a teacher at. - Oh, okay.

- So, I stayed in that one school for 15 years. - Yeah. - And then from there, my husband and I started a business together. He pretty much kept his day job, and I ran the business. It was a mobile pet grooming business.

But I did that for 13 years. While we were moving around the globe. - Yeah. - So, you had like, you had like a counseling, to agree, right?

Was that like a, a masters? - Yeah, yeah, a masters. - Great, yeah, it's counseling, masters agree.

“And then kind of experience with entrepreneurship, right?”

And so, at one point, you're doing all this research and did it just, those two worlds combine it and just you tapped into something that ignited that fire again. You're like, wait a minute, if I'm healing myself

and we hear about infidelity all the time, right? So, maybe I can help heal others. Yeah, so you had that fire ignited back into you. I'm sure that helped also with everything that you were going through. - Absolutely, it did, and purpose.

- Yes. - I'm sure that's part of healing as well. Find in a purpose, right? - Taking the very, one of the first courses, not the first one, but one of the first group courses

that I put out there, I called it pain to power. Take your pain and turn it into your power. - Yeah. - Too many times, the, and this is for both. The betrayed and the partner that was unfaithful,

you know, we get stuck in pain. And we don't know how to get out of it. We don't know how to take that mess and actually heal it and turn it into something positive. And so that's what I did in my life.

It was, you know, I tell people all the time, the woman you see right now is not the same woman who was living that three years in that, I called it betrayal hell, you know? No way, I mean, I was a mess, I was a wreck.

Yeah, minute that I said, you know what? I'm not gonna let this story take me down. - Yeah. - I'm gonna use this story and I'm gonna stand on it. I don't wanna live in it.

- Yeah. - Any more. So, you know, having something happen to you and then changing it, taking back your power, right? - Yeah.

- It's such a, it's such a powerful thing, you know? But it is, it's really like, you know, I gotta take my power back, right? Because honestly, something is completely just destroyed it, shocked it and you feel like, like, just not yourself, right?

I mean, yeah, I'm sure it's just a very tough road.

And I fortunately have never been through it, right?

But I guess, I guess, tell us how long have you been doing this and, you know, what are the kind of people, how do people find you, what kind of people are you being? Are you still together with your husband? - Yes.

- Oh, wow. - Absolutely. - Now, only because we both did our own individual work. - Yeah.

“- And that's why I kind of opened with on this disruptor”

in the industry because most people are going to marriage counseling because they think it's a marriage problem. - Yeah. - And I'm coming along going, honey, it's not a marriage problem. The marriage had issues, every marriage does.

So, how can you have a perfect marriage, right?

- Yes. - But not every marriage has a cheater in it. So, we cannot just say a bad marriage causes cheating. - Yes. - There's plenty of marriages that have very low moments in them.

There's a lot of marriages that have those valleys

“of maybe no connection, no physical intimacy, right?”

But not all of them end up with a cheater in it. - Yeah. - So, how do we explain that then? We have to go deeper than the marriage. So, in order to save a marriage, right?

And it's not even saving the marriage. That marriage is dead gone, done over. What we do when we're working with couples is we want them to build something brand new. But you can't build something brand new with the old parts.

So, we've got to dismantle the old parts and build something new. And what that means is the partner that was unfaithful. They have to go deeper, deeper than the marriage. They've got a, there's common denominators.

There's emotional suppression.

There's some avoidance tendencies.

There might be needs for validation that are unhealthy, that might be fears of abandonment or rejection. So, we work with them to clean out, I call it the gunk. Clean out all that gunk.

Get rid of the shame, get rid of the secrets, get the whole truth out there. Nobody's healing until the whole truth gets out. - Yeah. - And once they do that, then they transform

and become a man or a woman of integrity again. That's what we want. And now the betrayed partner, we help them process their pinging, work through their trauma, help them find safety again in the world,

help them get their truth back, their power back. - Yeah, build back the trust. - That's right, within themselves. - Yeah, not in the marriage, in themselves. - I had to learn how to trust myself again.

- Gotcha. - 'Cause that gets warm. - Like you do not love yourself. How can you love the other person? If you don't trust yourself again,

how can you trust the other person? - That's right. - All right. - I'm a denominator. Again, with the partners that were unfaithful,

almost all of them say to me at some point when I say, when I start talking about trust.

I thought that never really trusted anybody in my life.

I'm like, wow, that's a much deeper issue than my wife or my husband wasn't paying attention to me. - Yeah. - We've got to heal that. - Yeah.

- So that's what we do. And when two people do that, and that's what my husband and I did, we both went on our own individual journeys. And then from a healthy place,

you decide whether or not this relationship. - Does he go on an individual journey, though, on a leash? - No, well, he did in the beginning. - Yeah. - He did in the beginning.

And this is where-- - 'Cause it's like, how can you send him out on his individual journey when you don't trust him? And so it's like, hey, are we there has to be some common ground?

- Well, when you say, like, go out on a leash. He didn't want to do therapy. He didn't want to do the marriage counseling.

“I thought marriage counseling was the only thing”

to do at the time, so I really forced it. - Yeah. - But it wasn't working and I realized that. So we stopped that. So for him, the individual journey was his own therapy.

- Okay. - It was his therapy. - I went on my own individual journey, meaning my own therapy. - Let me ask you.

You said you're working with couples, right? Are you working more? I mean, 'cause there must be the individual women or men where they're no longer together. - Yes.

- So, are you, is it more women that you're helping more men after you're helping or couples? - There really isn't a more or less. It's, there's so many people. I was seeing seven to eight clients a day, five days a week.

- Oh, my Lord. - Keep up. - Jesus. - Well, I guess, yeah. - Yeah, I mean, even in today's day and age,

it's just, it's, they don't even call it cheating. They just call it open relationships now, right? - Yeah, that's a whole another talk. - Yeah, yeah. - You know, what's interesting is,

people can be in an open relationship and as long as they both know it, then there's no betrayal. - Yeah. - See, we deal with betrayal, trauma.

Cheating is one type of betrayal. You know, because people will say to me all the time, you know, my partner does this or my partner does that and I'm like, okay, well, do you know about it? - Yes.

- Do you agree with it? - Yes. - Okay, well, then we're not talking about a betrayal. Now, if you know about it, but you don't like it, then we're talking about disrespect,

but it's don't not betrayal. - Gotcha. - Betrayal is the secret. It's the line, it's the gaslighting in order to do something, I don't want my partner.

- The manipulation, only the manipulation. - Yeah. - So that's what we address. - Gotcha. - Yeah, so the pulse is because of cheating.

- And it helps a lot of them.

“- To define things, that's what I'm saying.”

- That's right. - You're thinking clearly about, oh, yeah, okay, I should think about it as this and that. I mean, just putting definitions on things. - Huge.

- And one of my courses is Roblox to reconciliation and one of them is definitions.

we had different definitions of forgiveness.

He thought because I was staying that that was forgiveness, right? My definition of forgiveness was not just staying. It was you need to do the work. - Yeah.

“- You know, you need to figure this stuff out, you know?”

- What, you know, it's funny 'cause I'm like, wow. So, you know, you went through the infidelity, but you're still married, right? - Yeah. - That's good marketing.

- Yes. - It's almost like, hey, hey, I've been through it and now I'm still happily married after going through some crazy, turbulent thing. So it's like, we know, I just feel like, yeah,

I'd like to talk to her and how to happen, out of work. - Yeah, exactly, how did you do it? And there's very few people out there that have done it in a true, healthy way. There's a lot of people that stay together,

but they're living pretend normal. - Yeah.

- They never really addressed the root causes

of what was going on. So to the outside world, you know, they're doing okay. But behind closed doors, they're still dealing with unresolved trauma, resentment, anger, bitterness. - Yeah.

- We don't want that. We want authentic real transformation. And that only happens individually. You can do that in a marriage counseling session. So a lot of people are turning to AI

for counseling, right?

“And as someone that has a master's in counseling, right?”

And there's some good and bad about it, right? There's some good is that it gives people access to talk to someone where these people would probably never, a lot of people never ever talk to someone. It's right out.

So it's a quick way to get definitions and understand what you're trying to put process things, right?

How is that affected your fields?

And what do you feel like when you are talking about your topics into AI, how is it answering you? And, you know, what's it like from a counselor's perspective? - I'm scared. - Yeah.

- I really am. Now again, you said it, there's pros and cons, right? I mean, if it's the best somebody has, oh, okay. But this is what we're seeing and we see this all the time. Our clients are coming to us like they'll have a fight

at home and let's say it's the betrayed partner. And the betrayed partner puts the whole fight, you know, into chat, GPT and says, you know, I think let's just pretend it's a betrayed wife and it's that the husband was the unfaithful

and the betrayed wife.

“- They can put coffee, I taste the whole entire”

- Exactly, they can transcript, right? But the chat GPT of the betrayed partner knows that they're a betrayed partner, right? So they're going to lean toward the side of probably diagnosing.

And we've had so many clients who come to us and say, you know, my partner is an narcissist. Well, how do you know that? Well, I chat GPT told me, I put our last fight in there and he's got all the classic signs of narcissism.

It's like, oh Lord, help me, you know? Chat is too agreeable. - Yeah. - Chat is way too agreeable and people don't know how to separate that out.

- Yeah. - And that's what scares me about it. Again, it can be used for good but if people are relying on it and more and more people are using it

and they're getting literal diagnoses, yeah. - Yeah. - That's scary, not every cheater is a narcissist. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - They all have narcissistic traits

because every human being has narcissistic traits. - Right, right, right, exactly. - Exactly, but to get that diagnosis from AI. Now, you can put your blood pressure in there and get a diagnosis that it's higher low

but don't put personality traits in there and assume that that's gonna be accurate. So that scares me a little bit because we're seeing more and more of that. - Yeah, yeah.

Wow. Well, it's good to hear that from you. Honestly, it's just from the short time that we've been chatting and talking. I could see here all day.

I watch things on some some psychologists online. You know, Dr. Romani. - Oh, yes. - Yeah. - I also like to watch there's a divorce lawyer

what's his name that talks about, you know, he's like a New York James Sexton. - Oh, right. - Yeah, he's also quite the character, you know. So yeah, it's just very interesting to talk to you

and, you know, I'm really happy that you got to, you know, find, discover yourself again, fix your marriage, fix each other, right? Which individually? - Individually.

- No, you're fixing the marriage. - Correct. - Yeah. - Yeah, exactly. - So yeah, I mean, just a few things before we go,

what do you most excited for? - Disrupting this whole industry.

- I really mean it. - Exactly what's I mean.

How do you guys flip it upside down?

- I wanna let marriage counselors know that they either need to tell their clients to see a trauma specialist or they need to understand. They need to deep dive into the trail trauma. We are, the average couple before they see us

has seen four marriage counselors. - Oh, wow. - That's brutal. - Yeah. - That's a waste of money.

- Yeah. - 10s of thousands of dollars. Waste of hours. Because marriage counselors are again, assuming that we're gonna save this marriage.

“- It's almost like, oh yeah, I saw a doctor, right?”

But there's different kinds of doctors that specialize in different body parts. - Right. - And we specialize in betrayal, trauma, recovery. - Yeah.

- Not just saving a marriage.

Not every marriage is gonna be seen. - I guess more and more of these days. And you're seeing it online with Dr. Romani, who's the expert now, I just narcissists. - Yeah.

- That's right. - And so it's almost like before it's just like psychologists, you know. And now people are kind of niching down and being an expert in that one lane.

- Yes. - And you're starting that with the kind of the marriage counseling lane and say, hey, it's not just marriage counseling, right? But there's so many different sectors within that.

- That's right. And I wanna be the sector that is specifically for betrayal, trauma, recovery for both people. The trade and the one that was unfaithful. Because it's a very, very clear path

that they have to go on. - Yeah. - It's not talk therapy. You're not just gonna sit in a counselor's office or on a Zoom for 50 minutes and heal all your wounds.

- Yeah. - You know, we focus a lot on emotional therapy where we're helping people really heal from the inside out, not just from the brain, you know. Okay, now we understand my father was a jerk

and that's why I did all this stuff. Okay, no, that's very rudimentary. There's a lot more to it than that. - Yeah. - Yeah.

“- Do you do like any YouTube podcast thing, right there?”

All right, well over social media. - And how do people, how do people find you? - So they can either, my handles are usually betrayal, trauma, healing method, but Beth Fisher. I do have to say though, it's F-I-S-C-H-E-R.

- Gotcha. - There's a little C in there. So people can just search for me. I'm an Instagram, lots of YouTube videos out there. - Great, yeah.

- TikTok, LinkedIn. - Yeah. - More ever social media as I am. - Great. - And look.

- Oh, okay. - I have a book, I didn't bring it, but my book is called "On the Other Side of Pain, Healing After Betrayal." - Okay. - "On the Other Side of Pain, Healing After Betrayal"

is find it on Amazon. - Yeah. - But I do let people know, again, this is a very delicate topic. So there's a lot of betrayed and partners that were on faithful

“who share Amazon accounts and don't want people”

seeing what they're buying on Amazon. So I'll get messages saying I want to buy your book, but I can't buy it on Amazon because my kids share the account. So for those people, I have a separate resource for them. - Yeah.

- If they just want to send me an email. - Can I see a email? - Give it an email. - Support at yourfamilyneedsew.com. - All right, yeah, that's smart.

- Yes. - Because it's like-- - I like it. - "Mom, why are you buying little gullies?" - I looked at it.

- On the other side of Pain, right? - Exactly. - Wow, okay, that's so smart. - They can reach out if they need a private way to get the book.

- Yeah. Well, you're so easy to talk to. - Right. - This has been great. - Yeah, it's been fantastic.

So thank you for coming down to the studios and talking about everything. I'm really excited for your episodes to come out. You know, our coffee set, it was fantastic that you're really easy to talk to and I see why now.

But yeah, my first guest for Love Experts

was an amazing one. So I'm excited to get more love experts here and see where it goes. - All right, thanks so much for having me. - All right, thank you.

- And thank you guys for joining us and I hope to see you next time, guys. (upbeat music)