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I’m Andrea Giles, and you’re listening to the Heal from Infidelity podcast, episode number 212, Anchoring into Safety When You Don’t Have the Answers Yet.

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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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Hello. Hello. Welcome back to another episode of Heal from Infidelity. I hope that this episode finds you well. Today we’re going to talk about uncertainty. This is something that seems to be coming up a lot lately. I know that when I first start working with people, so much of the reason why they come to me is because they find the uncertainty of not knowing how things are going to go unbearable. At times, they feel the pain of the hurt and the pain of knowing that there’s things that they need to know about if they can stay or if they have to leave, or they already know one way or another, but they don’t know how it’s going to go. And so there’s fear and safety there, and their reality is that life itself is a sequence of living with uncertainty. There’s so much uncertainty throughout our lives and it can be so unsettling.

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I know that this has been an ongoing struggle for me in my own life that I get really impatient. I can get really fearful at times when there’s things that I want to know how it’s going to work out, and it can be very uncomfortable with relationships, with big changes around maybe moving to a different location, maybe a relationship change, maybe just personal changes internally that I know that I need to lean into this and I’m so afraid because I don’t know what is going to happen. I don’t know how well it’ll be received. I don’t know if I will lose people I don’t know. And so it can be very, very uncomfortable. So today I’m going to be talking about it again. It seemed like it was needed today. So this is what I’m bringing you today. Okay, so this middle ground where answers having to ride or maybe I want to back that up.

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Maybe answers have a arrived. Maybe there are things that you do know, but you know that you acting on some of those answers could bring some ache, could bring some difficulty. It could bring maybe some pain, and so maybe you’ll hold back and it could be that you don’t know and that you really are kind of waiting for some information. It can bring out fear, it can bring out control where we want to control it so we can determine how it goes. It could bring out self-doubt and shame, all kinds of things we could make ourselves wrong. Think if I were stronger or to clear or more healed, I’d know what to do by now. And in reality, that’s just a big fat lie because all of us are moving along in this life at the pace we’re at with different things that each of us bring from our own life experience, from inherited traits, from current circumstances.

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There’s so many things that we are bringing along and we’re doing the best we can. I really do believe that. And we don’t intentionally say, I’m not going to heal. We don’t intentionally say, I’m not going to be strong. We’re doing the best we can. And sometimes it can feel like so much has been piled on us in various ways that it can sometimes feel impossible to take a move forward without knowing how it’s going to end. How is this going to go? Right? And I want you to hear what I say here, that the in-between, it’s not a punishment. It’s not to show you where you’re doing things wrong. It’s a teacher. It’s just a teacher, okay? It’s showing you things, it’s teaching you, it’s revealing things. It’s opening you up to possibilities that maybe you couldn’t see before that can then embolden you to make some of the moves or to be consistent in what you’re doing while you wait for outcomes to show up.

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Okay, so let’s start here at an important place, which is around the nervous system. Our nervous systems love certainty. They love to know. They love to know how things are going to go. Our nervous systems are wired for us to survive. We want to know what’s coming so we can prepare, so we can plan, so we can protect ourselves, but when life won’t give us that clarity yet, it can stir up every part of us that equates unknown with unsafe, and for most of us, unknown does equal unsafe. And you might notice parts of you trying to fix or hurry and decide to get somewhere or force an outcome just to make the discomfort stop. Maybe you catch yourself ruminating, spinning stories to try to close the gap between what you know and what you don’t. That’s not weakness. It’s your nervous system trying to help you feel safe, like, okay, give us some direction here.

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Give us some direction. And that ruminating can sometimes create a space where it’s trying to give you certainty, but it’s doing it in a way that’s actually working against you, creating more confusion. This episode is about a different kind of safety that is available to you even in the midst of all of that, and it comes from anchoring inside yourself instead of reaching for an answer outside of you. This in between is actually a sacred place. It’s where old identities fall away. The ones that said you had to have it all figured out or that you’re worth depended on how quickly you could move on or your relationship status or parenting status, whatever that may be. In between seasons, ask us to practice presence. Ooh, they’re hard. They, even as I’m saying this, I’m like, yeah, but I don’t like that either because I really don’t.

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I really don’t. I don’t like inbetweens. I don’t like waiting to see how things are going to work out. I really don’t. And I will say that something I do know is that learning to be with it, learning to be with it is the higher lesson here. Not just waiting it out, okay, waiting it out. It’s like torturing ourselves. It’s making it so much harder for ourselves, waiting it out. This place of presence, of bringing presence to it, of growing our capacity to feel what is there is actually what’s going to help us to know what to step into next. It’s going to lead us forward. This in-between is helping us learn how to hold tension without rushing to resolve it. It’s allowing us to be with life as it unfolds rather than trying to outsmart it, being with it, being with it, rather than trying to outsmart it.

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I often think of it like this. When a seed is underground from the top, it looks like there’s nothing even there. We can’t see it, but all the transformation is happening where no one can see, and if we dig it up too soon, we interrupt the process that was meant to lead that little seed to growth. We interrupt it. It’s like we have to stay out of the way. Give it the space it needs. You’re the same. What if these in-between places? What if you could lean into the belief that there are much bigger things at play here? That there are bigger things being reworked, configurated. Maybe there are things being reworked and reconfigured in your loved ones, in your partner that you actually have to step back from that are not totally dependent on you. Please know that not dependent on you and you showing up perfectly.

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That’s way too much responsibility. What is needed here sometimes is stepping back and letting things unfold while simultaneously listening to what is true for you. In the past year or so, I’ve had a lot of truth bombs come through. A lot of them for me, and not all of them have been easy. In fact, none of them have been because every single one of them has asked me to step into growth. Even as I’m saying this out loud, it makes my voice shake a little bit because every single thing that has come through has required me to shed identities to be honest with myself and with others, to admit what I already know to be true. Even if it means rocking the boat in different ways, it’s been quite challenging. But when we are in these in-betweens, there is truth that’s going to emerge. There are things that are going to be revealed.

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There are things that you already know that will become clearer if we allow the space for it to become clearer. So how do we do that? How do we do that? First, number one, name what you do know. You do know something. What do I know for sure today? What’s true right now? It might be as simple as I’m breathing. I’m safe in this moment. I am safe. I’m somewhere warm. I have water. I have food. I have fresh air. I have people that love me. I’m safe in this moment. I’m breathing. I’m capable of meeting this moment. Did you know that All you need to do is meet this moment? That’s it. You don’t need to have what you need right now to meet a moment in two years or in a year or even next week. You meeting your moments. Now, you meeting yourself as you are now will give you the strength and capacity to meet what’s there next week, next month, next year.

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Meet yourself in the moment. What do I know now? What is true right now? And it can be more than I’m breathing. I have support those things. Yes, those are great places to start, but there can be other things too. For example, I know that I am deeply loved. I know that at this moment I have enough money to have the things that I need. I know that I am where I’m meant to be right now at this time. I know that in the past, I have been given information of what I need to do or things that I need to find out right on time. I know that I can trust myself, that if needed, I can make really courageous decisions. I’ve done it in the past and I can do it again. There’s many different truths that you might have for me. One of the big ones for me this past year has been around spirituality and knowing that there’s a whole level of spirituality that I’m meant to learn about, that I’m meant to study, that I’m meant to understand, that I’m meant to live, that I’m meant to bring into my work, and it has been uncomfortable and stretching.

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But there’s also something really powerful in honoring something that even if you don’t even know why it’s there, there are things that you know that only you know don’t even know how to explain. If you’re trying to put words to it to explain to somebody else, the words fail, but it’s still something that, and the fact that you know it is good enough, no one else needs to trust it but you. Okay? Alright. Number two, slow the timeline. There’s often no actual emergency, just the illusion of one. Okay? Probably the thing that’s on your mind, it probably isn’t an emergency, okay? If you’re in a situation where there’s abuse, yes, that is urgent, okay? That is urgent. If there’s not abuse, there’s likely an illusion of an emergency. Okay? What if you can soften your own internal deadline? What if it doesn’t have to be done by a certain time, like a homework assignment or you’re going to flunk?

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Let clarity arrive in its own timing instead of demanding it on yours. Let it arrive in its own timing. When we can soften, we’re much more open to hearing the things that we need to hear than if we are urgently frantically looking for it. Number three, anchor in the body. Feel your feet on the floor. Drop your awareness into your breath. When your mind wants to spin, come back to the truth that this moment is survivable. You know those moments where you just want to crawl out of your own skin because it feels so intense? If you can bring some presence back to your body and remind yourself that this moment is survivable, I will get through this too. It will help you feel that and let whatever emotion is there move through you rather than resisting it for trust that not knowing is still movement, okay?

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Not knowing is still movement. Growth isn’t always loud or visible sometimes, and oftentimes it’s happening in quiet and visible ways, ways that you might not even recognize in yourself. For example, the tiniest tide, like even a small tide, can completely reshape a shoreline slowly without a grand announcement. It’s just the continuance of it. It’s the steadiness of it that it keeps ebbing and flowing and ebbing and flowing, right? You’re doing the same thing, okay? You just trusting that even though I don’t know, even though I’m in the in-between, that there are things happening here. There are things that are bigger than me happening here. It’s not going to be loud most of the time. It’s usually kind of incremental, and there can be times where you have big, big bursts of truth bombs that come to you. But the in-between, while we have those truths and before we see the fulfillment of the things that we see coming or the fulfillment of things that we know are meant for us, it can be in these slow, steady things that we try to control and that we don’t need to control.

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We don’t need to control them. We can step away and allow bigger forces to do their work. So if you’re listening and you’re in a space of in between right now, between endings and beginnings, between certainty and mystery, I want you to know this. You’re not behind. You’re not behind. You’re right on time. You’re not broken. You’re not broken. There’s nothing wrong with you. You are stepping into a new identity. You’re shedding an old identity. You’re stepping into a new way of relating to the world, even bigger. You’re stepping into a new way of relating to you. There’s you, and then there’s the way you’ve related to you. There’s you and the ways that you’ve thought about you. This space of shedding this old identity and stepping into a new identity is super uncomfortable, and you can be in process and still be very powerful.

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Your job here is not to force clarity. It’s to hold steady until the next move or the next drop of information is ready to reveal itself. Take a breath, be here. Feel your own presence as proof that you are capable of staying with yourself in the unknown. Just your breath is proof that you are still here. You’re still here. And maybe just maybe, and I would say most probably this in-between isn’t something that you’re just going to get through. It’s something that you are going to expand through. You’re going to grow. There’s going to be growth from this space, okay? You got to hang in. Patience, presence, compassion, being with yourself, reminding yourself you’re safe, reminding yourself that there are bigger things at play, that you don’t have to control all of it. That the things that you don’t know will all be revealed in time, that you don’t have to force it.

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That your higher good is always working for you. That what is best for you is always trying to come through for you. Always, always, always, always, always. Our highest self always wants what’s best for us every time. And often this in-between space is this space. The false learnings about ourselves, the false learnings about who we are, what the world is, other people, false beliefs about all kinds of things. Recalibrating to some more universal truths, some bigger truths about the world, about people, about your soul, about who you are. There’s all kinds of things here, and that takes a little bit of time and recalibration to be able to hear those things. And more importantly, not just to hear them, but to grow the capacity to act on whatever information you’re given. Hang in. Good things are coming. Good things are in the works. You will have the life that you want if you stay open.

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My friends, stay open. Stay open. Before we go, I want to invite you to come speak to me about joining my Get Your Life Back After Infidelity Program. It is a place where we do this together, where there’s so much in between, so much not knowing, and we do this together and we look at the things together. We get to the bottom of things together. We get to the truth of matters together. We do this together. You don’t have to do it alone. And when we do things together, we generally move faster and further than when we’re trying to do it alone. Okay? Go ahead and get your application in. The link is in the show notes. Come see me, come talk to me, and we’ll get you in and be helping you through this time. Alright, thank you friends. Take care, and I’ll see you next time.

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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 about dash infidelity slash. Again, it’s andrea giles.com/lies about dash infidelity slash I will see you next time.