Overcoming a friend’s betrayal can be very painful due to the emotional disappointment of accepting the reality of the conflict. It is clear that going from having a very good friendship with someone to having to accept that it has been broken is hard and can make the experience difficult to overcome.
If you are not careful, this situation can lead you to develop negative and undesirable feelings towards the lost friendship, along with the development of a certain internal distrust regarding the possible establishment of new friendships. To avoid all this, in this Psychology-Online article, we give you some advice on how to get over a friend’s betrayal.
Don’t close your heart
When you suffer the loss or betrayal of a friendship, the first thing that happens is that, in order to feel the pain, we close our hearts. However, this seemingly insignificant and invisible gesture can give rise to a series of negative attitudes and emotions that will impact our lives in the short, medium and long term. Furthermore, feeding resentment makes us egocentric, not very empathetic and compassionate, distrustful, etc.
Therefore, to overcome the betrayal of a friend it is important that you try not to close your heartdespite the painful experience, and open the doors to positive experiences of personal growth.
Look for alternatives to resentment
It can be one of the main responses that arise after going through painful experiences. The pain experienced leads us to try to understand what happened and, given the incoherence of many of these experiences, we tend to get angry with the person who caused us said pain.
Although anger may be a logical response in these cases, it is important to be careful do not feed the internal resentmentsince this emotion can cause many blockages, fears, bad responses, inabilities,
Therefore, it is important to look for alternatives so that resentment does not increase, and that will greatly facilitate the process and encourage it. Next, we mention how to act when faced with someone who has betrayed you:
- Relaxation techniques.
- Go for a walk and freshen up.
- Practice any other sport.
- Read what catches your attention.
In reality, it is about trying to mislead resentment with another alternative every time it draws attention from within us, or releasing the accumulated tension and negativity.
Try to understand your friend’s behavior
A very effective alternative to overcome a betrayal is try to empathize and understand your friend’s behavior that, although at first it is unjustifiable, he may have his own reasons for acting this way.
You may not share it or it may be difficult for you to accept at first, but the simple fact of understanding their reasons will help you not feed resentment and keep your heart, at least a little more open. Time and your intention to positively resolve this situation will help you feel compassion and mercy for your friend.
Accept your decision
What do you do when a friend betrays you? Once you manage to put yourself in their place, you must accept your choice, no matter how painful it may have been for us and no matter how much he has erred in his conduct. Accepting this will provide you with enormous inner relief from the emotional discomfort and disgust sustained by the lack of understanding of what happened.
Work on forgiveness
When you trust someone and they betray you, you must keep your heart open and try understand the personal motivation that led to the betrayal. Acceptance of his behavior will lead you, with time and a great deal of waiting and patience on your part, to feel some compassion for your friend.
Don’t close the doors to friendship
Despite what happened, and once the initial vision of the situation has been modified to a deeper and more constructive one, it may be advisable not to close the doors to friendship. As the inner state of rejection is being replaced by a new and more complete acceptance of the person who has betrayed you, it may be possible to get over a friend’s betrayal. In this process, it will be good for you to read this article about .
Be patient
The most profound personal changes are those that equip you with the best tools to positively and adequately address your life. These changes do not happen overnight, but require a certain amount of time to establish a process of change and inner transformation. Be patient with yourself It will help you overcome a friendship betrayal.
Learn to forgive
How to act when faced with someone who has betrayed you? As the final part of this entire process, it becomes the answer to closing the doors of this unpleasant incident and moving forward with your life with great joy and renewed strength.
Get forgive the person who has betrayed you, will bring you the peace that that experience stole from you, although that does not mean that you will have to maintain the friendship relationship again.
Consider the experience as life learning
As we have seen, the betrayal of friends is very painful, but it is necessary to keep an open heart and be patient, empathetic and merciful. This way, you can move forward in your life with a new look at betrayal and friendship.
To finish overcoming the betrayal of a friend, it is necessary learn to feel happy and grateful for experiences and knowledge learned, to help you improve as a person every day.
This article is merely informative, at Psychology-Online we do not have the power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.
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