Welcome to the Trust Talk Sessions. Join a collective of former guests and I for a 19 day dive into Trust to celebrate 100 episodes of Trust your Sacred Feminine Flow. Each conversation offers an intimate glimpse into the challenges and precious moments experienced in our journey to trust.
Jenni Rochelle is a Betrayal Trauma Specialist who supports women who have been impacted by their husband’s sex addiction and betrayal. She is a certified life coach, yoga teacher, and a spiritual director. Jenni has been trained according to the Multidimensional Partner Trauma Model developed by the Association of Partners of Sex Addiction Trauma Specialists.
Jenni is also a poet, a wife, a mom and a mystic. She loves butter, coffee, bacon, traveling and pugs.
https://www.instagram.com/msjennirochelle/
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Listen to Jenni’s Trust Talk Session by clicking the play button on the audio player below.
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Read the Full Transcript Here:
Joni
Welcome to the Trust Talk Sessions. I’m your host, Joni Advent Maher, and I’m delighted and honored to have my friend and soul sister, Jenni Rochelle, join us today. Jenni was a guest probably two and a half years ago at this point. Her episode was number 032 Becoming the Love of your Life. And Jenni is a Betrayal Trauma Specialist and she coaches women who are impacted by a partner’s sex addiction. So welcome Jenni.
Jenni: Thank you Joni. Such a pleasure to be here.
Joni: Yes. And I can imagine you might have a unique perspective on trust.
Jenni
Oh, for sure, absolutely, absolutely. Trust. For the women that I work with trust is something that we talk about probably in almost every session. When that trust is betrayed, how do you get it back and what does that look like? And you know, more importantly, how do you learn to trust yourself again? Because when there’s betrayal and quite typically it’s gone on for a number of years it can really make a woman doubt herself, right?
Joni
Yes, yes, yes, yes. So how, what does that journey back look like or what, what was it like for you?
Jenni
It was a very slow and deliberate process with a lot of yoga and a lot of meditation and a lot of the right people, coaches who taught me about gaslighting and ways, right, that we are taught not to trust ourselves. And just really I think at one point one of my coaches told me just trust your intuition and make room for it to be proven wrong. But it’s really just learning to listen to your body too. I was talking about this, this last week on my Instagram show, about how wise our bodies are, right?
Joni: Yes, yes. Another guest was just saying our bodies don’t lie.
Jenni: Yeah.
Joni: And I think that’s absolutely true.
Jenni: Yeah.
Joni
So are there, so where are you today in your relationship with trust and what are the ways that it comes into your day to day life? Cause I know you’re in a much different situation than when you had to go through your healing journey?
Jenni
Right, absolutely. Yes. I’m remarried and happy and we have a loving and trustful, is that a word? Relationship, trusting relationship.
Joni: Trusting and trustworthy.
Jenni
Trustworthy right! But it wasn’t that way and there was a lot of work that I had to do. So there was sort of like one level of work, right. As a human being, as a woman, single woman recovering, learning to trust myself and then, right. You know, we’ve all heard that we’re hurt in a relationship and we heal in relationships. So there was a next level of trusting another human again. Right. And learning to manage my nervous system and because partners of sex addicts are ex partners of sex addicts, experience post traumatic stress disorder or PTSD. It’s still even in my new relationship, there’s still managing the triggers that come up that impact my trust. And so it really is just a lot of awareness, like what’s happening in my body in the moment. And being able to say, is this feeling right now about this person in front of me? Or just because of something that happened five years ago or 15 years ago? It just takes practice, right?
Joni
Oh, yes. Yes it does. Yes it does and I… So from your perspective does it seem like the necessity of healing that wound around trusting ourselves. Is that a key element? Is it a starting place? What can you say about that?
Jenni
Yeah, I would say absolutely. That’s something I really try to do with the woman I work with to really begin. And that’s what I mean by becoming the love of your life, right?
You’re the one you’ve been waiting for and learning to trust yourself to make the right decision. And in my case, because I did end up getting divorced from my ex who is a sex addict. Like making the decision to leave was like the first step of trust, right? I trust it is right for me to leave. I trust that there will be more love for me in the future. I trust that this is the right thing for my kids. Of course, obviously your relationship with a Higher Power or Spirit comes into play in that. But it is, it’s learning to trust yourself. I’m making good decisions for me and then carrying that forward into future relationships. But absolutely, it begins with that core inside yourself and learning to listen to your inner wisdom and pay attention to what’s going on in your heart, in your head and your body.
Joni
Hmm. And how do, how did you, or how do people reconcile with that feeling, whether it’s the self betrayal of having not seen something or, or having made a choice that perhaps they judge is wrong or bad or misguided? Because we all have our blind spots. And discernment. And seeing who and what is trustworthy is an important part of the equation. So are there themes you’re seeing around that? And is it a self forgiveness issue? Is it an issue of I don’t know, recognizing deeper pieces?
Jenni
Yeah, it’s a lot of those things. So there’s definitely self compassion and grace. Right. And two key things that people said to me along my path where you couldn’t see until the lights go on. Until the lights on, right? Like I could not see what was going on in my life. And so until I was able to. It just wasn’t right. There’s a great Maya Angelou quote, you do the best that you can. When you know better, you do better.
Joni: Yes, yes, yes.
Jenni
Yes, When you have more information and then really, really understanding the self-compassion. And then eventually you get this awareness in the relationship. So all sex addicts, Gaslight, which means they overtly or covertly manipulate their partner to hide the truth because they have this double life. So they all Gaslight. And so it’s learning to recognize how much of that was going on and impacting your ability to see clearly. It’s emotional abuse, it’s very damaging, and it takes a while to recover and it for sure impacts your ability to trust yourself. So learning to recognize that and then realizing how much of that was going on in the past. And again, pouring on that self compassion and that grace for yourself. You were just doing the best that you could in the relationship.
Joni
Yes, yes, yes. And it seems to me just circling back to that, being able to reconnect and listen to the body, the signals of the body is a part of that reinstituting of that trust.
Jenni: Yes, absolutely.
Joni
Yes. Yes. Well, I know you have a wonderful gift that you are sharing with one of our lucky listeners, so can you please tell us a little about that?
Jenni
Sure, sure, sure. So I love pretty things. I love pink things and things that smell good and are sensory. So one of the things that I do, so we talk about listening to your body. How do you do that? Okay, well, you need to learn grounding practices, right? And so one of the easiest things that I love to teach my ladies is to pay attention to your five senses. When we pay attention to our five senses, we’re in the present moment and we’re in our bodies and it brings our nervous system back online. And so I created this beautiful box, I call it the Woman in the Desert Survival Kit.
Joni: I love that.
Jenni
So a woman in the desert, that’s like my metaphor for the woman, right? Who was discovered that her spouse is a sex addict and her life is completely different from what she was thought she was living in.
So now she’s in this desert, which seems like this inhospitable place, but there’s so much beauty to be discovered there. So that’s where that metaphor, that’s why I use that metaphor, but the box has all these lovely essential oils and palo santo for cleansing your energy space. It has an Aventurine bracelet Mala, it has a Rose quartz heart stone and some sprays and lots of things that smell good. And there’s this beautiful little turquoise velvet pouch that you can put all your things in so you can carry it with you wherever you go. So when you’re in your car and you’re triggered you can pull it out and touch things and smell things that help you. And soon your body associates all of that with these.
Joni
Yes. So it’s a very loving, it’s a self loving little package and it’s a very loving and generous gift. Thank you. And I, and I know you’re also offering an hour session with you. exactly.
Jenni
Exactly. An hour session with me. It’s for any women out there listening who has been betrayed. And it doesn’t necessarily mean that your spouse has had a sex addiction, but if there’s been betrayal, betrayal trauma is still real.
Joni
Right. And I’m imagining that could even be betrayal by a parent, betrayal by a business partner, betrayal by a friend?
Jenni
Absolutely, Joni, you’re absolutely right. Yeah. It’s really the woman who originally developed the term, says any person or institution that we rely on for safety or security?
Joni: Wow.
Jenni: We can experience betrayal trauma with.
Joni
Right. I can imagine many of us in the collective are feeling that just betrayal by the leadership. Or, oh my God, life.
Jenni: Absolutely. Yes, yes.
Joni: Like Hey,
Jenni: Yes
Joni: We’re all in the desert a bit right now.
Jenni: It’s not supposed to be happening this way.
Joni: Right
Jenni: Absolutely. Absolutely.
Joni
Yeah. Yeah. So listeners, you can be eligible to win Jenny’s generous gift. If you go to the Facebook group, which is the Trust Talks Sessions group on Facebook, I have all the instructions there, on how you can enter to win. And if folks don’t win, but they’re still interested in pursuing something with you, what is the best way for them to reach you or to follow you?
Jenni
I’m on Instagram and Facebook at Ms. Jenny Rochelle. On Instagram, I do a live show every Sunday morning where I talk about sex addiction and betrayal. And they can follow me there.
Joni
Wonderful. Wonderful. Well, I just want to honor you and the very important work that you’re doing because I believe that shift from the shock and I would imagine shame that goes with betrayal to the freedom and the liberation of having trust in yourself restored is such an important journey and healing work. So I want to thank you for that.
Jenni
Thank you, Joni. Thank you. That’s very well put. Yes, there is a lot of shame that these women experience.
Joni
Yes, of course. And it’s really, I know, and I’m sure you tell them it’s not their shame, it doesn’t belong to them. But it’s very natural for us to carry it when we have been through betrayal like that. So.
Jenni: Yeah. Yeah.
Joni: Yeah. So thank you for taking some time to be with us.
Jenni: My pleasure. Joni. Thank you so much for having me.
Joni
Yes, it was my pleasure. And I just appreciate your honesty and your willingness to be such a voice and a stand for truth, for big T truth.
Jenni: I like that.
Joni
So yes, yes. And we together want to thank you, our dear listener for being here with us today. And want to remind you as always, to trust what your heart knows.