These are some of the symptoms I have had since Oct. 2015, when Brandon betrayed my trust and abandoned our 16-year friendship. They are the cumulative effect of events spanning that time period (more details in Summary::Time). Our relationship was never romantic and there was never any physical threat or abuse. Still, here I am, an average, previously healthy person with trauma symptoms typical for victims of assault, violence, war, or natural disaster even though I have never experienced any of these causes of trauma. I am in my 30s and have never had these symptoms before, although I have experienced stressful events like bereavement, illness, romantic break-ups. I don't have any personal or familial history of depression, anxiety, and other similar disorders. My experience is consistent with what is known in psychology as betrayal trauma. Trauma is the brain and body's normal reaction to abnormal and damaging external conditions.
Biomedical studies show that abuse of trust can cause not only betrayal trauma but also physical injuries, even if they are not as visible as bruises or broken bones. Like other types of abuse, abuse of trust has far-reaching consequences for people's health, quality of life, and life expectancy. However, our laws do not yet take this into account. This webpage is a case study of how and why some behaviors that are still widely considered "normal" can cause trauma. I use my experience as a scientist to examine and summarize the effects of that trauma on health, quality of life, and lifespan, and show that since it has characteristics and long-term effects similar to physical injury and abuse, radiation exposure, and contagious disease, we need to address it with the same rigor socially, medically, and legally that we do these physical causes of trauma, illness, and decreased quality of life. In the end, I outline potential solutions. In these pages, I use the term "psychologically induced injury" to mean trauma which was inflicted without any physical violence or coercion and has prolonged or permanent negative effects that are physical as well as psychological.
Currently, we have an elaborate legal framework that provides deterrents against, protections from, and compensations for physical injuries. Sticking a pin into a stranger's hand would be prosecutable even though it is relatively harmless, while we have almost unlimited leeway in inflicting psychologically induced injuries to others, as long as we don't do it by threatening or committing acts of physical violence. Here is some (by far not exhaustive) evidence that this distinction in how we consider physical and psychological injuries is obsolete:
One reason why psychologically induced injuries are not considered on nearly equal footing to physical ones is that in the past it would have been easy for people to fake or exaggerate them for personal gain. This is no longer the case. Physiological markers of psychologically induced injuries can be evaluated with a brain MRI scan or a blood test, without relying on self-reporting.
What would happen if people could rely on the same protections against psychologically induced injuries as against physical injuries? A friend who is an immunologist thinks this will be the next frontier in public health and the effect could be as significant as that of the discovery of antibiotics.
Interpersonal betrayal is the only thing not involving threatened, experienced, or witnessed violence or natural disaster that can cause post-traumatic symptoms of similar severity. Betrayal trauma is common enough that there are therapists specializing in treating it and research psychologists specializing in studying it. It is often discussed in the context of infidelity or childhood abuse or neglect, but can be damaging also in a non-romantic or non-caregiving context. The only condition is that there be emotional closeness and trust between the betrayed and the betrayer.
Social workers, mental health professionals, law enforcement officers, and lawyers working on cases of abuse (including Brandon in his practice) have long been aware that suffering trauma contributes to the likelihood that the traumatized will in turn traumatize others. People who were exposed to family or relationship dysfunction even in the absence of abuse or violence have more difficulty forming and maintaining healthy relationships than those who were not exposed to such dysfunction.
As suffering a psychologically induced injury makes one more likely to inflict a psychologically induced injury and one person can injure many, such injuries propagate in a manner similar to contagious disease. Preventing psychologically induced injuries is not simply about stopping one person from harming another but about cutting short a potentially devastating chain reaction that can affect multiple people, span generations, and result in physical violence.
Dr. Kay Redfield-Jamison is a psychology professor who studies suicidality. From her book "Night Falls Fast" I learned that the main cause of suicidality is mental illness. In many cases the onset of mental illness is caused by stress - either a very stressful individual event or chronic stress in everyday life.
Psychologically induced injuries cause enormous stress. If we put the same effort in preventing them as we do about physical injuries, how many fewer people would develop mental illness overall? How many fewer people would develop disabling mental illness? How many fewer people would develop addictions, lose their jobs, drop out of school, attempt or complete suicide? This research has never been done.
Medical studies show that stress makes us more susceptible to physical illness. If we put the same effort in preventing psychologically induced injuries as we do about physical ones, how many fewer people would develop diabetes, heart disease, cancer, autoimmune diseases - all of which are affected by stress? How many fewer people would become disabled as a result of these diseases? How many fewer would physically injure themselves and others, deliberately or accidentally? This research has never been done.
How much longer would people live? This research has been done, sort of. People who have experienced "adverse events" as children die years to decades earlier than those who did not (Centers for Disease Control - Kaiser Permanente study; presentation; press). A number of US states are currently conducting their own adverse childhood experience studies modelled after the CDC-Kaiser one. However, such studies tend to lump together physical and psychological adverse events which may in turn have natural or human-induced causes. People who have experienced a significant heartbreak as adults (caused by bereavement, breakup, divorce, or estrangement) die on average 4-5 years younger than their peers who have not (XX add ref). To put the magnitude of these effects in perspective: it took 30 years' worth of improvements in medicine, nutrition, psychology, work conditions, etc. for life expectancy in the US to increase by 5 years (National Center for Health Statistics data). In any other sphere of life, if the carelessness or malice of others erases the care we take of ourselves, we define that as a crime.
False. What damages you, damages you. Resilience comes in handy during adverse events but it is built outside of them (American Psychological Association). Our resilience and our ability to trust others are related: we are as strong as our closest relationships. Even if we don't explicitly ask for help, simply knowing that we can rely on those relationships makes us more resilient. The reason why interpersonal betrayal causes some of the worst psychologically induced injuries is that it destroys the very foundations of our resilience.
Psychologically induced injuries cause two types of damage: acute and chronic. Symptoms of acute injury occur immediately or soon after the injury: panic attacks, difficulty focusing, insomnia, nightmares, etc. Research into hedonic adaptation shows that most people return to their baseline psychological state from a few months to a couple of years after a life-changing event (either positive or negative). However, some types of events permanently alter that baseline. Hedonic adaptation research uses questionnaires and assesses people's self-reported level of happiness and comparison with their psychological state before the event took place.
Consider: You are physically injured in a car accident and it takes you a year to heal to the point where you are able to work and enjoy life as you used to before the accident. You can sue the driver who was at fault and the severity of your injuries is taken into consideration when awarding damages. No such legal mechanism exists for psychologically induced injuries. Lawsuits that mention "emotional damages" are brought under statutes that target e.g. workplace discrimination, physical violence, or negligence; the consideration of psychologically induced injuries is ancillary. Currently, the vast majority of psychologically induced injuries are not prosecutable, no matter how severe or life-altering. The equivalent would be if you could sue someone who caused you a physical injury only if they did it with a monkey wrench on a Tuesday.
False. Self-reported hedonic adaptation times are one, subjective measure of recovery from psychologically induced injury, and that measure is incomplete and imperfect.
Longitudinal studies track the same set of people (usually hundreds to tens of thousands) over their lifetimes, recording diet and exercise; education and socioeconomic status; incidence of various illnesses, at what age people get sick and how long it takes them to recover; at what age they die. Most of these measures are objective.
Such studies have found that people who have experienced a psychologically induced injury end up on average sicker and die younger than their peers who have not. Even if you feel that you have completely recovered from the injury a few months or years after it took place, your lifetime probability of developing cancer, heart disease, autoimmune diseases, etc. never recovers to what it was before the injury. The probability that you will die years earlier than a peer with similar background and habits who hasn't experienced a psychologically induced injury also never recovers. This effect is cumulative: the more psychologically induced injuries you experience, the sicker you end up and the younger you die. Counseling can improve how one feels and mitigate stress from the injury going forward, but it cannot erase the effect of the injury on these lifetime probabilities.
Consider: You live near a nuclear power plant and find out that years ago an accident was covered up and you were exposed to harmful radiation. You have thyroid cancer. Since in any population some percentage of people develop such cancers, there is no way to tell whether your cancer specifically is such a random occurrence or caused by radiation exposure. However, it is known from many studies that people exposed to harmful radiation have a higher probability of developing cancer. Based on this knowledge, you can sue the power plant company and would likely win.
Or: Same case as above, except that you don't have cancer, you just find out about the accident and your exposure to radiation. You and your neighbors can still seek settlement with the power plant company because the effect of radiation exposure on human health is well-studied and it has been shown that the damage to your lifetime probability of developing cancer and your lifespan is cumulative and largely irreversible. There is currently no such legal mechanism in the case of psychologically induced injuries, even though their effect on health, quality of life, and lifespan has also been shown to be harmful, cumulative, and largely irreversible.
False. It is not possible to traumatize yourself for the same reason that you can't tickle yourself: trauma and tickling depend on a crucial element of unpredictability. (You may know you are about to get tickled, but you can't exactly predict the motion of the tickler's fingers. When you try to tickle yourself, your brain automatically suppresses the ticklish sensation in a manner calibrated to the movement of your own fingers.)
This fallacy depends on people's misplaced belief that you have an obligation to avoid potentially traumatic situations regardless of the effort, sacrifice, or inconvenience that requires, while the potential traumatizer has an option to not harm you, rather than the other way around. This plays out with how victims of domestic violence get blamed for their situation if they don't leave their abusers. Setting aside the significant practical difficulties leaving an abusive partner may pose, the issue comes down to this: you have a right to physical and psychological safety always and everywhere, and especially in your home and relationships.
Consider: You walk in a dark alley, get beaten and robbed. Your attackers are caught and sent to prison, serve time, and are released. You walk in the same alley again. Maybe it's a shortcut between work and home, maybe you like alleys, maybe you want to overcome your fear of the place after your traumatic experience. The same attackers beat and rob you again, and are caught again. They will get a harsher sentence the second time. Why you walked in that alley and whether you knew that the attackers were out of prison or even waiting for you is irrelevant; the law recognizes your right to physical safety. No such recognition exists for the right to safety from psychologically induced injury, except in very narrowly defined cases tied to physical injury and control.
Trick question; and the trick hinges on its two meanings which in most cases would evoke opposite answers. Here is why:
Meaning 1: "Did something bad happen to you?" This is a question about events. Even people who deny the reality of psychologically induced injuries would agree the events that cause them merit a "Yes" answer to this question.
Meaning 2: "Are you weak?" This is a question about pride. The person asking "Are you a victim?" is manipulating you into answering "No" to this meaning of the question out of pride, so that they can then purposely interpret it as a "No" to Meaning 1 and effectively point back at you to say, "So what happened wasn't so bad after all, was it?"
To subvert the trick question, do not give a Yes/No answer but say "I am a survivor".
There is much public discourse about "victimhood mentality", much fist-pumping with cries of "I am not a victim!" Both stem from falling for the trick question. Are people to whom bad things have happened weak of character or determination, as the question implies? Of course not. Suffering and weakness are different beasts. Many people suffer in silence while going through the tasks of daily life. They suffer in a way those who have not experienced psychologically induced injuries do not. Many or most things in daily life may be more difficult for them because of the injury; the rest of their lives may be rendered permanently harder because of the injury. Soldiering on despite this takes strength. The same is true about sufferers of chronic back pain, depression, fibromyalgia, and many other "invisible" conditions. The same is true about victims of assault, abuse, and other traumatic events that have a profoundly damaging effect on quality of life long after all visible physical injuries have healed.
As discussed above, psychologically induced injuries have long-term effects similar to those of physical violence and radiation exposure. One solution would be to adapt to psychologically induced injury the existing legal framework that aims to discourage, protect from, and compensate for physical injury. Some countries have already taken piecemeal steps in that direction:
All 50 US states have passed anti-bullying laws. The first to do so was Georgia (1999); the last was Montana (2015). The internet became much more easily accessible in the 1990s, with cyberbullying becoming more common and suicides where cyberbullying was implicated gaining the attention of the national press.
After a pilot program in 2015, Australian schools now have Respectful Relationships classes (Victoria government; NAPCAN nationwide). While their stated goal is domestic violence prevention, such a program implicitly addresses common causes of psychologically induced injuries as well.
In 2015 the UK passed a law making some types of psychological/emotional abuse a crime even in the absence of physical abuse or threat.
Another approach would be restorative justice, where the focus is not on punishment but on reconciliation and restitution. In this case the needs and desires of the traumatized drive (within reason) the steps taken in judicial proceedings. After the fall of Apartheid, South Africa established the Truth and Reconciliation Commission as a national forum of restorative justice. The Commission sometimes gave amnesty to former Apartheid officials in exchange for public testimony about victims and practices of the Apartheid regime.
Some damaging acts that were once considered "normal" are now against the law (discrimination, bullying). Ditto for many other practices that used to be considered "normal": domestic violence, tax fraud, environmental pollution, etc. They are still viewed that way in some parts of the world. Most laws we have were necessary exactly because they concern damaging behaviors that used to be considered "normal".
On the other hand, there are many common behaviors that can be damaging but have never been or are no longer considered by the law (infidelity and other types of betrayal; ostracism). No one would want to criminalize infidelity in a modern society, for example, even though it arguably meets a standard currently used in US jurisprudence to determine whether certain actions are against the law: "offensive to a reasonable person of ordinary sensibilities."
This website is a prototype for a virtual grapevine combining the functions of Yelp and Wikileaks and aimed at giving detailed reviews of people and relationships. It went live in early 2017 and unwittingly presaged two significant, worldwide developments in that direction in late 2017 and 2022 (see bullet list below).
The grapevine is the informal mechanism through which communities regulate damaging behaviors that are not addressed by formal law. "Grapevine" is sometimes used interchangeably with "gossip."
The word "gossip" usually has negative connotations but while gossip may be used maliciously sometimes, it has been found to serve a bonding and protective function in communities across countries and cultures (Beersma and Van Kleef 2011; Feinberg et al. 2012; Beersma and Van Kleef 2012; press). Gossip is one of very few practices that occur in all human societies: it is as universal as speech. This universality is a measure of how consistently its advantages outweigh its disadvantages overall. (There are or have been human societies that do not go to war, or have no religion, or have no concept of numbers or of what we call romantic love. But all gossip.)
A robust community and a well-developed grapevine reinforce each other, because the grapevine serves as a vetting mechanism.
Consider: You are part of a small prehistoric community and do something against the community's rules (steal food, shirk your hunting/gathering duties). Soon everyone in the community knows and is on the lookout when dealing with you. If you persist, you risk being outcast, which would most likely mean death.
Or: You are a crooked craftsman in the Middle Ages and swindle your customers. Soon everyone in town knows and gives you no business. It's quite a trek on foot to move to a town far enough away where no word about you has reached, and you go hungry until you establish a clientele there. If you cheat your customers again, you will have to move and start from scratch again.
Or: You are a kid in a small town, pre-internet. You do something that your peers and/or elders view with scorn. Soon all your peers and their parents know and no one wants to or is allowed to play with you, hang out with you, or go on a date with you. You are lonely and miserable until you move away or show remorse and prove that you can do better.
Historically, being ostracized was the high personal cost of engaging in damaging behavior and the grapevine enabled the exacting of that cost. All people one knew or was likely to meet were in potential contact with one another. In the days of Tinder, Grindr, and Meetup.com, this protective mechanism no longer works as it used to. Our communities have changed and our protections need to follow suit. And they are starting to evolve in that direction:
In 2015, two enterpreneurs created Peeple, an app described as "Yelp for people." It received backlash online due to privacy and slander concerns, as a result of which the app's features were watered down and it eventually shuttered. The implementation, as well as the name, left a lot to be desired but it was only a matter of time until others improved on the concept. If implemented right, an online system for sharing reviews of people and relationships could replicate the protective effect of the face-to-face grapevine.
In late 2017, the world awoke to (or was awakened by) the #MeToo movement against sexual harrassment. Countless women began sharing their experiences online and naming perpetrators. Eventually this spurred changes to social norms, standard practices in many occupations, policy, and legislation. As a result of these changes, some rapists and serial sexual harrassers who had enjoyed impunity in some cases for decades were sentenced to prison time and court-ordered to pay millions of dollars to their victims. Others lost their jobs, their family lives, and their reputations. The #MeToo movement is one modern, public take on a protective grapevine that illustrates its purpose, effect, and power.
In 2022, a woman in New York City created a Facebook group called "Are We Dating the Same Guy?" where many others soon started posting photos and details of their partners whose faithfulness they doubted. By 2024 this grew into a sprawling network of hundreds of "Are We Dating the Same Guy/Girl?" groups that covers the US, Canada, Europe, the UK, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand (press: The Guardian, Vice, The Independent, The Standard, CBC). Most groups focus on a specific city or region, but there are also groups focusing on specific religions, ethnicities, or occupations, especially those involving a lot of travel (pilots and flight attendants). The groups have unmasked, and in so doing protected others from, countless abusers, stalkers, harrassers, cheaters, romantic scammers, and catfishers, in addition to providing warnings about garden variety jerks, off-putting dates, and serial ghosters.
The collective membership in the "Are We Dating..." groups includes millions of people. They use the groups not only to see if someone they are already dating is cheating on them but to vet potential partners before entering into a committed relationship or even before going on a first date. In one case that illustrates the importance and reach of these groups, an American woman's husband left her and disappeared without a trace while she was pregnant with their second child. She tried for months to locate him to serve him divorce papers. After she posted her case to her local "Are We Dating..." group, the network of groups located him across the country within 24 hours (press: The Standard).
In the absence of adequate formal protections, people started crowdsourcing their own safety. The result is shaping up to be formed of digital, searchable grapevines with a global reach fit for the 21st century.
We rely on references when deciding whom to hire and product reviews when deciding what to buy or what service to use. All of these thoroughly reviewed things matter less for our well-being than our relationships. The examples above focus on professional and romantic relationships, but those are not the only types of relationships that, if mishandled, can result in lasting harm.
This website went live in early 2017 and pre-dated both the rise of #MeToo and the "Are We Dating the Same Guy/Girl?" groups. It was intended a prototype for a virtual grapevine combining the functions of Yelp and Wikileaks in order to provide detailed reviews of people and relationships. I posted all information I had collected in verifiable form during my 16-year friendship with Brandon and its traumatic end to illustrate how this can be done. The website has more than 500 entries which are primary sources for Brandon's personality; the vast majority can be verified by email or chat service providers. The large volume (the Wikileaks aspect) matters for two reasons. First, the size of this archive testifies to its authenticity: it would be very time-consuming to fabricate such a correspondence and difficult to ensure a voluminous fabrication is self-consistent. Second, people tend to be good judges of character if they have access to enough of the right kind of information: knowing what music, books, or movies someone likes isn't as useful as knowing their behavior in previous relationships.