Betrayal Specialization
Professional Certification in Psychoanalysis
The Betrayal Specialization is a completion-based professional certification from Therapist University (Miami) for working with infidelity, broken trust, and relational rupture — in individuals and in couples. You finish able to hold the discovery crisis, structure disclosure, and guide trust-rebuilding without taking sides. It is also deeply personal: if you carry your own betrayal — an affair, a hidden secret, a friend or parent who broke faith — the same frameworks help you process the wound and decide what comes next.
For your practice
Specialize in infidelity, broken trust, and relational rupture — approaches for individuals and couples.
For your own life
Process your own betrayal, rebuild trust, and decide what comes next.
What you'll learn
- 1The Anatomy of Betrayal Trauma. Why discovery hits the nervous system like trauma, not ordinary conflict: intrusive images, hypervigilance, obsessive checking, and the loss of the assumptive world. Distinguish betrayal trauma from grief and from PTSD so you frame what you observe accurately rather than diagnose.
- 2Managing the Discovery Crisis. The first 72 hours and first weeks: stabilizing the betrayed partner, containing rage and self-harm risk, the disclosure-vs-staggered-discovery problem, and setting interim ground rules so the relationship can be assessed before any decision about staying or leaving is forced.
- 3Structured Therapeutic Disclosure. How to facilitate a full, non-trickle disclosure that ends drip-fed revelations: preparing the involved partner, protecting the betrayed partner from gratuitous detail, the role of the impact letter, and handling the 'do I want to know everything?' question with informed consent.
- 4Working With Both Partners Without Taking Sides. Multidirected partiality in couples work after an affair: holding the betrayed partner's reality and the involved partner's accountability and underlying story at once. Managing the third party, contact boundaries, and the therapist's own counter-transference toward the unfaithful partner.
- 5The Long Arc of Rebuilding Trust. Trust as earned behavior over time, not a single decision: transparency agreements, repair attempts, rituals of reassurance, navigating triggers and anniversary reactions, and recognizing when reconciliation is and is not viable — including supporting a clean, dignified separation.
- 6Beyond the Affair: Other Betrayals. Financial infidelity, parental and childhood betrayal, betrayed friendships, and institutional or professional betrayal. Mapping the common rupture-to-repair structure across contexts so your framework transfers beyond romantic infidelity.
Who this is for
- Practicing therapists and counselors who keep getting infidelity and trust-rupture cases and want a structured, non-blaming way to hold both partners through the affair fog
- Coaches and relationship practitioners who need defensible scope and method when a hidden affair or financial deception surfaces mid-engagement
- People rebuilding after their own betrayal — a partner's affair, a parent's broken faith, a friend's deception — who want to understand the wound and what recovery actually requires
- Aspiring psychoanalysts who want a concrete specialization in the most emotionally charged work that walks into a practice
What you'll be able to do
- Hold a post-discovery session without escalating it — stabilize the betrayed partner, contain reactivity, and keep both people in the room when staying-or-leaving is still undecided
- Facilitate a structured therapeutic disclosure that ends trickle-truth, using an impact letter and informed consent rather than gratuitous detail
- Guide a trust-rebuilding process with transparency agreements, trigger management, and honest checkpoints on whether reconciliation is viable
- Recognize the rupture-to-repair structure across affairs, financial infidelity, and family or friendship betrayal, and work within your scope or refer when clinical care is needed
What's included
Globally valid certificate
An official certificate of completion you can show and verify.
Professional register entry
Your name in the Therapist University professional register.
Practitioner ID & badge
Your official, verifiable practitioner ID and digital badge.
A completion-based professional certification with professional-register entry and a practitioner ID badge — not a state license, academic degree, or accredited qualification.
Questions
Is this certification a license to practice couples or marriage therapy?
No. This is a completion-based professional certification in the Betrayal specialization from Therapist University, plus entry in our professional register and a practitioner ID badge. It is not a state license, not an academic degree, and not CHEA/USDE accreditation. Psychoanalysis is largely unregulated in the US (except New York); always practice within your jurisdiction's rules and your own scope, and refer out when clinical licensure is required.
Can I take this to work through my own experience of being betrayed?
Yes, and many students do. The same models that train you to support clients — understanding betrayal trauma, disclosure, and the trust-rebuilding arc — give you practical strategies for your own affair, broken secret, or family rupture. It is an educational program for understanding and working through betrayal, not a substitute for your own personal therapy if you need it.
Does it only cover romantic infidelity?
No. Affairs are the central case, but the final module extends the same rupture-to-repair framework to financial infidelity, childhood and parental betrayal, betrayed friendships, and professional betrayal — so the structure you learn applies wherever trust has been broken.
Is the Betrayal specialization valid in my country?
It is a globally valid certificate of completion, used by graduates across 130+ countries. It certifies that you trained and qualified through Therapist University — it is not a government-issued license. See our Recognition & Validity page for the honest specifics.
What exactly do I receive?
The certificate of completion, an entry in our professional register, and your official practitioner ID badge — all publicly verifiable.
Become a certified Betrayal specialist
$297 · certificate, professional register entry, and practitioner ID included.