Fame Trauma Series: Betrayal and fake friends

Dr Jessica Taylor writes about betrayal and distrust for those who live in the public eye

This is the third article in the ‘Fame Trauma’ series by Dr Jessica Taylor.

For this article, I wanted to write about trauma that arises from betrayal, social isolation and fake relationships when you become famous, wealthy, or live in the public eye.

“It’s lonely at the top!”

Is that a flex, suggesting you’re the only one at the top of your game? Or is the reality slightly more traumatic - that the higher you climb in society and in your own industry, the more isolation, betrayed, lonely and suspicious you become?

Maybe one causes the other? Maybe it’s both at once?

Fame and success again presents a double-edged sword - one which quite often leads to heartbreak, fear, isolation, sadness, lies, mind games, rumours, betrayal and distrust.

For those of you who have already been through this, or are living through it right now, it’s common to lose your family and friends as you become more successful or as your life moves into the realms of celebrity. It’s common for new people to pop up out of nowhere. Family members to become jealous and resentful. Friends to start selling stories to media outlets.

Even the ones who are not doing anything malicious can feel sidelined, forgotten, or can assume you are so busy and important that you don’t have time for them anymore. They might stop ‘bothering’ you, fearing you won’t care about their struggles or day-to-day lives anymore.

The other side of this of course, is that you often do the same. You don’t want to be bothering your family and friends with issues they won’t understand. You don’t want to be calling your friend who is busy bringing up her three kids whilst trying to hold down a job and go through a divorce with no money, to talk to her about an argument you’ve had with your agent, or that role you didn’t get, or that shit you keep getting on Instagram.

In this example, it is an accidental two-way process. Isolation happens gradually but severely. It isn’t really anyone’s fault in these circumstances (as opposed to deliberate betrayals and harm).

Reality is often so different from what you pictured success and wealth to look like. For lots of people, they imagined those moments to be filled with friends, family, celebrations, parties, fun times and amazing memories. You often believe that everyone you love will be happy for you, excited for you, stood alongside you for all the wild rides this new life presents - but it doesn’t always work out this way.

The reason I believe it is important to validate how traumatic this is, is because it represents enormous loss, grief, betrayal and trauma that tends to come at a time in your life when you are not expecting it. Everything is blowing up for you, and suddenly you are faced with losing people you loved and looked up to. That’s very complicated to process.

No matter who or where we are in life, our relationships are a central feature of our lives. One break up is bad enough, but gradually (or suddenly) becoming isolated whilst having to pretend to the world that you are happy and living the high life in your success or wealth will quickly cause you cognitive dissonance and distress.

As people fall away from you, you are surrounded by new people who you often can’t or don’t know whether to trust. It’s not like this isn’t openly discussed by those in the spotlight. Everyone from sports personalities through to A-list musicians have spoken of this experience for decades.

It reminds me of the lyrics of Lil Nas X in ‘Panini’, a track about someone who claimed to want to see him succeed right up until the point he did, at which point they wanted him to fail, and became resentful.

Eh, panini.

Don’t you be a meanie.

Thought you wanted me to go up, why you tryna keep me teenie?

I thought you wanted this for my life?

Said you wanted to see my thrive, you lied

Say to me, what you want from me. Just say to me, what you want from me

This set of lyrics from Lil Nas X is pretty self-explanatory, in my view. He’s not the first and he won’t be the last to express such confusion and hurt around his family, friends or mentors lying to him, saying they want to see him succeed and then hating him when he does.

Sorry, probably outing myself here as a huge hip hop nerd but Logic talks about this as well, on ‘Under Pressure’ - when he talks about working so hard to become successful and then people turning on him, or simply using him for money.

Drake talks about it on ‘Fake Love’, too - direct track about fake friends, betrayal, lies and two-faced people in his life:

That’s when they smile to my face

But the whole time they wanna take my place

I can tell that love is fake

I don’t trust a word you say

These examples are from the music industry, but I’ve heard from enough people in politics, influencer work, acting, and writing - and they’ll all been through this at one time or another.

I chose to write about this topic because it’s so unique to fame trauma. Relationships, friendships and trust is complicated enough without there being constant incentives for people to harm you, lie about you, betray you, and gaslight you into believing you have got it all wrong.

This trauma will leave you feeling suspicious, you may well struggle to trust people or have solid friendships. People may even begin to tell you that you are paranoid, obsessed, delusional or anxious.

From a trauma-informed perspective, I would argue that these responses are normal, natural, and proportionate. They do not constitute a mental health issue or a disorder. Living in a world where you have absolutely no idea who to trust, and where making a mistake could be career-ending, or even fatal, is a very frightening and stressful experience - and so you will certainly notice behavioural, psychological or physiological impacts and changes.

These changes are your trauma responses which are the ways your body and brain are responding to the feelings and experiences of trauma. The things you do to cope with this are then your coping mechanisms.

Common coping mechanisms for this level of distrust and betrayal will include self-isolation, struggling with relationships, pushing people away, becoming distrustful of everyone and everything, never reaching out for help, never telling people the truth about how you really feel or what is really bothering you, hiding parts of yourself or your life that could be used against you in future, becoming reclusive, not being able to let yourself relax in friendships or new relationships etc.

All of these coping mechanisms are normal, natural - and most importantly, they are to be expected as a way to protect yourself from further harm.

I hope this small insight was useful today. Please subscribe or follow to make sure you don’t miss the next article in this series.

Dr Jessica Taylor