179. Why Valentine’s Day (and Love) Is Triggering After Betrayal Trauma

Hello hello, my amazing, beautiful listeners. Welcome to the month of February.

I find there are a lot of different feelings for a lot of my clients during this month, and it definitely differs depending on where you are in your healing. February can feel like love is being shoved in your face. The cards, the candy, the flowers, the couples, social media posts, the whole thing. And if you are sitting in the aftermath of betrayal trauma and a life saving divorce, it can feel like the world is celebrating something your body does not trust and feels like it may never trust again.

So if your triggers are sky high right now, if the next couple of weeks feel loaded, if you hate love, feel scared of love, feel scared of loving again, or you are leaning back in but you do not even know what healthy love looks like, this episode is for you.

Why February and anniversaries hit so hard

Holidays like Valentine’s Day and anniversaries are basically pre scheduled reminders. Even if you have done a ton of healing, your body and your heart can still light up when the calendar rolls around. Those dates carry meaning. They hold memories, expectations, routines, and the emotional before and after of your life as you now know it.

So when the world starts pushing romance and celebration, it can bump into the places where you remember heartbreak, deception, and loss of what you thought you had. And when those triggers come up, sometimes it can feel like you are failing at healing.

I want you to hear me on this. A trigger around a holiday does not automatically mean you are in present day danger. Sometimes it is simply your nervous system surfacing unfinished grief.

This part gets missed. When life becomes more stable, when there is less chaos, when you are separated or divorced, when you have boundaries, legal boundaries, personal boundaries, your system often has more capacity to feel what it could not feel when it was not safe. So you might actually notice stronger waves around anniversaries or Valentine’s Day, not because you are moving backwards, but because you are safer now.

It is like your body is saying, okay, we have enough ground underneath us now to process this layer that never got processed.

That can feel confusing because it looks like you are getting worse, but it can actually be a sign that your body is ready to look at something that was really hard.

When I am doing somatic work with clients, I often explain that after a session, when deeper emotions that were blocked by shock start to surface, it can feel worse before it feels better. Trauma often has to rise to the surface in order for it to be processed and integrated.

Triggers are information, not a verdict

Part of healing is learning to tell the difference between your intuition and triggers that are coming from the past.

That trigger is a signal. It is not necessarily the verdict.

It is information. It is not proof you are not healing.

So I want to encourage you to be aware of how you are talking to yourself when you are triggered. The work is meeting the trigger with curiosity instead of panic and self blame. A lot of times it is a grief wave that needs space to move and soften. And sometimes it is your gut picking up on a real lack of safety. Either way, you can respond from a steadier part of you.

Many women notice they start to feel off in the days leading up to a discovery day, disclosure day, birthday, anniversary, or holiday, even when they are not consciously tracking the date.

Then it clicks later. Oh, that is why I have been edgy. That is why I have been weepy, irritable, wired tired.

This used to happen to me around my anniversary. I would not put it together until I saw the date.

This is how triggers can work. Your body knows before your brain does. It knew before your brain did when you were living in that false reality. So sometimes the body calendar still happens.

It can feel like your body is betraying you, like healing is not working. But what is usually happening is that the calendar is holding implicit memory. Your mind is not counting down the days, but your nervous system learned the rhythm of when pain happened, and it can brace early in preparation.

I call this the anniversary response, or the body calendar. It is a nervous system protection.

In my own experience and with the women I work with, those pre date waves can absolutely shift over time. As the body processes stored activation, the memory becomes more integrated. The bracing loosens. The body and mind relationship becomes more connected. The flood that happens when you are triggered starts to lessen.

You still might remember the date. Valentine’s Day still might feel like ugh. But it does not hijack you.

Somatic work helps not by erasing what happened, but by releasing the PTSD like body activation that gets glued to the memory. The anniversary becomes a day you notice rather than a day your body relives.

Progress does not look like never getting triggered again.

Sometimes progress looks like the trigger arriving with less intensity, lasting less time, and you finding your way back to center faster.

Let February make sense

Right now, notice what energy is showing up in your body as Valentine’s Day approaches.

Let it make sense.

Even if you feel angry, let it make sense.

I hated this month. I hated this day. I wondered who invented it. I was in my year of rage against love and I actually looked it up.

The roots trace back to Saint Valentine. Records are sparse, but the theme is that he was honored as a martyr, a witness, someone who held onto his faith under pressure. That word witness stood out to me because after betrayal, something inside of us gets executed too. Not by a sword, but by deception.

The version of you that trusted, the version of you that believed the story, the version of you that loved innocently, something in that dies.

Then later, culture turned Valentine’s Day into romance, cards, and profit, and for many of us it became this painful collision.

I remember being in a store the night before Valentine’s Day and seeing a swarm of men scrambling for last minute cards. I was furious. If you are feeling that right now, I get it. We are going to hold space for that.

But underneath the story of Saint Valentine is faithfulness in the face of pressure, and a lot of you know what that feels like.

Not that you were too much for loving, but that your love was tried by fire.

You were faithful to what you believed was real.

Then reality arrived and something in you died. The death of innocence. The death of illusion. The death of the version of life you thought you had.

Being a witness to the love you gave does not mean staying loyal to the person who harmed you. It means staying loyal to the truth of who you were in it.

I can look back now and say, I did love. I did give. I did try. That was not weakness. That was devotion.

And I can choose to hold onto faith that love is still real. Faith that love itself did not betray me. Betrayal did.

Faith that I can still choose where my love goes.

So I stopped trying to make Valentine’s Day mean what it used to mean. I shifted it into love that was still safe. I poured into my kids. I reached out to people who had proven themselves steady. I let the day be a reminder that I was not too much for loving fiercely. I was giving my love to someone who could not hold it with care.

And I also held space for the whiplash. The moments I wanted to gag walking past the Valentine decor. The grief for what was lost. The version of me who did not know what was happening behind the curtain.

If you keep thinking I should not have loved so hard

I want to validate something I hear all the time.

There are moments you might look back and think, I should not have loved so hard. I should not have loved so much. I should not have stayed loving for so long.

If that thought has been circling in you, it makes sense. Your brain and body are trying to resolve a really important question.

How do I make sure this never happens again?

So your system starts auditing everything. It replays scenes. It rewrites stories. It searches for moments you should have known, moments you should have left, moments you should have been less open.

And then it can conclude that your love was the mistake.

But that is protection, not truth.

Your nervous system is trying to build a rule to keep you safe. If I love less, I will hurt less. If I do not love, I will not get hurt. If I hate love, the pain will never happen again.

I want to say this carefully.

Loving deeply is not the same as abandoning yourself.

Many of you loved with devotion and patience in good faith. Betrayal still happened because of choices you did not control. Healing is not about punishing your capacity to love. Your big, beautiful heart does not need punishment.

Healing is learning how to pair your love with protection. Healthy boundaries. Pacing. Discernment.

So you never have to disappear inside love again.

For many women, the deepest pain is not only heartbreak. It is the dignity wound.

You loved with integrity, and you assumed love would be met with care. When love is met with deception, the nervous system scrambles to make the world make sense again and feel safe again.

That is why rumination is so common. Your system is trying to regain coherence.

And the answer is often not going to be a satisfying explanation about your ex, because there is rarely one that matches your integrity.

Here is a reframe that can help.

Their choices are not a direct reflection of the value of your love.

They are a reflection of their capacity, their entitlement, their compartmentalization, their avoidance, their patterns.

Your love did not lose.

It was offered to someone who could not hold it with care.

And that is where a lot of grief lives. Grief that your love was not received.

So if you want a shift, and if you do not, you can skip this part, shift from why did he choose that over me, to what do I need right now to honor the love I gave without abandoning myself again.

What to do with love this month

If you are feeling more triggered this month, it does not mean you are not healing. It might mean you are.

If you are finally feeling more stability, more boundaries, less chaos, your system may have more capacity to feel than it could before.

So if you feel like you are back at zero, I promise you are not.

It may mean you are ready for a deeper layer of healing.

The practice is pausing and asking.

Is this past threat or present day threat

Is my body remembering or is my gut warning me

Either answer is useful. Either answer gives you your next step.

What do you do with love this month when it feels activating

First, stop forcing yourself to feel how you think you should feel.

If you hate Valentine’s Day right now, let it make sense. Let your anger be valid. Let your grief be valid. Let the whiplash be real. Disgust and devotion can both live in the same body. You can be proud of how you loved and still be devastated it was not received.

Second, you get to choose where your love goes from here.

And I am not only talking about romantic love. If romantic love feels too big or too scary, that is okay.

Love is bigger than romance.

Love can be the sun on your face. Love can be your children. Love can be a best friend who is steady. Love can be your pet. Love can be music. Love can be your garden. Love can be God, your version of God. Love can be the decision to take care of your body instead of abandoning it.

Third, practice safe doses of love.

Not the kind that makes you over function, prove, please, or disappear.

Not the kind that asks you to override your body and your intuition.

The kind that helps you stay in yourself and connected to yourself.

Healing does not mean you shut your heart down.

I remember feeling like I had to shut my heart down to stay safe. My hope is that you keep your heart open with micro doses of love that are safe and boundaried.

Love with boundaries is safe.

Love without boundaries is reckless.

Bring it back to micro doses in safe ways.

And if this month feels hard, remember this.

Love is not what betrayed you. Betrayal did.

Your love is still yours.

You are love.

And you get to choose where it goes next, because you can.

Take care everybody.

Podcast outro and resource mention

Healing from betrayal, abuse, and divorce can feel like putting pieces of yourself back together after trauma has torn you apart. It can be overwhelming to know where to begin. You might question your ability to recognize what healthy relationships look like, let alone enter a new one.

As you cultivate the seven levels of intimacy within you, you can start putting yourself back together. Learning to take up space. Have a voice. Trust yourself. Trust others. Connect back to your body, mind, and spirit. Becoming the chooser of your life.

The Intimacy Within self paced course walks you through each level with practices, suggestions, worksheets, and a printable workbook for each section.

Your journey to self discovery and genuine connection can begin right now.

Start today by going to amiewoolsey.com and clicking Intimacy Within. See you soon.