When Healing Feels Like Betrayal

Scripture: “Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me… and whoever does not take up their cross and follow me is not worthy of me.” – Matthew 10:37-38

The text arrived late one night: “You’ve changed. We miss the old you.”

Those words landed like a punch to the gut. Because they were right – I had changed. Setting boundaries, speaking up, taking space for myself. Each step toward health felt like a step away from who they needed me to be.

Brianna Wiest writes that growth often feels like betrayal because *”healing requires you to disappoint the people who benefited from your brokenness.”* This isn’t just about personal growth – it’s about disrupting entire systems of relationship patterns that have often existed for generations.

The Holy Disruption

Psychologist Murray Bowen’s family systems theory helps explain why healing feels so disruptive. He describes how families and close relationships develop intricate emotional systems where each person plays a specific role. When one person changes their role – even in healthy ways – it forces everyone else to adjust, often creating resistance and tension.

Consider Ruth. Leaving Moab wasn’t just about following Naomi – it meant disrupting generational patterns, leaving behind familiar gods, disappointing her birth family. Her transformation required what looked like betrayal to become who God called her to be.

Parker Palmer, in his work on authentic living, describes what he calls “the pain of breaking through.” He writes, “Often the truth that needs to be spoken is not about ‘out there’ but about what’s going on ‘in here.'” When we begin living authentically, it can feel like betrayal because we’re breaking through layers of adaptation we created to keep others comfortable.

Sometimes, what feels like betrayal is actually refusing to perpetuate patterns of pain.

The Cost of Wholeness

Wiest explains that our dysfunctional patterns often serve as bridges in relationships. When we remove these bridges, relationships either find new foundations or reveal their fragility. Psychologist Carl Jung called this “individuation” – the process of becoming psychologically individual, which often requires separating from collective family patterns.

Some uncomfortable truths about healing:

– People who once found us “easy” may now find us challenging

– Those who loved our compliance may resist our boundaries

– Relationships built on shared wounds may not survive shared healing

– Our growth may mirror others’ stuck places, triggering their defenses

Jesus warned that following Him might divide families (Matthew 10:34-36). Not because division was the goal, but because transformation disrupts established dynamics. Thomas Merton describes this as the “true self” emerging from beneath the “false self” we’ve constructed to please others.

The Sacred Permission

Theologian Howard Thurman writes, *”Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”* Your healing isn’t betrayal – it’s obedience to a higher calling. You’re not abandoning others; you’re abandoning patterns that abandon yourself.

Brené Brown’s research on shame and vulnerability supports this, showing that authentic living often requires disappointing others to remain true to ourselves. She calls this “choosing discomfort over resentment.”

Finding Your Way Through

When healing feels like betrayal, remember:

  1. Your growth may trigger others’ unresolved pain
  2. Resistance often indicates you’re disrupting unhealthy patterns
  3. True relationships can survive transformation
  4. God’s calling sometimes requires holy disruption

**Prayer**:

Lord, when healing feels like betrayal, anchor me in Your truth. Give me courage to disappoint others in order to be faithful to Your work in me. Help me trust that authentic love can survive transformation, and that Your plans for my wholeness serve Your greater purpose. Amen.

**Action Step**:

Identify one relationship being challenged by your growth. Write a letter (unsent) expressing both your commitment to healing and your grief about the disruption. Then, spend time in prayer asking God to show you how to honor both your growth and your relationships.

**Closing Thought**:

Sometimes the path to wholeness feels like betrayal because we’re breaking agreements we never should have made. But as Wiest reminds us, *”Your healing might inconvenience others, but it doesn’t harm them.”* Trust that God’s plan for your transformation serves not just you, but all those you truly love.