Betrayal: When your Job Cheats on You

I found myself in a session recently, listening to a client describe being laid off from a tech job they had poured themselves into. They weren’t just talking about losing income. They were talking about confusion, disbelief, and this sense of, “I thought I mattered to you.” Without thinking, I said, “This sounds a little like betrayal trauma.” Then I thought, "Wait....am I allowed to call it that?" Later, I went looking to see if anyone else was putting language to this same experience. It turns out, they are.

To be clear, this is not me saying that workplace experiences are the same as betrayal trauma within close relationships. Absolutely not! Those are different in depth, impact, and complexity. Betrayal trauma in relationships often involves profound attachment wounds that shape how we experience safety and connection at a core level. But just because something isn’t the same doesn’t mean it’s nothing.

Here’s what I keep hearing, especially right now from clients in tech: They gave a lot. Not just time, but energy, identity, and belief. They stayed late, blurred personal time with work, bought into the mission, and trusted its messaging. On some level they believed, “We're in this together.” Then, layoffs happen...BIG layoffs.

Intellectually, we know that companies pivot, budgets change, priorities shift, and it was a transactional relationship all along. However, our nervous system is not moved by corporate logic, rather to human experience. The experience given by your employer has been that you're valued, you're blood, sweat, and tears are essential to the mission, and you’re performing well. It’s been positive feedback, then with very little warning, "You’re out" (a distasteful nod to Heidi Klum). That kind of hard stop is like whiplash and it isn't just disappointment. It's disorienting and with a quiet, persistent question of, “Was all of this a lie? Did I do something wrong? I thought we had each other's backs." That’s the space where the language of betrayal starts to make sense. There was an implicit trust that got broken between you and your employer, an unspoken agreement that meant something more than it ultimately did. Our brainbodies get confused with that kind of rupture.

When something we depend on for stability suddenly becomes unpredictable, the nervous system doesn’t label it as a strategic business move. It labels it as unsafe. You're now sensing danger in a space that also provided you stability, and maybe even for decades. Can you even trust what your superiors say anymore? I think of the show Severance, that eerie sense of disconnection between what you’re told and what you feel. Different premise, obviously, but a strangely familiar dis-ease that warrants shuddering.

You can see this unfold in what people experience after the fact. There’s something often referred to as “post-layoff fog,” where focus is harder to come by, motivation dips, and everything feels a little surreal. Even simple tasks can feel heavier, like your brainbody is still trying to make sense of what just happened. This is most common for those who were laid off, but it’s not exclusive to them.

Employees who remain can experience their own version of it, sometimes called “survivor’s fog,” where concentration drops, morale dips, and there’s a lingering sense of unease or distraction. There can be a shift in how they relate to their work and their team, a subtle pulling back. More questioning and less assuming that things are solid. Thoughts like, “Maybe I shouldn’t get too comfortable here.” I don't blame them, albeit a source of crazy-making.

Another effect is “job hugging,” where people hold tightly to their current roles, even if they’re unhappy because leaving voluntarily suddenly feels far riskier than staying. Stability becomes less about fulfillment and more about not losing what little stability they feel they have. Then, there are the quieter safety-seeking behaviors: Overperforming in an attempt to prove worth. Staying hyper-aware of leadership changes or company communiques. Updating resumes more frequently. Emotionally detaching just enough to not feel as impacted if something happens again.

What's more, clients who have been the source of betrayal trauma within their own relationship structure have found themselves on the receiving end of something that feels emotionally adjacent. With that, I’ve watched a kind of perspective-taking emerge that was lacking before these big layoffs. “Oh… this is what betrayal feels like.” Not identical, definitely not equivalent, but enough to expand empathy toward their [betrayed] partners and to soften defensiveness. Enough to create a bridge toward understanding the impact their partners endured in a way that felt more embodied than conceptual in a self-help book. That doesn’t justify harm, but it does open something up.

If you’ve found yourself using words like betrayal, or working with clients who do, it might be worth getting curious: What felt promised, even if it was never explicitly stated? What did you believe would hold true?

And what does it mean to rebuild a sense of steadiness that isn’t so dependent on something inherently changeable and contract based? We don't have to decide whether this “counts” as betrayal trauma, but to simply notice what shifted inside you when trust met uncertainty. Then, let that awareness shape how you relate to work, to trust, and to yourself moving forward.