Infidelity changes everything. Who you thought you were, what you thought your life was. From here, you can keep circling the pain or rebuild something real. This is a space for men and women navigating infidelity. Whether you’ve been betrayed or you’re the one who broke trust, I’m Andrea Giles, master certified relationship coach. I know what’s possible on the other side, when you’re willing, willing to tell the truth all the way out. You’re in the right place. Let’s begin.

Hello, everybody. Welcome back. I will tell you that I’ve truly, truly enjoyed being back to live episodes every week, new episodes every week. I’ve missed you. I love even though you’re not here with me, I think about if I were sitting in a room with you, just having a conversation, and I love it. I love it. So today we are going to be talking about fear. And before I jump into that, though, I do have a favor to ask. First of all, it’s been a while since I’ve been live, and I’ve noticed that the. The podcast ratings have gone down. Not down, just, they’re not. There aren’t m many current ones, meaning that there’s just nothing much new in the last few months of people chiming in, rating the show, leaving feedback, and that gets it back into circulation. It gets it bumped up for people to see so that when somebody’s searching for infidelity at 2am it puts mine up to the top.

So if you have not yet rated my show, could you go in and rate it? That would be awesome. Even if you already have, you can do it again. Uh, if you have more to say, if it’s been a long time and you’ve. You’ve grown from this podcast, I would be so grateful. Just recently, I got a private message from somebody saying that this podcast has been more helpful to her than years of therapy. And I know that there are others out there like you who feel the same, and I would love to hear from you. I would love to hear from you. So thank you so much in advance for taking the time to leave me a review. It truly means so much. Also, if you have been circling my get your life back after infidelity program, I’ve got a fun bonus going on right now. It’s a fun bonus where you get a, uh, one on one call with me after you join, where I do a personalized map for you.

For you. I already have several of those spots filled, but I want to do that for a little bit. It’s being incredibly well received, incredibly Helpful. It’s pretty detailed. I have the conversation with you and then I send you a custom map. It’s directly for you with specific things that when you feel lost, when you feel like you’re wandering off in the dark, it’s specific guidance for you. It is included now when you join the program. And so if you already have had a consultation with me and you hear this and go, okay, it’s time, just send me an email andrea@andreagiles.com if you have not yet had a consultation with me, just go to Andrea Giles.com and fill in the consultation information and we’ll have a call. We can go over everything, get your questions answered, get to know each other, and you can grab one of those spots. Obviously, due to time constraints, I can only offer so many. So I suggest if you hear this and that sounds like an awesome thing to you, go grab it.

Okay, Here we go. Okay. I’m going to begin by sharing a story about my daughter. So my little girl, Finley, is almost four and a half now. Yesterday my husband was in the backyard kind of a ways in the backyard, working on something, and my little girl wanted to go out the door and go down the deck stairs to go join dad and her brother out there. Okay. So I was kind of watching her, but I couldn’t see out the window to the side of the house where she was going down the stairs to go back to meet him. But I heard her start just screaming, just full on screaming. And I went out there. I ran, of course I ran. You all who have kids know that fear. Oh, what’s wrong? And she was just frozen, completely frozen in place, just crying and said, a snake, A snake? I said, did you see a snake? Yeah. Okay, show me where? And she pointed over and I said, did you see it? No, I heard it and I went over and there’s this little space that she could see under the deck where there’s just like nothing under there. But she heard a rustling sound. And when I looked down there, a piece of plastic blew under there during the winter and it was kind of rustling around and she could hear it. She heard that rustling and in her sweet little mind, she thought that it was a snake, was fully convinced it was a snake. It took a little while. We had to go over and show her.

00:05:00

My husband came up. We had to show her that there was actually nothing there, that it was just a piece of plastic and that there wasn’t really a snake. Okay. It reminded me of a time when I was a girl. I was probably maybe I was about 13 or 14. So much older than her. So it’s a little bit embarrassing, actually, like, when you hear what I’m about to tell you. But I remember I was sleeping, and in my. Half asleep, half awake, I felt this really sharp pain in my back. This really sharp pain. And I. I just started screaming. Screaming. Like, oh, um, m. There’s like, I was so afraid. And in my head, it sounds so ridiculous saying it out loud, but in my head, there was a cobra. A cobra. It was not just any snake. It was a cobra, and it had its fangs in my back. Okay. We lived in Oregon where there are no cobras. However, it for sure was a cobra. Had I ever been bitten by a snake before?

No, I had not. Have I ever seen a cobra? No, I had not. But I was sure my parents heard me screaming, and they were so alarmed that they came running. And guess what it was? It was an earring. An earring, like the pokey part of an earring had kind of, I don’t know, must have fallen out of my ear, and it was, like, poked up my back. And so it did hurt, but it certainly wasn’t a snake. Right. Okay, so today we’re going to talk about fear, but we’re going to talk about it in the, uh, the language of snakes today. So come with me. I know that I’ve talked about fear before on this podcast, but in the name of what I’ve been talking about recently, and truth all the way out, we’re gonna.

We’re gonna weave that into this in a way that I never have before. Okay. I’ve talked about truth all the way out. I’ve talked about what’s living in the corners. And what I am coming to learn about what truth all the way out means is that it’s being willing to follow the thread of something all the way to its source, whatever it is. Okay? Your truth. So if your truth is, I’m afraid, it means following the thread of that fear all the way to the source. We’re going to talk about that. Where it’s like pulling on a thread all the way. You’re pulling it all the way until you find out, in this instance, is there actually a snake? Right. Is there actually a snake? Okay, so how does fear actually work? Fear is not always a response to what’s actually there. In fact, most of the time, uh, it’s not. More often than not, it’s a response to what your brain predicts is there.

So, like with my little girl, she was outside, she heard this Rustling. And the story was, it’s a snake. It has to be a snake, right? And for. For most of us, it’s based on something that happened before. Not in my cobra example, okay? But it. For most of us, fear. This kind of fear can be the most intense because it might be based on an actual thing that happened, right? Based on old data, based on pain that already occurred and left a mark. Your brain. Your brain is doing its job. It heard a, uh, rustle once, and it actually was a snake. So now every Russell is the snake. And this is not weakness. It doesn’t mean anything is wrong with your brain. In fact, it means your brain is working really well, thank you very much. It’s not you being too dramatic or too sensitive. It’s your nervous system actually doing exactly what it’s designed to do. It’s protecting you from getting hurt again, right? It’s keeping you from another snake. But often it’s creating more issues for you because everything’s a snake. It’s all a snake. And so you’re always on this high alert, right?

And another problem is that this. This system, this protection system does not automatically update itself based on new information, new data. It keeps sounding the alarm based on old information, old experiences, old wounds. It cannot tell the difference between then and now without your help. And in the context of betrayal, this shows up everywhere. So. So first I’m going to speak to the partner who was betrayed. Okay? The partner is home late. It’s a snake. They’re quiet at dinner. It’s a snake. They’re on their phone in the other room. It’s a snake. They seem distant that day, quiet. It’s a snake. You start to feel. This is a funny one, okay? You start to feel genuinely happy and safe. And your brain is like, snake, snake, snake. It’s a snake. Okay, don’t trust this. Don’t trust this, but examine it. Examine it. Pull the thread. Pull the thread. I want to remind you that you’re not crazy. I want to remind you

00:10:00

that you’re not broken. You are a person whose brain learned that certain sounds equal danger. And the question here that’s worth asking is, is there actually a snake or are you responding to a rustle? Okay, so we’re gonna get into that more. But I wanna speak for a minute now to the partner who did the betraying, because this is every bit as applicable to you. Every bit. Okay? This is for the ones who broke trust. Because even though your snake looks a little bit different, it’s really important that we discuss it, the betrayed partner snake is usually out there in the bushes of the future of is it going to happen again? Is this safe? Can I trust again? Am I. If I lean into trust, is it just going to happen again? I’m just going to get hurt again.

And even for some of you who have left your relationships or who the your partner or spouse chose to leave you, I guarantee, right? You know this, I don’t have to tell you this, that this still shows up if you are starting dating again. Snake. Is that a snake? Is that a snake? Right? He didn’t return my text right away. He. He looked at his phone and uh, what’s he looking at? Right? I told you guys before about when I was dating my husband at his house and woke up in the middle of the night convinced that he was like a porn addict. Okay, so what did I do? I literally went and opened up his computer in the middle of the night looking, isn’t that wild?

And you, uh, listening, probably are thinking, no, I get that there had never been anything that gave me reason to think that that was happen, but I was sure and I was like looking for evidence and I didn’t find any. And guess who came waltzing out in the middle of the night? Him. He heard me out there, he came out, I quickly shut the computer and then he’s like, what are you doing? And I had no choice but to tell him. And to his credit, he handled it really well. But still, like, uh, this doesn’t. It doesn’t matter if it’s with like your current partner or in a different relationship. The same patterns are going to follow you until you learn how to pull this thread of fear, how to pull it, how to get into it, how to ask it intelligent questions and teach it what is true.

Okay, so for you listening, who did the betraying, what this can look like is this. It’s an inside snake. It’s not so much an external snake of what somebody else is going to do, it’s inside. And it usually sounds like one of these, okay, I’m a bad person. Full stop. The end. I’m a bad person. Okay, this is what I’m calling the shame snake. It’s a shame snake. It’s the one that says that what I did is the truest thing about me. That’s what defines me. That’s who I am. And everything. It’s everything I will ever be. The end. The end. Or here’s another one. If people really knew me, if they really saw me, they would leave. Or if people knew That I did this. Everyone would leave if people knew. That’s the exposure snake. Okay? The exposure. If this was exposed, everyone would leave. The fear that the self who made that choice is fundamentally unlovable. Unlovable.

That real intimacy is now impossible because real intimacy would require being fully seen. And that if somebody fully saw you, that certainly they would not want to be with you. Okay? Another one is, I don’t deserve to heal. I don’t deserve it. I can give my spouse everything I can to help them with their healing, but I don’t deserve to heal. This is the punishment snake. The belief that staying in shame is somehow the right thing to do. The honorable thing that moving forward would be letting yourself off the hook. So you stay low and you stay quiet. And you keep paying.

You keep paying. You keep punishing yourself. Even if nobody else is punishing you, you punish you. And then there’s this one. And maybe these ones are even more important. Please hear me out. These are really, really important. Okay? I want to say to you, listening, who have been betrayed. Make sure that if you can, that your partner, spouse listens to this part. It’s really important. Okay? I’m afraid to look at why I did it. This is the understanding snake. This is the fear that if you actually examine what was driving the behavior, the loneliness, the avoidance, the unmet needs, the patterns you brought from long before this relationship, that you’ll maybe find something you’re not quite ready to face. And here’s what I want you to notice. It’s really important. The wayward partner or, uh, the unfaithful partner’s fear doesn’t usually look like that screaming in the bushes.

00:15:00

It looks like going quiet. It looks like going inward. It looks like going small, managing, keeping the head down, making yourself wrong every time. Every time. Which can look like remorse from the outside. And sometimes it is, but often it’s just a different shape of the same frozen. It just looks a little bit different. And your spouse, they might be. When they’re feeling that snake, they might freeze, they might yell, they might scream, they might rage. Okay? They might have that response for you. What’s your snake response? What is yours?

And I guarantee you, I guarantee you that it doesn’t go unnoticed. It does not. Because there’s a part of you that cannot be present when you are afraid of that snake. And there’s a part of you that is not examining the full picture when you’re afraid of what you might find. And to be fair with everybody, we all do this. It’s both sides. Okay. Shame is a really potent snake and it’s just as loud and just as paralyzing as any other fear. Shame is quite the snake. It’s a beast of a snake, I would say. It is that, that python, it’s that one that can keep you from living your life because you’re afraid of it. And it might not make you scream, but it might be keeping you really silent and feeling small and stuck.

So what do most people do with fear? Most people do one of two things. They freeze or flee or in the case of myself and my daughter, scream. Right? That’s what we do. Freezing looks like staying stuck. It looks like not making decisions. It looks like circling the same thoughts over and over again. Circling, ruminating, staying stuck, replaying like you get. You think you’re getting somewhere and then you circle back, you circle back again and again, okay? Asking the same questions without following them all the way to an answer. Uh, I want you to really think about a thread. I want you to think about that. Okay? And if, if this helps, I want you to do it. Several years ago I was a speaker, a guest speaker at a, ah, retreat for coaches and, and I gave everyone there, those thread brand bracelets that are made out of threads.

Maybe you know what I’m talking about. There’s usually multiple colors and if it helps you go get yourself one of these, okay. You can get them online. I think they’re is the brand. I can’t remember the brand, but they’re thread. They look like threads and they are usually different colors. They’re kind of fun looking. And I gave them to my, to the people there as a reminder to pull the thread. Because what this looks like in real time is exactly what we did with my daughter. Examine. Let’s go look. Let’s go look. Let’s go see if there’s actually a snake there. And so she was really tentative, but, uh, we picked her up, right? So she wasn’t just on the ground. If there was a snake right there. We picked her up and we went and looked where she said there was a snake.

We showed it to her, we examined it. We used logic. For example, I live in Montana. It’s been pretty cold still. It snowed like last week. Yesterday was a, uh, warmer day, but it’s not yet warm enough here even for the snakes to come out. It’s usually not till next month. So logically, it’s too early for snakes. Right? She doesn’t understand that, but we’re her parents and we can understand that logic so that we can know there’s no snake. She’s just scared, right? So you can do this for yourself. You can slow down and go, is there actually a snake? Is use logic, right? Use what you know. Is this always true? That when I feel this way that it leads to this outcome? Slow this baby down.

Okay? Even the thought of pulling on a thread, think of it like, slow and steady. Like, have you ever seen people had. Make things like a hand loom, right where they’re. It’s slow and steady, like them pushing the pedal and weaving that thread through and making something beautiful. This is what we’re doing. We’re not yanking it and creating a big tangled mess. Right? We’re slow and steady pulling on that thread. And what that looks like is examining what is there piece by piece. Okay, before I get to that, I want to go back to these two responses of, uh, freezing and fleeing. Okay? We freeze when we think that we’re pulling on that. But what we’re actually doing is we’re asking the same questions without ever following them all the way through to an answer.

00:20:00

And we’re keeping ourselves in kind of this survival mode or this. I don’t think there’s a possible outcome mode. I don’t think that there’s a way through this mode and keeping ourselves stuck because it feels familiar. And it may be possible that pulling further brings us to another fear. Okay. And so we might just keep circling the same thing. Now fleeing looks like staying really busy, numbing out, avoiding the conversation that needs to happen the most. Keeping things at a surface level so you don’t have to feel what’s underneath, telling yourself you’re fine often enough that you almost believe it, but there’s something that still feels off. And both responses make total sense. Both feel, like, maybe even useful. Okay, but here’s what I want to be clear about.

Both of those are your nervous system doing the best it can to protect you from getting hurt again, Whether it be a, uh, betrayal again, and having to feel all of that again, or whether it be facing your own shame, facing your own questions of, uh, why did I do this thing? Why did I? And what if I don’t like some of the answers? What if there really were things in the marriage that I was really unhappy with and I didn’t know what to do with? What if I felt trapped and I didn’t know how to help myself with that, and I regret the decisions that I made, but they came from a place of feeling trapped. What do I, uh, do? I Still feel trapped. What do I need to address?

Right. Those are just some examples. But here’s the problem, okay? When we stay in the cycle, we keep repeating the same thing over and over again, and both are keeping you locked in the same place because the rustle never stops sounding like a snake until you actually learn to slow down and look and go, is this actually a snake? Staying in fear, whether it be managed fear or controlled fear, or fear that you’ve gotten really good at living alongside, is not the same thing as healing. It’s not the same thing. It’s just a quieter version of frozen. Okay? It’s just a quieter version.

And when we start to dive into this, pulling the thread to get the truth all the way out, this is where we really examine the fear beneath the fear. Truth all the way out is not just about what you say to other people. It’s not just getting your truth out of yourself. In fact, I think that it’s an inside job. And then we sit with the truth in ourselves, and then from there, we get to decide how much of, uh, that truth we say out loud. It’s about what you are willing to follow inside yourself, to honor inside yourself, what you’re willing to even say. This is true for me. I’ve examined it enough to know this is actually true for me. It’s about picking up the thread of fear and pulling on it persistently all the way out until you find out what’s actually attached to it.

Most people pull the thread until it gets uncomfortable and then let go. And the resistance shows up when they release. Okay. And the fear stays intact, unnamed, uh, unexamined, running things quietly in the background. Just running. It’s. It’s just kind of always there. Now, what does pulling this thread all the way out look like? Truth all the way out. If you’re the betrayed partner, it looks like, I’m afraid my partner will betray me again. And you’re pulling on it, and you look at, is this fear based on what’s actually happening now or on old data? Sometimes the answer will be, I actually don’t know. I don’t know if this is something current, if this is something old, but this is what you do with that. What would it mean if they did? If they are lying, if they are doing this, then what? What would I do? Pull on it. Pull on it. Pull a little harder. Pull a little harder.

Okay. Journal it. Write it down. Be your best, your own best coach. What would you do? Okay. What does your gut actually know versus what is your nervous system Predicting what does your gut actually know versus what is your nervous system predicting? What does your gut know? Follow that all the way. What does your gut know? Your gut knows some stuff. Your intuition, your heart. Your heart knows some stuff. Follow it. Listen to it. Slow that down. Get quiet enough to hear yourself. I’m afraid that if I tell the truth, everything will fall apart. That’s a big fear. Now pull on that. What exactly falls apart? Name it. Specifically name it. And is what falls apart something worth holding together at the cost of your truth? Hmm. What? Mhm. If this question comes up,

00:25:00

I’m, um, afraid I’ll never trust again. Pull on it. What does that actually mean to you? What does that mean for you? Who betrayed? I’m afraid to. I’ll never trust again. You can have the same one. You can have the same fear that if I really, really surrender here and really allow myself to be fully seen here, that ultimately they won’t want me. That ultimately they still won’t want me. And I won’t be good enough and I’ll still be punished. And this is just how it’ll always be here, right? So pull on it. Ask these questions. What does trust actually mean to you? And here’s a deeper question. Underneath that, that is at the crux. Do I trust myself? Because that’s where trust actually has to start.

How do you even know if you can trust someone else if you don’t trust yourself? So examine that if you’re the wayward or, uh, the. The one that betrayed. Okay. This fear. I’m afraid that what I did means I’m a bad person. What about that? Pull on it. What would it mean to look at what drove the choice without using it to condemn yourself? Right? What if understanding it is not the same as excusing it? Please hear me on that. Okay? Please hear me. You just getting to the factual data of what happened and it making sense in your mind like a puzzle. Like, yeah, makes sense that that’s the choice that I made. You can get there without making excuses.

You can own it and be like, yeah, it makes sense. And I probably would do something different if I had a redo and I will do it different from here forward. It’s not the same as excusing it. Understanding is not excusing. And what if. What if you looking at it clearly and you pulling that thread all the way leads you to finding something human inside you and not monstrous? And here’s my promise. Please hear me. If right now all you can see is this bad thing that you did, I’m telling you that if I sat down with you and listen to your story, I could see your humanity and could offer you compassion. Can you offer it to yourself? Okay, you may be afraid to look at why you did it. What are you most afraid that you will find? Because I tell you what, whatever is at the end of that thread is much more workable than all the shame that’s piled on top of it.

The shame is a, uh, non starter. You can’t go anywhere with shame. Can’t go anywhere. Okay, you can’t go anywhere. But this is much more workable. Removing the shame on top and pulling this thread is much more workable. You can actually get somewhere. It leads you somewhere. Right. The snake is almost never as big as the sound suggests. Almost never. There are some exceptions. Like last summer when my husband did not hear because he had headphones in the rattlesnake that was at his feet. That is an exception. And it scared him so bad. And I’m so glad it did because we’re more careful now. Right. Okay. So what do you actually find when you look?

What do you find? All right, let’s be honest. I’m going to be honest with you. Sometimes what you find is not easy to see. I’d be lying if I said you’d see rainbows and sunshine and it’d be fine. Not always. That would be a lie on my part. Okay. Sometimes you might find something real. A real pattern, a real problem, a real truth that needs to be addressed. And I know that it might sound a little crazy, but this is a really good outcome. It’s the best possible outcome. Why? Because now you know. Now you know, and now you can do something with it. That’s amazing news. Right? You are no longer responding to a shadow. You’re no longer responding to a shadow. You are dealing with what’s actually there. You’re dealing with truth. You got something now. Okay, You’ve got to. You can know what it is. And now what? I’m going to formulate a plan. Instead of just running in fear. Sometimes you look and there’s nothing but old pain that keeps casting a new shadow or a new noise or that rustle like my daughter heard. Right? Old data pretending that it’s new, predicting new data incorrectly. Right. And that is equally valuable because now you can stop organizing your life around a snake that isn’t there. You can be like, I know this and I know that it’s not real, or, I know this and I know how to examine it to see if it’s real. Okay? Either way is better than not looking either way every time. Okay? My daughter, she stood, uh, there screaming at

00:30:00

a rustle, just screaming at it. And the moment that she actually looked, like really, really looked at it, the fear had somewhere to go, right? The fear had somewhere to go. It either found its source if it was a snake in which we would take care of it, or it dissolved. In this case, it dissolved, but it could not stay exactly the same once she was willing to look at it. Okay? And that is what. What truth all the way out does to fear. It gives it somewhere to go. And you stop being at the mercy of sound. You stop being at the mercy of what’s rustling in the bushes. And then finally, you get to decide what to do from that place of fear and moving into a place of clarity instead of panic. Right?

Okay, so I want to leave you with this question. What, Russell, lately, have you been treating like a snake? What fear have you been living alongside? Managing, tiptoeing around, trying not to trigger, trying not to upset, instead of actually looking at it directly? You don’t have to look at everything at once. Okay? That’s not what I’m asking. But I am inviting you to pick up one thread, one fear that’s been running quietly in the background. One. Pull on it a little further than you normally would. Give it a tug, okay? Follow it somewhere you haven’t let yourself go yet. See what’s actually there. What I will say to you from my own knowing, from my own examining, from my own pulling of that thread, is that truth all the way out isn’t only about what you are saying out loud.

It’s about what you are finally willing to see. Even if the rustle is loud, even when every part of you wants to freeze or run, and when you are willing to look at it, even if it’s hard to see, there’s a freedom in it. Because now you know. Now I know. And what can I do with this? Right? And I will also say that nine times out of 10, there is no snake. Nine times out of 10, and the one time there is, you are now far more capable because of the muscle that you have grown. Um, to look at hard things, to face that, to face that snake, then your fear has been telling you you are. You are growing your own muscle of self-trust, of going. I know what to do. I know how to examine. I’ve developed the skill of examination. I know how to get to the bottom of things. I know how to get to the truth all the way out and so no matter what comes, you will be able to face it with this skill. And I’d invite you into this. Practice it. Go see what’s there. You are very capable. All right. Truth all the way out. Until next time. I’ll see you soon.

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 at andreagiles.com lies-about-infidelity forward/ Again, it’s Andrea Giles.com forward slash lies-about-infidelity forward slash I will see you next time.