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I’m Andrea Giles, and you’re listening to the Heal from Infidelity podcast number 215, A Message for When You’re Really Hurting.

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Hello and welcome to the Heal from Infidelity podcast for courageous women learn not only to heal from their spouse’s betrayal, but to become the boldest, truest, most decisive and confident versions of themselves ever. If you know there’s more for you than the life you’re currently living but don’t quite know how to get there, you are in the right place. Stick around to learn how to create a life that will knock your own socks off. Is it possible? It is. And I’m here to show you how I’m your host, Andrea Giles. Are you ready? Let’s dive in.

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Hey everybody. Welcome to another episode. This episode is going out to those of you who, when you hear this or when you come across it, are in a whole lot of pain. It might be hard for you to breathe. It might be hard for you to put one foot in front of the other. Your energy is just depleted. You’re so tired where you’re doing all the things. You’re journaling, you’re praying, you’re walking, you’re trying to talk, you’re trying to do all the things, and it doesn’t seem to touch the depth of what is inside of you, the pain that is swirling inside of you, the depths of how bad it hurts. This episode is for you. This is for you, okay? I want you to imagine that. And if I could, this is what I would physically do if I knew you, if I could be with you while you’re in your pain, I would look at you and I might hold your hand and I might ask you, tell me about it.

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Tell me about your pain. Tell me what you’re feeling. Tell me more. Tell me more, tell me more. And I would listen to you, and this is me reaching out to wherever you are in the world, whatever part of the journey you’re on saying, I hear you and I see you, and I love you. And this is me wanting to give you some love and encouragement in the way that I can. I want to remind you of something. Pain is not proof that you’re broken. Pain is proof that there’s something inside you that needs to heal and that is trying to heal. Pain is an indicator that there is something that is trying to heal. And sometimes when we are on a healing path where we really know that we’re trying to heal, we can be walking along that path and have things come up that are intensely, intensely painful.

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And you might wonder if this is healing, why does it hurt so bad? Here’s why. Pain is a doorway to the life that you want. Pain is the doorway where it’s hot to treat pain like an interruption, like something that we have to deal with, something to fix, to avoid, to hurry through. But pain is actually the doorway. It’s only in walking right through that, through the fear, through the uncertainty, through not knowing where you’re going to land. It’s that doorway that is actually going to take you to where you want to go and to the healing and to the version of you that you’ve not met before. She’s always been there, but you haven’t met her yet. It’s time to remember her. You want to remember her. And it’s the invitation to meet yourself there by walking into the pain. And here’s the thing, you might think there’s something wrong with you that you are wherever you are on your journey and still feeling as much pain as you are.

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And what I want to remind you of is the deeper the pain, the deeper the truth that it’s trying to reveal, the deeper the pain, the deeper the truth that is trying to be revealed, trying to get some air trying to come up. And if your body is saying, I can’t hold this anymore, your soul might say something is asking me is asking to be known. Something is asking to be honored and freed, freed it once out, it once out. And so it might be extra painful because it’s trying to be released. It’s trying to actually not have you have to hold it anymore, but it only can get our attention in pain. Okay? I want you to think about it like this. Most of us don’t go to the doctor if something first starts to feel a little off. We just don’t. We wait until it’s too painful to ignore where there’s symptoms that are getting worse, and then we might go to the doctor.

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That is not weakness. It’s how we work. It’s how we work. Like, okay, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. The squeaky wheel gets the grease. It’s when things get annoying enough or loud enough that we’ll finally do something about it. And if it’s not that big of a problem, we tend to ignore it, right? Pain, pain gets our attention. It says, Hey, hun. Hey sweetie. However you want to say that. There’s something here. You have been walking around and it’s time to tend to it. Now it’s time to tend to it. Now, it’s not punishing you. It’s not here to punish you. It’s not here to make you wrong. It’s actually more of a summoning. It’s saying, come, come. There’s freedom. On the other side of this pain, there is joy, there’s peace. There’s a new way of relating to yourself. On the other side of this pain come pain is an initiation and into being acquainted, reacquainted with who you always were into your remembering.

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Pain is not a problem to be solved, but it’s an invitation into where you are meant to go. Pain is like a sacred fire. It’s like a fire that burns out what no longer works, what no longer belongs. The belief structures, the patterns, the relationship patterns, the stories, the thoughts, all of it that have kept you small, kept you silent, kept you shrunken in on yourself. Pain is trying to burn through that. Sometimes the pain looks like a searing anger. We are just so mad. Sometimes it looks like just an ache in your soul of how did I get here? How did I allow myself to be treated this way? How am I going to change things in the future? I’m so afraid I’m so anxious. It can look like anxiety. Pain comes in lots of different forms. But if we just attend to the pain, what it’s trying to do is burn through what no longer belongs here with where you’re going.

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It’s trying to help you create something new. When life cracks you open, when you feel like you have just been cracked open, it feels like cruelty, especially because you in the space, it’s come by the hand of infidelity. It can feel very, very cruel. And what I believe is that when these times come in our lives that are really painful, where we’re like 10 out of 10, don’t recommend, 10 out of 10 painful, don’t recommend. It’s actually building your capacity. It’s showing you parts of you that are ready for deeper love, truer boundaries saying, I can’t go back to that. That pain was trying to show me what I no longer have tolerance for greater showing you where you are ready to evolve, where you’re ready to step into this remembrance of who you are. I know, trust me. Do I know how hard it is to willingly choose to step into it and how tempting it is to resist it, to distract yourself, to make it stop, to decide that you’re doing it wrong because it hurts.

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So you’re still trying to circle the pain because you’re trying to tell yourself that you’re doing it wrong. So if I just go around all of this, then I won’t have to feel it as bad. Here’s the thing though. You distracting yourself. You trying so hard to make it stop you deciding you’re doing it wrong because it hurts so bad is keeping you from the epicenter. It’s keeping you from the center. It’s keeping you from what actually need to really feel, to really feel. Healing is not linear, and healing is not comfortable. It’s not. Healing is raw and honest. It’s like holy, sacred work. Okay? It’s like the analogy I gave earlier about kind circling around an injury. Like, oh, I’ll just have some ibuprofen put on a bandaid, wrap it up until we have to deal with it until we have to see it.

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And then we can actually look at it and go, oh, this is the thing that’s causing all this pain. Right? My husband is watching, bless him. He’s watching Downton Abbey with me. Okay? I’ve seen it twice. In one scene, one of the main characters has a leg that was injured in war and he is embarrassed about it. And he has to use a crane at a crane. He has to use a cane, excuse me. And at one point he goes into the shop and they offer him this metal brace thing that’s supposed to correct his leg so he doesn’t have to use a cane anymore. So he doesn’t have to walk funny anymore or walk with pain. And he tries to wear this for several weeks and people are noticing that he’s grimacing in pain and he doesn’t tell anybody until finally one of the other characters says, I’m not leaving until you tell me what’s wrong.

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And he finally says, okay, it’s going to be ugly. I can’t remember exact words, but it’s going to be ugly. I hope you braced yourself for this. I hope you’re ready. And he pulls up his leg and this thing that is supposed to be healing him, his leg is just like raw, like bloody and raw from having this metal contraption day after day, pulling and scraping his skin away. And sometimes the attempts that we make at trying to heal are causing so much more pain and suffering because we’re not even looking at it. We’re not being willing to even look at, is this something that can be helped? In what way can I help it? What does it need? What’s it looking for? And in the show, he takes it off and they go throw it into a pond and he lets his leg heal.

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And in that case, he accepts this is something I’m probably going to have to live with. And he knows that he tried and that it didn’t work, right? That’s not the case here though. Pain, pain is a part of the human condition. We do experience pain. Suffering is what we do when we try to go around it and around it and around it and around it and attach stories to it. All these stories and chords of what we think it means that if I were good enough than this, if I were better than this, right? And really the pain is just asking for your care. It’s just asking for your attention. It’s just asking to be known. It’s asking to be heard. It’s asking to be recognized. That’s it. It doesn’t have to be really hard. When you can look at your pain and say, I’m listening.

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I’m listening. Tell me more. You’re starting to walk with it instead of against it, and that’s how transformation begins. You’re listening to it rather than thinking that I should be in a different place. If I were better, I wouldn’t be in pain. No, no, no, no, no, no. The suffering that we engage in by circling the pain, human nature, us avoiding pain, human nature, it’s all human nature, but you are being invited. Those of you listening to this that are really, really in the throes of intense pain, you are being invited into a place that is through right through, through the center of this pain. I am listening. I’m done avoiding it. I’m listening. And you will feel something shift when you start to listen to what the pain is actually trying to tell you. Okay? Alright. At the root of all of this pain that is ignored, just like an injury, it’s going to resurface again and again until it is attended to a weed that just keeps popping up because you never looked at the root.

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How deep is this root? Where did this even come from, right? You can cut back a weed over and over a thousand times, but it’s always going to come back until we slow down enough to dig it up and get to the root and understand this is the same for you. All of your pain, everything you’re currently doing makes perfect sense. It makes perfect sense. When you start to look at the soil where you start to look below, when you start to look at the root of our own pain, it makes perfect sense that this is what you’re doing with it. Just like if we look at the roots of this really aggressive weed that just, I swear, every week it pops back up and then if we go look at the roots, whoa, that’s quite a root system there. No wonder it keeps popping back up, right?

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It’s the same for you. You might have something that has a really strong root system that goes back many years that has been reinforced again and again and again by things that have happened in your life. It might go way back, okay? And it’s asking you the pain that feels so intense right now, like that weed that just is so obnoxious and gets taller and taller. It’s just, it’s, its ready. You are ready, you’re ready. You’re strong enough to face it. You are ready to go to the root. You’re ready to look it in the eye. You’re ready to go. Okay, let’s go. You’re ready to face it. And when you tend to that root, not with judgment, but with compassion, you’re going to be able to see what actually is there. What’s been hanging out, unmet needs, grief, unspoken truths, younger parts of you that you figured out, strategies that you worked out, strategies that you figured out to survive that are really keeping you in a place of feeling unhealed like you’re not getting your needs met.

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You made these strategies to survive, but now that pain is coming up because you’re ready to heal it. You don’t need that strategy anymore. But we have to go attend to those younger parts of us that put those strategies in place and thank them for that. Thank you for being so smart and wise and resourceful and letting ’em know we’ve got them now and when we meet them, really meet them. This is cellular level healing. It’s done at a very deep level. It’s cellular. It’s the kind of healing that truly changes how you carry yourself in the world truly changes how you carry yourself in the world and it creates a different outlook. Things start to look different. They sound different. They feel different. Things are different. There’s a shift, okay? So if you’re in this place today, the really, really painful place, don’t turn away from your pain.

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I won’t turn away from your pain. I’m here with you. I’m with you. There’s no pain that you could tell me that. I’d go, where did you come up with that? Or you should be past that. Never ever, ever. I would sit there and invite you into more. I want to know more about your pain. Tell me more, tell me more. I would never make you wrong for your pain. You don’t make yourself wrong for your pain either. Don’t rush to tidy it up. Don’t rush to fix it. We don’t have to hurry it just like a wound. Sometimes wounds require some tender care over an extended amount of time. Sometimes those younger parts of us, they want to know that if it gets scary in here again, that they could come back as many times as they need and you’re still going to attend to them.

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Okay? Sit with it like a child who’s scared because that’s what this is. Hold it gently. Ask it what it’s here to teach you. Okay? Ask it. You are in healing. You’re being initiated into this healing that’s going to to be so liberating for you. This is what courage looks like is facing this pain. This is what self-love really looks like. Not the pretty Instagram version, but real, real self-love. Staying with yourself when it’s really, really hard. Staying with yourself. I’m here. I am here. Oh my gosh, do I want to bail? Do I want to run? But I’m still here. On the other side of this pain is a new kind of peace. The kind that does not come from everything being perfect, the kind that does not come from even knowing exactly how this is all going to turn out, but it does come from knowing that you did not abandon yourself in the pain.

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You didn’t abandon yourself. You stayed with yourself, my friend. If you’re really in a lot of pain right now, breathe, take a breath. You’re not being punished, you’re not weak. You’re not always going to be in this space. You will move through it the deeper you can allow it, like waves coming through, the deeper, you’re going to feel some peace on the other side. If you stay with yourself here, if you let this pain come to do what it came to do, you will be able to look back and go, this was not ever meant to destroy me. It was actually helping to reveal who’s here is helping to reveal truth, helping to reveal what I really, really want, what I really need. I’m so glad that I listened to the pain rather than continuing to make myself wrong for it. Lean in. It won’t kill you.

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It won’t last forever. It is temporary. And on the other side of it is you alright? Now, I want to say this before I go. If you are in the space where you’re just in a lot of pain and you might feel embarrassed, you might feel like, ah, no one would really understand, I’m such a mess up. I’m what’s wrong with me. Please, please schedule a call with me and come see if it’s the right fit for you to join all of your sisters that are waiting for you in my group. Get your life back after infidelity. It is a group of people just like you who thought that they had to hide in their pain. Who thought they needed to figure it out alone and now none of them dare figure it out alone. They lean on each other. They talk to each other.

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I am there. I would never ever tell you that your pain is wrong. Ever, ever. I would want to know more and help you discover the roots of it. Let’s do this together. Let’s do this together. You don’t have to carry this alone. I am here. You’ve got an army of sisters that are ready to help you. You’ve got Beth, who is my assistant coach, who is one of her expertises, is on understanding these parts of us and why they do what they do. You get coaching with her, it’s amazing one-on-one coaching with her, okay? You get so much support. You do not have to do this alone. Let us carry this with you, okay? Go ahead and schedule a call with me. I’m going to let you skip the application this time in the show notes. I want you to self qualify without the application. I want you just to come talk to me. Get on a call with me. Let’s face this pain together. Okay? On the other side of this is a you that you are going to be so proud of that you’re going to be so in awe of and feel so great about. Okay? She’s right there. Alright, I’ll talk to you soon. Sending you all my love.

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Thank you for listening to the Heal from Infidelity podcast. If you would like to be kept in the know about upcoming free classes, new podcast episodes, and other ways of working with me, go subscribe to my weekly email. You can subscribe@andreagiles.com slash lies. Dash about dash infidelity slash Again, it’s andrea giles.com. Lies about infidelity slash I will see you next time.