Managing Stress and Overcoming Traumatic Workplace Betrayals

Literature Review

Traumatic betrayals are betrayals that go beyond the typical betrayal. First noticed in parent-child dyads, betrayal trauma can occur in other relationships. This kind of trauma results when one realizes he/she does not have the life/reality he/she thought he/she had (Schmidt, Adams-Clark, & Freyd, 2023; Tyler 2014). An example of workplace betrayal could be a boss or colleague who steals somebody's work/research and takes credit for it in order to advance his/her own career. Another example of a workplace betrayal trauma could be an employee who has worked with a particular company for years, expecting to retire there, losing his/her job to a less qualified person the employee trained such as the employee's best friend. For some people, the sense of betrayal can be so traumatic that it becomes destabilizing (Guy, 2022; Schmidt, Adams-Clark, & Freyd, 2023).