Speaker 1:
You'll see as people go on, and if they don't deal with the betrayal, this anger's there. And this is usually the betrayed person. If it's a woman, and I'm not being sexist, but they become more critical, if it's a guy, they become more critical. And that will be probably what ends up really hurting the marriage after. I mean, obviously the affair did, but they didn't deal with the affair when it happened. And so they may go years and then that person just has a chip on their shoulder. They're very bitter, and that bitterness, that criticalness, that anger, that angry response to things, really kind of causes the rest of the marriage to continue towards Destruction road. Yeah,
Speaker 2:
You are listening to Healing Broken Trust podcast with Brad and Morgan Robinson, where we talk about healing from affairs, infidelity, trust, and cheating in your relationship from the perspective of a professional marriage therapist and a fair recovery expert if you're wanting to heal your relationship after infidelity. This podcast is for you and we're officially on episode number 17, how to handle the Crazy Emotional Roller Coaster. It's a four-part series on trauma, and if you haven't already, go back to episode 15 and 16. Make sure to download and listen to those. It would also be helpful to listen to episode one where we talk about the seven stages of the affair recovery process so that you can really understand where this section comes in the grand scheme of things. So you can kind of put it into perspective why we're talking about trauma and why it's so important. Alright, so before I forget, let's go to healing broken trust.com/episode 17. Okay. It's important to go and download those free resources that we have for you because they're really going to help you through this process and really help you to make the most out of what you're learning in these podcasts. So go to healing broken trust.com/episode 17. That's the number 17. Download those free resources and let's get started.
We'll start today's show with a listener question. And the question is, I have been struggling with my spouse's affair for a year now. I just can't stop thinking about it and I have nightmares. I still feel like it happened yesterday. How do I know when I need to seek individual counseling?
Speaker 1:
Yeah, that's a great question. How do you know after betrayal when you need individual counseling? I would say if you feel like you did the first month or the first two months, six months out, you need individual help. And what I mean by that is you need to get help individually. What may be happening is you may have unresolved grief or trauma from things in the past. It may be times you felt abandoned by a parent or other betrayals. Different things in the past can really keep us in a holding pattern when dealing with trauma. And it makes it harder because when people experience trauma, what happens is, is it changes how they view themselves. And so if you've experienced trauma in the past with a parent rejecting you or sexual abuse or another deep personal wound, it changes how you view yourself. And then when you have your spouse betray you or a person betray you that you're dating or married to it just reconfirms that I hear so many times from people, I never thought my spouse would cheat on me. My parents rejected me, my family wasn't there for me, but I always thought they would be there for me. And then when that happens, that just reinforces all this negative stuff that that person believes about themselves. And one of the things that limits the trauma recovery aspect of this is when you have had previous wounds and previous hurts that haven't been fully healed yet, and then you're betrayed. It really hinders the affair recovery process for that person individually.
Speaker 2:
Okay. So it sounds like this person, like you're saying, is struggling with symptoms of post-traumatic stress or PTSD. We've explained in the last show what is PTSD, but Brad, will you explain the symptoms of PTSD?
Speaker 1:
Oh, okay. Because that's something we haven't talked about really yet. There's different symptoms, there's intrusive thoughts, there's nightmares, flashbacks, difficulty sleeping, there's rage, anger, irritability, and difficulty concentrating or remembering things. There's hypervigilance, there's an exaggerated startle response, there's avoidance and numbing, and that's about it. Lemme just kind of start with that first one. I said intrusive thoughts. Intrusive thoughts can take the form of many different forms like memories, images, perceptions about other people's behavior, and they're painful and they're so painful enough that betrayed spouses will often feel like they're reliving the discovery of the affair all over again. These intrusive thoughts, incite feelings of fear and vulnerability. They will incite rage, sadness, disgust, and sometimes guilt individuals are the most vulnerable to intrusive thoughts when they're trying to relax and their guards are down. Sometimes a trigger that reminds them of the affair will start the intrusive thoughts.
Speaker 2:
We will talk about triggers here in a little bit.
Speaker 1:
There's also obsessive thoughts and obsessive thoughts are different and in obtrusive thoughts in this way, obsessive thoughts are people trying to figure it out, the story of the affair, what happened? The details in their mind is just racing, trying to put everything together. It's almost like that person's creating a mental scrapbook of the affair.
And you just know the details, you know the timeline, and the more that you can know, the better you can heal and make sense of this. And there's unanswered questions. That's something that we all do when we're betrayed and we think about it. I had obsessive thoughts about when I was betrayed, probably felt like a hundred percent of the time, but it was probably closer to 80 to 90% of the time. And then there's nightmares that's basically experiencing some form of betrayal in the nightmare. Flashbacks are visual. Re-experience can involve sensations, behaviors, emotions. They can last from seconds to hours. Sometimes when people have flashbacks that last for days that can happen. There's usually a little bit more trauma there than just the affair. And here's, this is important for people to know. Flashbacks are commonly triggered by insomnia, fatigue, stress, and drugs. Symptoms of PTSD that we've been talking about. You need to take care of yourself physically. You need to get into physical rest and make sure you're not super stressed out.
Speaker 2:
And Brad, we have a question. How do we overcome intrusive thoughts? How do we overcome that?
Speaker 1:
Well, to be honest with you, the best way that I know how is really deal with the, don't avoid the affair, really deal with it. And that may mean journaling. What I mean by journaling is writing down the story, what feelings, letters that you want to write, but you're not sending this when you journal. You're only journaling for yourself. Then the other thing is doing a technique called thought stopping, which is basically you get these thoughts in your head and you choose to deliberately dwell on something else. There's a psychological principle, we can only think about one thing at a time, and so what we do is I'm not going to, this comes into my mind. I'm going to choose not to think about it right now. I'm going to choose to think about X, Y, and Z and what you may need to do if this is where you're at in the recovery, keep a note card or note cards with predetermined thoughts on it that you want to consciously dwell upon.
It could be poetry, it could be scripture, it could be something in the news, something that keep you distracted from that. And as you go throughout your day, it will become more second nature to reject these thoughts, handle these thoughts as they come up. But you don't, let me caution you though. You don't want to stay in a place where you're constantly not thinking about the affair. There has to be a balance where as time goes on, you can't do this. In the beginning it's, it's almost impossible. There has to be a balance where you, as time goes on, you're able to get some space between you and this, and you're able to control the thoughts at that time. You can kind of think about other things. It doesn't have as much control over you, but you don't want to live in total avoidance of it either. Then it's going to always be there. So you want to get to a place where you can eventually, you're dealing with it, but you have control over when you deal with it, and it's not just completely controlling your day.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I remember just laying in bed and thinking and not being able to turn it off and just when
Speaker 1:
You were betrayed.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, just laying there and just going over and over and over and over. Just these thoughts and 3:00 AM have to get up. I can't sleep. And you go in the living room and you just write and write. I mean, I come away with 10 pages just writing, and it's sometimes random, but it's intrusive and it's very difficult to stop.
Speaker 1:
Yeah. There are other symptoms of P-T-S-D-I want to get into, and again, I'm not diagnosing anybody who's been betrayed with this, but this is a common theme and common pattern of individuals who have been betrayed. They experience symptoms of PTSD, and that's what we're talking about right now. They have difficulty sleeping. Sometimes sleep is characterized by twitching, moving. Sometimes you just wake up with nightmares. We talked about that. Then there's rage, anger, irritability. This is more evident in the form of smashing things, heated, arguing, extreme behavior, screaming intensely, criticizing others and demonstrating the lack of patience. Having unresolved anger can quickly tire someone out. This anger can be mixed with shame, frustration, betrayal, or other uncomfortable emotions that lead to moodiness and explosions of pent up anger. Speaking of anger, usually this is a very common with people who've been betrayed. It's almost like they have an undercurrent of anger just below the surface and they can kind of just snap at any minute and little things set 'em off and you'll see as people go on, and if they don't deal with the betrayal, this anger is there and this is usually the betrayed person.
If it's a woman, and I'm not being sexist, but they become more critical. If it's a guy, they become more critical and that will be probably what ends up really hurting the marriage after. I mean, obviously the affair did, but they didn't deal with the affair when it happened, and so they may go years and then that person just has a chip on their shoulder. They're very bitter, and that bitterness, that criticalness, that anger, that angry response to things, really kind of causes the rest of the marriage to continue towards
Speaker 3:
Destruction.
Speaker 1:
Then this is important for people who've been betrayed, and this can last for months afterwards, difficulty concentrating or remembering things that occurs when the injured spouse is battling for control over intrusive thoughts about the affair. You spend a lot of time trying to block this out of your mind. Then you later have difficulty remembering or concentrating.
Speaker 2:
It's really interesting.
Speaker 1:
Yeah. Another common symptom is what I would call hypervigilance. This is where the injured spouse will be on guard against intrusive memories of the affair. Usually many betrayed people or spouses are very cautious to ensure that the affair doesn't happen again. So many spouses after being betrayed are very sensitive
Speaker 2:
To
Speaker 1:
Being lied called human lie detectors. They have a way of knowing if what they're hearing about the affair makes sense to them. So some of the ways that hypervigilance is demonstrated is they feel vulnerable or fearful that the affair will happen again, and they look for ways to ensure it won't happen. They act overprotective or over controlling of the spouse who had the affair, and they really have difficulty feeling calm.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, so it's just really, I mean, just not being able to calm down. I mean, I can imagine that that would be,
Speaker 1:
Yeah, it's very hard. And just a mental picture of somebody who's been betrayed. Think of somebody who's just gotten out of prison or jail. They cannot sit still. They're jumpy. They are
Speaker 2:
Fidgety, maybe
Speaker 1:
Fidgety, always looking over their shoulder,
Speaker 2:
Worried all the
Speaker 1:
Time, worried that somebody's going to come up and maybe stab him in the back or come and attack him or
Speaker 2:
That
Speaker 1:
Kind of thing.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, it's really interesting, something that you mentioned in their book. In the book, just a nervous system response. It's almost like it's like, oh a
Speaker 1:
Yeah, they're kind of jumpy, twitchy, and part of that is actually the next symptom. It's exaggerated startle response. That's a fancy way of saying the injured spouse is very easily frightened. They have a sensitive nervous system which will overreact to thoughts about the affair.
Speaker 2:
It's what they call the nervous system override, right?
Speaker 1:
Yeah. This often manifests itself as jumping flinching or tensing up when someone appears suddenly.
Speaker 2:
I wonder if that's because of just in the discovery phase, it's so shocking. It's like that major shock just freaked you out.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, well, but here's the thing. You are trying to ensure this doesn't happen again, and so you're using all your adrenaline, and that's the other thing with this exaggerated startle response. You have a sensitized nervous system and you have elevated stress hormones in the blood. You have an elevated heart rate even when you're resting, you have hyperventilation, you have tight chest or stomach, you can have lightheadedness, sweating and tingling, cold and sweaty hands, and this is all just having been betrayed. I want to unsure this doesn't happen again, and it's that fear of it happening that sends you into that exaggerated startle response.
Speaker 4:
Wow.
Speaker 1:
And so that's common. Here's the other thing, and this is also really common. There's avoidance and numbing. This is part of symptoms of betrayal because the intrusive fonts and arousal that follow an affair are so unpleasant. The injured spouse will desperately try to avoid all reminders of the affair. Sometimes they refuse to talk about it. This isn't everybody. This is something that really occurs a lot with the betrayer, but sometimes you get spouses like this, they might block out from their mind the thoughts, images or feelings surrounding the affair along with the activities, places, people or personal items that bring up that incite thoughts, that bring up these thoughts about the affair. Some injured spouses become house bound after an affair and attempts to avoid fearful encounters with those who have knowledge of the affair. Sometimes injured spouses turn to drugs or drown themselves in their work to avoid these painful feelings while others simply shut down all feelings to avoid the pain of the affair. And then others will live in a fantasy world trying to go on with their life like nothing bad has happened. If
Speaker 2:
They don't want to talk about it. How do you encourage them to talk about the affair?
Speaker 1:
Well, here's the thing. Part of affair recovery, it's trauma recovery avoidance is usually something that occurs early on during, I would say even during the shock phase. But if people don't want to talk about it, I can't make 'em talk about it. And so it's part of a affair recovery is really helping the injured spouse let go, forgive, rebuilding the marriage and the communication, the breakdown, helping the betrayer become more emotionally expressive and being able to ask for what they want to need. And so if they don't want to, and it's about 7% of the population who's been betrayed when they have been betrayed that doesn't want to talk about it. So this is a small group, but they often feel it. They often at times desire it, but there's a fear there.
Speaker 2:
If they're numbing that pain, if they're avoiding that pain, then they're also having to numb and stop feeling even the good feelings. So all of those things are tied together. But do we want to go ahead and talk about the triggers?
Speaker 1:
Sure. Yeah.
Speaker 2:
Okay. Well, there are different things that can trigger a trauma response in the portrayed spouse and kind of transport them back to those painful feelings. Will you talk to the listeners about the different triggers and what they are?
Speaker 1:
Yeah, just briefly on how the mind works, let me say this. This is why the triggers are so, there's so many of 'em. There's 12 different categories.
Speaker 2:
Wow, that's a lot.
Speaker 1:
And it's because the way the mind works when we go throughout something in our life, my drive to the radio station today, nothing traumatic has happened. I'm going to forget about it. Nothing unusual happened today, but if there was a deadly car wreck or even a fender bender, just that getting my adrenaline pumping, I'm going to remember it more than I would other
Speaker 3:
Events. Interesting.
Speaker 1:
And so what happens is when we experience trauma or deep personal wounds, these life hurts because we do go into avoidance and numbing because it is painful to deal with. What happens is, is our mind will experience disassociation. Let me explain it this way. Normal memories, we're able to just file away logically and just our mind's filing cabinets, but with painful memories, hurtful memories, what we'll do is we tend to avoid it and not deal with it, not really get closure on it, not really heal from it. And so what happens is our mind will remind us that there's unfinished business here. And so that's why we experience flashbacks. That's why we experience all these different things and those symptoms of PTSD that we talked about, and these are triggers that trigger you to thinking about the affair again. And these are things that activate memories of the affair
Speaker 2:
That maybe haven't been dealt with. Is that?
Speaker 1:
Yeah. Okay. Well, showing you that the affair hasn't been completely dealt with yet. Some of these are things that can cause betrayed spouses that haven't flashback of the affair activate memories of the affair, the first to site, obviously seeing someone who looks like the affair partner will do it, seeing the location where the affair took place, seeing visual reminders of the affair that will do it, and that occasionally I'll get people who will still see or view things that are reminders of the affair. Occasionally, they may still see that person, maybe it's a member of the family or they go to the same church or things like that, and that keeps that person stuck when they're still around that person who was a part of that betrayal and they see the affair partner or just see reminders of the affair. So you really, in my opinion, you need to get rid of that kind of stuff. You need to take some steps to not have that constant reminder because it keeps triggering you to think about the affair. The other thing is sounds, hearing the affair partner's name, hearing other people talk about an affair on TV or in movies or overhearing conversations between coworkers or friends, things like that. Just hearing certain
Speaker 2:
Things. And when you talk about site, getting rid of things that, I mean, obviously you don't want to burn down a building, but if you have a little like a sock or an object that reminds you of that person or whatnot, maybe when it's a good idea to go out in the backyard and have a bonfire or bury it,
Speaker 1:
Just getting ready to send these reminders, reminders so you can go on and sometimes maybe you've done work, but because you have these reminders, it keeps you stuck there.
Speaker 3:
The
Speaker 1:
Third trigger to thinking about affairs is smell. I know this is really interesting because smells can trigger memories. So smelling the perfume or clone of the affair partner smelling maybe even the smell of when you discovered or perfume this person was wearing as they were trying to get themselves more grooming themselves to be more attractive to the affair partner, they no longer wear it or they wear it all the time now.
Speaker 2:
Or you walk through the department store and oh my gosh, you smell it. And
Speaker 1:
It's like, yeah. So I know that's a little different, but I think it's interesting. The other is even taste, I know that's kind of silly, but eating food that was consumed around the time you were betrayed or even food that your spouse had with the affair partner.
So taste can do it. Just these reminders during this time. Body sensations of movement, tension or body positions, let me explain that better. Being sick can cause betrayed spouses to feel a flashback if they were sick when the affair was happening or when they discovered the affair or touched sensations. Being touched in certain ways can trigger intrusive memories. Injured spouses envisioning their spouse touching the affair partner while they're touching you can cause them to feel triggers of the affair. Feeling physical pain can also remind injured spouses of the emotional pain they have been enduring. And so there's other things I could add to this list that I'm going through. As far as examples of each section, significant dates are holidays is number six. The anniversary of the affair is very hard. The day the children left home holidays that are typically family events. Christmas is hard. Valentine's Day is hard. Those events are going to be hard. Anniversaries, holidays are going to be difficult. Family get togethers may be difficult, stressful events. And arousals. Number seven, the symptoms of PTSD and arousal can definitely trigger memories of the affair just being stressed, being tired, fatigued,
Speaker 2:
Definitely take care of yourself like what I
Speaker 1:
Was saying. Yeah, you got to take care of yourself. Eight, feeling strong emotions can trigger you to thinking about the affair. And here's what I mean by that. Heightened emotions can trigger a flashback even when they were caused by completely unrelated factors. Lemme give you an example of this. When you feel strong emotions, some people feel like they can't even be happy because they feel like being happy reminds them of the affair. And what I mean is somebody had a great day at work, they just closed a cell. They did fantastic. Their boss was praising them and they felt really good about themselves. And what could have happened with somebody is they later discover their spouse's affair and they're floating on cloud nine, and then they get this worst news possible. So every time they feel happy, it's just a reminder of that.
And so that can happen. So strong emotions, and that's just one example of how that can happen. The ninth trigger for thoughts about the affair is really just thoughts. Any thought that you have of the affair after discovery can cause you to go into self-preservation mode. You may feel like your normal self and then experience a thought of the affair and become completely withdrawn or irritable. And I'll go through this real quick, we're almost out of time, but behaviors, any behavior that reminds you of the affair can cause a flashback, but behaviors can trigger flashbacks. The things your spouse did while they were involved in the affair, like being preoccupied with their appearance or accepting late night work, phone calls. So certain things that they do can kind of trigger you to think about the affair, staying, staying up late on the computer, late on the computer, text messaging, all these different factors
Speaker 2:
That they were doing while they were,
Speaker 1:
And then 11 would be out of the blue. Flashbacks can occur randomly for no logical reason and in combinations many times triggers contain several memory aspects at once. You can have a visual plus location plus date and season, such as going to the grocery store on our dark night in the winter. All those things can trigger
Speaker 2:
Perfect storm.
Speaker 1:
Yeah. Yeah. And so let me say this, to wrap up our show, choosing to forget about the affair can be helpful and provide genuine relief, but continually blocking out thoughts about the affair requires enormous amounts of energy and probably leaves you feeling fatigued and irritable. As I mentioned earlier, when you numb out painful memories, you also lose pleasant and good memories as well. I had somebody tell me recently, they were actually the betrayer. They don't feel happy because they try to block out. They feel so much guilt and shame about the affair that they try to block out those negative feelings, and so they end up blocking 'em all out. It's a fact of life that betrayed spouses will have intrusive thoughts about the affair, but choosing to ignore or forget about those thoughts will only delay or prevent the healing you need because it keeps you from dealing with the trauma. Dealing with the affair until it makes sense is key for a fair recovery.
Speaker 2:
Interesting. That's a very good point. So dealing with it until it makes sense is the key to a fair recovery.
Speaker 1:
Thanks for listening to Healing Broken Trust. If you like this episode, you can always get our show notes and more details and links to the resources we discussed at healingbrokentrust.com. Also, as long as you're online, head on over to healing broken trust.com/retreat for details on an upcoming one-on-one retreat with me. If you like us, please subscribe and leave a review for us on iTunes. As always, everything discussed on this podcast is either my opinion or Morgan's opinion and is not to be taken as relationship advice because I'm not your therapist, nor have I considered your personal situation as your therapist. This podcast is for your entertainment and education only, and I really do hope you've enjoyed it. See you Until next time.
