You Don’t Have to Be Ready Yet: Building the Capacity to Heal from Betrayal Trauma w/ Michelle Mays
What if you’re not ready yet?
Not ready to feel the anger.
Not ready to set the boundary.
Not ready to make the request.
Not ready to face what might happen next.
In this powerful conversation, MaryAnn Michaelis, LCSW, CSAT, CPTT, sits down with Michelle Mays, LPC, CSAT-S, a Licensed Professional Counselor and Supervisor, Certified Sex Addiction Therapist and Supervisor, founder of the Relational Recovery Institute, creator of the Braving Model™, and author of The Betrayal Bind: How to Heal When the Person You Love the Most Hurts You the Worst.
Together, they explore why healing from sexual betrayal is not simply a matter of understanding what happened or finding the right cognitive tools. True healing often requires us to slow down, come into the body, feel what is happening, and gradually build our capacity to tolerate emotions, uncertainty, vulnerability, risk, and relational change.
Michelle explains why what looks like overthinking, controlling, problem-solving, or intellectualizing may actually be the mind’s attempt to manage what the nervous system is struggling to hold.
In this episode, we explore:
- Why we often try to think our way out of emotional pain
- How intellectualizing can become a way of avoiding the deeper experience of grief, anger, fear, and uncertainty
- What it means to build emotional and nervous-system capacity
- Why some betrayed partners may struggle to access anger or protest after betrayal
- How the window of tolerance relates to healing
- Why “I can’t do it” may actually mean “I can’t do it yet”
- How self-compassion changes the way we understand our limitations
- Why healing requires more than cognitive insight and coping tools
- The power of co-regulation and relational healing
- How watching other people express and tolerate emotions can help us discover that our own emotions are survivable
- Why vulnerability and connection can reduce shame
- Michelle’s BRAVE framework and the capacity to Reclaim Authenticity
- How betrayal can attach shame to our identity, sexuality, relationships, and sense of self
- Why reclaiming authenticity requires learning to tolerate the possibility that our truth may not always be welcomed
- How slowing down can actually help the healing process move faster
- Why the work of healing betrayal can ultimately transform far more than the relationship affected by betrayal
- Simple practices for beginning to reconnect with your body and emotions
A powerful reminder from this conversation:
You don’t have to be ready yet.
Your inability to do something today does not necessarily mean you are incapable of doing it. You may simply need to build the capacity to hold what that next step requires.
And sometimes, slower is faster.
Rather than forcing yourself to move through the pain, healing may mean slowing down enough to discover what your body is telling you, learning to tolerate what you feel, and gradually expanding your capacity to live from a deeper sense of authenticity and self-trust.Try this after listening:
Three times a day, pause for a brief body check.
Ask yourself:
What am I noticing in my body right now?
Do you feel tension, constriction, bracing, openness, heaviness, warmth, numbness, or something else?
Then try putting words to your experience:
“I feel…”
“I am noticing…”
“My body is telling me…”
You don’t have to fix it. Start by noticing.
