How Accelerated Resolution Therapy (ART) Works for Betrayal Trauma, and What to Expect
If the idea of resolving infidelity trauma in just one half-day session sounds too good to be true, that doubt makes sense to me. Most of us grew up believing that trauma lasts forever, healing takes years, and that therapy is supposed to be slow.
But the good news is: speed and depth aren’t mutually exclusive when it comes to ART.
This article explains how resolution, not just coping better, after betrayal trauma is possible, and why ART is thought to be so effective for the job of healing betrayal trauma.
What Happens in Your Brain During Betrayal Trauma
First, we should cover what happens to your brain during a very stressful event like partner betrayal so that you have context for how ART resolves the trauma response.
When you’re in the middle of a highly stressful moment, like the moment you found out about a betrayal, your body releases stress hormones, including cortisol. These hormones change how your brain records that moment.
Cortisol makes it harder for your brain (specifically, the hippocampus) to put memories in order. This is what makes you feel like the betrayal is happening right now, or that it’s about to happen again in the very near future. Because of cortisol’s interference, your brain wasn’t able to categorize the betrayal as a past event.
Meanwhile, the amygdala (the part of your brain that detects a threat) doesn’t get slowed down the same way as the hippocampus does. In fact, the more intense an experience is, the more vivid and exact the amygdala’s recording of the sights, sounds, and sensations tends to be (eg: the way the room smelled, or the feeling in your chest or stomach).
The intensity of the moment is also why finding out about the affair turns into anxiety and constant scanning afterward: once the amygdala categorizes a sound, an image, or a sensation as dangerous, it treats anything similar the same way later, even when nothing objectively dangerous is happening. A phone buzzing or a certain smell can set off the same alarm as the original infidelity discovery moment. That’s the feeling of being on high alert all the time.
What Researchers Think is Happening in the Brain During ART
So, how does ART help your brain take a highly stressful, highly upsetting memory and both reduce the emotional intensity of it, and make it feel resolved?
Here are the leading ideas, starting with the ones that have the most research behind them.
Your brain can update memories for a while after you remember them. When you remember an emotional memory, it becomes changeable again for a little while. Scientists call this memory reconsolidation. For about 6 hours after you remember something, your brain keeps it open to change, and then the memory “closes” again.
During that open window, ART guides you to replace the upsetting images tied to the betrayal with new ones you pick yourself.
As strange as it might sound, clients have told me that they could no longer retrieve the old image, or that it was much more dull, even though the facts of the memory stayed the same. Changing the mental images seems to have a direct effect on how we feel about an event.
You stay aware of the present while remembering the past. During ART, you hold the old memory in mind while also staying aware of where you are right now: the room, the therapist, and the fact that you’re choosing to look at this on purpose, as an adult, today. Researchers call this dual attention, or dual focus.
That combination is thought to be what updates the memory. The window described above is when the memory can change. Dual attention may be what fills that window with the right information: this happened, it’s over, and you’re safe now.
Your working memory can only hold a few things at once. During ART, you hold a distressing memory in mind while also following the eye movements. Your working memory, the mental space that holds only a few things at once, has to split its attention between the two.
Researchers think this competition for your attention makes the memory feel less vivid and less upsetting afterward.
The amygdala calms down. Brain-imaging studies have found that guided eye movements, like the ones used in ART, calm the alarm part of your brain.
The eye movements also strengthen the connection between the alarm part and the thinking part. A stronger connection means the thinking part gets more influence again.
In this research, the people whose alarm response quieted down the most during the eye movements also had less fear come back later, when they were tested again.
This is one of the strongest explanations researchers have for why ART can change how a memory feels, not just how you think about it.
Eye movements are similar to REM sleep. There’s both wisdom and science behind the old saying to “sleep on it.”
REM sleep, the stage where you dream, is when your brain works through the day’s emotional memories and lowers how intense they feel. That’s part of why you feel better in the morning after a bad day.
The theory is that ART borrows this same process while you’re awake, and manually uses it for one specific memory.
An old theory: the two sides of your brain talking to each other. An older idea said that moving your eyes side to side helps the two sides of your brain (the logical side and the emotional side) talk to each other more.
The idea was that a memory stored mostly on the emotional side would connect to the reasoning side, and that would make the memory feel less emotional and easier to think through. This theory still gets repeated a lot, but the studies that tested it directly found mixed results. Most researchers now see it as, at most, a small piece of a bigger picture, not the main reason ART works.
Quick Doesn’t Mean Too Good to Be True
Logical understanding and emotional processing are two different things.
Understanding builds through new conversations. Each time you talk about the betrayal, you form a new memory of that conversation. Session by session, you have more conversation memories, and together they add up to more understanding.
But forming a new memory of a conversation doesn’t change the original memory of the betrayal. The original memory, the one stored by the amygdala, stays the way it was stored, unless something specifically changes it.
ART works on changing the original memory directly, instead of forming new conversation memories.
When you recall the specific memory, it becomes changeable again for a while (the reconsolidation window described earlier). During that window, staying aware of the present at the same time (dual attention), lets new information become part of the memory when it “closes” again.
That changes the original memory itself without having to wait. The change is almost immediate.
What an ART Session Involves
A session doesn’t require prep work beforehand or homework after. You don’t need to describe the betrayal out loud in detail. You’ll briefly recall the betrayal memory for about thirty seconds at a time. While you do, you’ll use eye movements that I will help you with. You choose the replacement images yourself, with my guidance.
ART follows a set script, so the session is predictable. It isn’t an open-ended conversation that could go anywhere. It’s structured and directive.
You also stay in control of how much detail you say out loud. For many people, that’s a relief after retelling the same story.
What to Expect in the Hours and Days After an ART Session
Most people leave an ART session feeling lighter, but your brain is often still finishing what the session started. In the hours afterward, it’s common to feel unusually tired, more emotional than normal, or both. Some people notice more vivid dreams that night. These effects are totally normal and usually fade within 24 hours.
I will check in with you 72 hours after your ART session to make sure there are no lasting “side effects.”
What Clients Report After ART
Clients I’ve worked with report real emotional changes in their everyday life. Clients often say they think about the infidelity less, and that the images lose the emotional intensity they used to have. Maybe the most common report after ART is that clients no longer feel anxious like they did before the session, and their looping thoughts have stopped. They no longer wake up thinking about the affair.
After their ART session, clients have described the betrayal as a matter of fact; something that happened in the past instead of something that is happening now or about to happen. This “peeling back the onion” leaves room for other emotions to surface. Often that includes grief, even when the relationship continues and heals from the betrayal.
A grieving period is totally normal and necessary for healing. The presence of grief indicates that ART has done its job: it removed the trauma and anxiety layers that prevented grief from being felt. This is what allows my clients to emotionally work through the betrayal to a level of completeness that wouldn’t be available if trauma and anxiety were still present.
How to Get Started in Therapy
I offer half-day ART intensives that last between 3 and 4 hours. The cost for an intensive is $1,950.
I see clients online in the following states: Oregon, Washington, Colorado, Massachusetts, and Florida.
If you’d like to get scheduled, please see my HIPAA-compliant calendar here for my availability.
The link will take you to my calendar where you’ll choose your day and time for your intensive. You’ll be prompted to pay a 50% deposit to hold your spot, and your intake forms will be emailed to you within 24 hours. Then we’ll meet on your scheduled day. I look forward to meeting you!