My Story | Ep #1

I’m Andrea Giles, and you are listening to The Heal From Infidelity Podcast, episode one, My Story.

Hello and welcome to The Heal From Infidelity Podcast where 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 free 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.

Hello friends, welcome to episode one. I’m so excited to finally get this podcast launched. Thank you for being here to share this exciting launch with me. So in this episode number one, I’ve decided I’m going to tell you a little bit about who I am. I’m going to tell you my backstory, how I came to be a coach, why I’m now talking to you. I’m going to tell you a little bit about the people that I coach. I’m going to tell you about some of the common things and themes that I see in my clients. I want you to see if you relate to any of them. I’m going to tell you how I can help you with those things. I made this podcast because I know that there are so many women out there who are suffering alone. They feel shame, they feel guilt. They don’t know who they can talk to. They don’t want others to think less of their spouse, so they keep things to themselves and feel a lot of sadness and grief in the meantime.

I want my listeners to know that you’re not alone. I want my listeners to know that there are many other women who are experiencing the same thing as you, and I want you to know that there’s hope for you. That there is hope on the other side of the pain that you’re now experiencing. I know firsthand, and I’m going to tell you about it. So again, my name is Andrea. I’m a certified life coach, and I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. So I was raised in the church, and as a little girl, like many of you, I thought, well, if I grow up and get married in the temple, especially if I marry a return missionary, then everything will work out, right? All will be well.

Well, I did those things. I cared a lot about being obedient. I tried hard. I got married in the temple, the Mountain Tibidabos Temple. I was just shy of my 20th birthday. I was a married young lady. I married a return missionary. We had all the hopes and dreams ahead of us, ambitions, exciting things to look forward to, and I thought that it would be forever. Well, we got married and shortly into our marriage, there were some things that I noticed that concerned me. But again, I was really young, so I didn’t know what to take seriously, what not to take seriously. We started having children, and then another child and another child, and over the years things became to a point where I couldn’t ignore them anymore. There were things that I could not ignore, behaviors, patterns, things like that. Now, I thought that if I fixed myself that things would get better.

So I went to lots of counseling. Pretty early on in our marriage, I went to counseling. I thought that there must be something wrong with me and that if I fixed myself, then maybe things would be better in our marriage. We also did some couples counseling here and there, and it didn’t really help much. I learned more about different behaviors and things like that in myself, but it didn’t really help our marriage move forward and I wondered why. Fast-forward, year 15, we’d been married for 15 years. And right around that time a lot of things came to a head and I decided that it was time for a change. I realized that the only way that things were going to get better would be if I made the change. So right as our 16-year anniversary hit, I was filing for divorce and preparing for a lot of uncertainty.

I did not know how we would be okay. I didn’t know what it would look like. I was married to a successful lawyer who made good money, and I had always been a stay-at-home mom. We had six children, 14 and under, and I didn’t know what the future held, but I knew that I couldn’t wait anymore for him to change. I knew that I couldn’t give him that responsibility. That if I wanted my life to change, if I wanted things to change for my family, that I needed to take that on and be willing to go through it. And it was really, really tough. I experienced a lot of fear. I experienced a lot of doubt. I wondered all the time, now, am I sure I know what I’m doing? Today am I sure I know what I’m doing? And I had to go back over and over to the things that I knew, the convictions that I knew that I was capable of changing my own life, that I could use my own agency to change my own life.

And so I kept moving forward. I knew that there were parts of our situation that were very, very unhealthy and that they were not going to go away and would likely get worse. And so I kept going. So the divorce finalized, and just seven months after the divorce finalized, my first husband was killed in a car accident. He was only 39 years old. And once again, myself and my children were met with a lot of fear, a lot of uncertainty and a lot of grief. And for all of us, it kind of felt like losing him twice. It was a pretty hard time. While I was in the middle of going through divorce, backing up a little bit, I had lots of women reach out to me saying, me too, me too. And during that time, I had this thought, Andrea, you need to get through this. You need to weather this and be on the other side of this so you can help other women who are going through the same thing. And it was at that time that I decided that I wanted to make it a profession to help women who were in the same situation I was.

So I started to go to school. I started taking online courses, working towards a degree to become a therapist. Now also during this time, so this was after my divorce finalized, but before my first husband had died, I put some feelers out there to start dating, and I started talking to a widower who lived in Montana. We started chatting, had barely gotten started in dating, and that’s when my first husband passed away. But fast-forward, a couple of years later, we had decided it was time to take the leap and we got married.

So I went from being a mother to six, to a mother to 11, moved to Montana and became a mom to five more wonderful children. Side note, I’m also a grandma to two little boys, and it’s so much fun. Anyway, so we had been married about a year, and I was still going to school to be a therapist and was still struggling with certain things, different thoughts that would come up, different fears that would come up. And I had a conversation one day with a friend of mine who told me to go check out a specific podcast by someone named Jody Moore. I had never heard of her. So I went and listened. And in that first episode that I listened to, something clicked inside me. Andrea, this is what you need. So I started to devour her podcast as well as the podcast of Brooke Castillo in the Life Coach School.

This connected dots for me. In all the therapy that I went to, I gained a great understanding of addiction model, of how it affects the people living with addiction. I learned about mental illness. I learned about all kinds of different things that were very helpful. I was in a group setting, I did one-on-one. And it was great, and I encouraged that for people who are struggling. But what I was missing, what I lacked was how to connect the dots between what I had learned and where I wanted to go. I didn’t know how to change my thoughts. I didn’t know how to overcome some of the thinking patterns and some of the ways that I processed things, and it was really wreaking havoc. I felt afraid a lot of the time, a little bit in that fight or flight energy, more time than I wanted to be.

And so I knew this is what I needed to do. It was one of those moments of recognition where it was like, Andrea, this is what you need to do. So I jumped ship. I stopped taking the classes. I finished the semester and called that quit and joined the Life Coach School as a student. I became certified a year and a half ago, December 2018, and the rest is history. I have spent the last 18 months coaching women who are working through infidelity and other forms of betrayal in their marriages, and I love it so much. So one thing about becoming a life coach is that we have to be our own first best client. And so while I’m able to help other people, the person that I’ve helped the most is me because I’ve learned how to change my thoughts. I’ve learned how to heal. I’ve learned how to speak to myself in a way that is conducive to growth. I’ve learned how to challenge the way that I’ve been thinking about things. I’ve learned how to challenge the way I think about the past and the stories that I’ve told about failure, about victimhood, some of these stories that have caused a great deal of pain. I’ve learned how to retell them in a way that is empowering, that helps me to feel strong and capable rather than weak or victimized.

So as a coach, and having talked to lots of different people at this point, I notice some themes and see some patterns, and I want to talk to you about those a little bit today. And these are patterns that I see in myself, that I had. These are patterns that I also experienced myself. And I want you to listen if you identify with any of these themes.

So one big theme that I see is indecision, fear of making the wrong decision. So there’s this fear of getting it wrong, so I’m just not going to do anything. There’s this fear of, if I get it wrong, will it ruin my kid’s life? Will it ruin my life? What if I get it wrong? So much is riding on my decision, so much pressure. So often we just do nothing. Another big theme that I see is this conflict between being selfish and being selfless. So often many of my clients feel like when they’re taking a stand for themselves and speaking up, that they are being selfish. And they wonder and ask me, well, isn’t it selfish for me to want what I want? Isn’t it selfish? What if I’m hurting the other person? Aren’t I supposed to forgive again and again and again. And this is something I coach on a lot, how selfishness and selflessness are very different things, and how we can be selfless and show up for ourselves powerfully, and that when we do that, we actually create the best outcome for everyone involved. That’s something I’m going to be diving into later on in this podcast.

Another big theme that I see is shame. Why am I not enough? Why was I not enough? There’s guilt for things that spouses blame them for. If I would have been X, Y, Z. If I would’ve been prettier, if I would’ve been kinder, if I would’ve been more intimate, if I wouldn’t have experienced that bout of depression, if I wouldn’t have been so tired all the time, if I wouldn’t have been critical, if I would’ve just been happier then these things wouldn’t have happened.

Another big thing that I see is a fear of the future. If I stay, what will that look like? How can I ever trust again? If I go, what will that look like? How will I be okay? How will my kids be okay? Will they be okay? How can I ever trust again? How can I trust anyone again? Most of all, how can I trust myself? The signs were everywhere and I missed them. How? How did I not see them? These are all things that we dive into that I’m going to dive into with this podcast.

These are all themes that I see in almost every one of my clients. If you recognize yourself in any of those stories, I want you to know you’re not alone. I want you to know that you’re okay and that there’s so much hope for you. That you have so much to look forward to. You get to be in charge of your life. You get to decide on your terms, the kind of life that you want. It might be staying in your marriage and making it amazing. It might be leaving the marriage and making it amazing.

I want you to know that your kids are having the experience that they’re supposed to have. Kids are very resilient. I know for me that that was my number one concern. I thought, I can handle anything. I can deal with hard things, but I don’t want my kids to have to go through these things. And I learned that my kids are very resilient and yours are too. So moving forward, I want to just tell you a little bit more about what I have in mind for this podcast. I would love it if you’d share it with people. Share it with anyone who you think might benefit from it. I’m going to be teaching how to process emotions, how to feel our feelings so we can let them go. How to learn from our feelings so that we aren’t slaves to them. I’m going to teach you how to manage your mind, how to process your own thoughts and create thoughts that serve you.

On the very next podcast, I’m going to be addressing why we are stuck, why our brains want us to stay stuck, and why there’s nothing wrong with you. I’ll be teaching you about why your brain’s doing what it’s supposed to do and how to get out of that. It is one of my most greatest honors to be a coach and to be here today talking to you. I love what I do so much, and I know that there are so many people who just need some help. I want you to know that you’re not alone. I want you to know that you’re okay, and again, that you have everything to look forward to. I’m so grateful every day for the changes and the experience and the growth that I’ve experienced in my life.

I look at where I am now and where I was six years ago and seven years ago. Seven years is when I got divorced. Six years ago is when he passed away. I look at my life and sometimes I can’t believe that it’s real. I can’t believe how far I’ve come. I can’t believe the joy that I feel from day to day, that I get to experience just normal peace and normal calm, and that I get to feel joy, that I get to feel all of the things that I put off that I didn’t know that I would be able to experience. And you can experience those things too. They’re waiting for you. It requires digging deep. It requires asking yourself some tough questions and showing up with courage and strength. And you are capable of all of that. And I’m here to show you how.

If this podcast has been useful for you, I would so appreciate it if you would go into iTunes and leave me a review and subscribe to it. This helps other people find this podcast. The more people go and subscribe, the easier it is for people to locate it. So thank you so much for doing that, and I will see you on the next episode. Bye-bye for now.

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/. Again, it’s andreagiles.com/lies-about-infidelity/. I will see you next time.