(00:00):

I’m Andrea Giles and you’re listening to the Heal from Infidelity podcast,
episode number 185, “Stop Learning and Start Letting In: The Power of
Integration After Infidelity.”

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 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.

(00:53):

Hello, my beautiful listeners. I’m so glad to be here with you today. As
always, I thank you for being here. I thank you for sharing this podcast. I
thank you for your amazing reviews. Just thank you, thank you, thank you. I
mentioned in the last episode that there’s a class that I was putting out
for the first time, a class that is all about the decision to stay or go.
We had a little bit of some hiccups getting it out. It is now available.
It’s available, and I’m actually going to weave in a couple things about
that class in this topic today because it totally goes hand in hand with
what we’re going to be talking about today and why that class is as
powerful as it is. Okay, so we’re going to be talking about integration
after infidelity, and the reason why I decided to talk about this topic is
because it’s something that has been coming up a lot.

(01:49):

You’ve heard me mention before that the inspiration for this podcast, 100%
comes from my clients, 100%, and it’s always really cool to me to be
coaching my different people who I have my group, I have my one-on-ones,
and they don’t know each other. These are individuals, and then the people
in the group know each other, but not everybody across all of my different
clients know each other yet. It seems like every time I have themes that
come up every time, there’s themes that come up. The theme recently, there’s
been a couple, but one of them has been around integration and what it
actually means and how to do it and what it is, and so I decided I was
going to do a whole episode on this topic to just clear it up and help you
with this topic. I guarantee that if you take what you hear today and go
use it and go put it to practice, it will help you immediately, okay?

(02:52):

It will help you immediately. I’ll give you first a little story. As you
well know, I am happy to throw myself under the bus, and this is going to
be no exception. Kate, I am not here to tell you how I’ve done all things
correctly, and that’s why my life is so magical. I’m here to say I’ve
learned a lot from my own experience. I’ve learned what works. I’ve learned
what doesn’t work. I’ve learned what’s train wreck for me, and I just want
to be real with you guys always, and so I’ll tell you that as I look back
on my life and the various times in my first marriage that I went to
different therapy with my then husband, and then when I was divorcing, and
then when I was single and went to different therapy, a lot of that didn’t
seem to apply.

(03:43):

A lot of it didn’t seem to be helpful in hindsight. I think there’s a lot
of things to it, but one of the things I think was part of it was that I
was so busy trying to get my husband to change, trying to get him to figure
it out, trying to get him to be better, to be nicer, to be more honest. All
the things that I wasn’t paying attention to me, I wasn’t paying attention
to who I was being, and a part of me had a belief that if I were better,
then he would maybe make better choices. That absolutely was there, that
maybe if I were more lovable, maybe if I were whatever, many number of
things, then maybe he would stop the things he was doing and choose to more
fully engage in our family or more engaged in being the kind of partner I
wanted.

(04:35):

And so often when I went to therapy with him, I was very focused on him,
not so much on me, and then after it all ended, I was listening and I had
lots of amazing support, but somehow it was difficult for me to integrate,
and I heard the concepts about navigating tough emotions and things like
that, but I had a hard time integrating it, and I think part of it is
because, one, I think that I didn’t know what I needed. I didn’t know how to
do it. I didn’t know how to make it a part of me. I didn’t know what it
even meant, and I also think that there was still a part of me that was
resistant to it, resistant to integrating, resistant to really feeling the
things because it meant pain or it meant that I could no longer blame him.

(05:30):

It meant that I would have to go deeper into my own stuff and that it was
easier to just kind of keep myself busy learning and talking through
things, coming and talking without really practicing the things that I was
learning. Okay, so this one’s for you. If you are really good at keeping
yourself busy but sometimes have a hard time slowing down and really
applying what you’re learning, this is for you. Alright, here we go. Okay.
Many of you here have read the books, you’ve listened to the podcast, you
have done courses. Many of you listening are likely in my program or
working with me one-on-one or watched a webinar or something like that. But
if you’re honest, I have a tough question for you. If you’re honest, has
anything really changed? If you’re honest, has anything really changed?
Okay, not in your head. Your head is already full, your head knows a lot,
okay?

(06:34):

I’m talking about in your life. I’m talking about your nervous system, your
own sense of self, your ability to stay grounded when triggers come, your
ability to feel safe when you’re close to your partner or when you’re
alone. Okay? Either or both. And the truth of the matter is that education
without integration is just another form of avoidance. Ouch, right? Ouch.
Or to say it in another way, education without integration is just high
functioning, self-abandonment, dressed up as personal growth. Ouch. Again,
I’m going to say that again. Education without integration is just high
functioning, self-abandonment, dressed up as personal growth. What does that
mean? Some of you’re hearing that you’re like, ah, she’s onto me. Okay, we
can be so great at consuming, consume, consume, consume. We can study, we
can read every book out there about infidelity, every book out there,
everything about relationships, all the things.

(07:50):

Here’s the truth though. Your own truth, your own healing, your own
actually healing, actually changing the way you think and feel doesn’t come
from consuming something new, alright? What this functioning
self-abandonment means is that you’re likely learning, learning, learning,
learning. It looks like personal growth, but the self-abandonment piece is
where you’re avoiding actually taking the things and going inward. I’m
going to give some examples throughout this, avoiding going inward, really
tapping into what’s true for yourself, really tapping into deeper things
within yourself, what your own truth is. Alright? Now, there’s a really,
really good reason why we do this. In the aftermath of infidelity, your
brain is absolutely desperate for answers and for good reason, right? It’s
trying to protect you from more pain. You don’t want more pain; you want to
be out of pain. Please, thank you very much. We don’t want more pain, so
you learn, you consume, you binge, and for a while that does feel like
healing.

(09:02):

It feels like momentum. Many of you with this podcast probably found it and
have probably binge through it, listened to lots and lots of episodes, and
I appreciate that. Trust me, I appreciate that, and I believe you when you
say it has probably helped, but sometimes it can become just another way to
stay busy and avoid the real work. What is the real work? What is it? The
real work means letting it in. It means letting yourself feel. It means
letting yourself change all of these things. You do not need more
information. You really don’t. You already know a lot. You already do. You
need embodiment. Embodiment is where you take the things you learn and you
embody them. You bring them into your body, you make them real, you bring
it in and you make it real. It means that rather than being the star
student, the one that can rattle off all the things, all the ways that our
nervous system responds and all the things about infidelity rather than
that, you’ve dropped into actually feeling your feelings.

(10:22):

You’ve dropped into this place where you can loosen your grip on control
and feel what’s there and just surrender to it. Surrender is a big piece of
it. Letting things in and surrendering to that journey. When things are let
in, okay, this looks like practicing the pause. When the stories flare up,
there’s the story and there’s you, and they’re not the same thing. What do
I mean by that? You likely have had many, many stories about the
infidelity. Maybe it’s stories about him. Maybe it’s stories about you. It’s
likely both, and being able to go, okay, this is my experience with
infidelity. This is my experience around the choices that he or she has
made, and I’m just going to sit and breathe and breathe some space between
me and my innate worth and value and the story that I’m creating about it.
That’s what that looks like.

(11:26):

You are embodying, feeling your feelings, slowing it down, giving some
space, growing your skill to this rather than getting busy and looking for
a quick hit of something that’s going to temporarily make you feel better.
You guys, I’m the worst offender. This is something that I’ve had to work
at for years. I want the quick fix. My brain is like, tell me now what to
do and I’ll do it or tell me the answer. I’ll do it right. I don’t like
being patient. I don’t like having to slow down and feel my feelings
anymore than the rest of you. But what I have learned and what I am deep
into right now in my own life is this awareness that, again, there’s no
shortcut Every time we want to level up, anytime we want to change
something in our life, we often look for external things like somebody
giving us permission, somebody doing the things that are going to make us
feel like we can go ahead and do what we want or take up space, or maybe we
look for cues that us doing something we want won’t rock the boat too much.

(12:37):

That kind of thing. We all do this. We want to know that the things that we
are going to do or want to do aren’t going to be too difficult on us, that
it’s not going to backlash too much, but the problem is that we’re still
giving so much authority to what’s outside of us rather than what’s inside
us. And I’m going to tell you guys something about myself here. It feels a
little bit vulnerable to share, but it’s true. Okay? Sometimes people want
to know how I know how to help you. What certifications, what education,
what this, what that, and I have done a lot of training around infidelity.
I’ve done a lot of training around relationships, and I will continue to.
It’s something that I’m very, very committed to, but do you want to know
something? My best coaching, my best work is not from anyone else.

(13:34):

My very best coaching where I show up with my own fire is from my very own
brain and where I’m at in my career, in my life is I’m actually
intentionally slowing down my own consumption. I’m not constantly going and
learning from experts that I think are better than me. I do some if there’s
a specific thing I want to learn, but what I’ve learned is that that’s a
way to escape from what I already know. It’s a way to escape from the inner
wisdom that is there. It’s already in me. It’s already there. I can’t tell
you. It is been like in the thousands of times that I’ll be a coaching
somebody and I will just know. I’ll know what to say. I’ll know what to do.
I’ll know where to lead the discussion, and it’s pretty effortless for me.
It’s something that’s in me.

(14:28):

It’s not from something I read. It’s not from some book. It’s not from some
other expert that I deem better than me, from me trusting in me. It’s from
me dropping into me and dropping my resistance to that. The same is true
for you. The same is true for you. The answer is not outside. It is in you.
I’m working with several people right now who have gone to other
therapists, other coaches, and I’m kind of their final stop. They’re kind of
like at the end of going, either this works or it doesn’t, and I will say
that one of the things that I proudly bring, and this is not meant to toot
my own horn, to give you an example of what I’m talking about today, one of
the things that I bring is I’m not about leading any of my clients to a
very specific outcome of how it needs to work, of staying, of going.

(15:30):

That is so beside the point. My greatest work, my greatest work that I’m
the most proud of is helping you get back to you, helping you step back
into your own body, helping you step back into your own wisdom. You’ll have
everything in you you already do. You have everything in you, every answer
you could possibly need. You already have, you already have, and the only
reason you need me or anybody else that helps you with this stuff is to
help direct you back to you. It’s to help shed the layers that are in the
way between your ego, between your hurt pride, between your very hurt heart
and what is actually true at the center, which is that you were always
worthy. You are always good enough. You are always beautiful and lovable
and amazing and incredible and magnificent that you already are. All of
those things you just are.

(16:34):

There’s just so many layers. There’s so many layers that have been piled on
and infidelity throws on. One of the biggest ones of all, my greatest
pride, my greatest sense of fulfillment is when I can help my clients strip
those layers back and do it quickly so they can get on with their life. And
what I have learned in my own work is that me being able to do that is not
from some other person that tells me how to do it. It’s from me tapping into
the gifts that I already have to tell the truth to my clients to help them
see what is true. And the same is true for you. You all already have within
you everything you need to know, but how much are you running from it? How
much are you trying to escape from it? How much are you outsourcing outside
of you?

(17:30):

The right answers, okay, slow this down. Slow this down. All right? Slow it
down. Integration means slowing down and practicing the things that you’re
learning and leaning into them, dropping your resistance to them, dropping
your resistance and saying, I’m going in. I’m leaning in. I’m going to have
the courage to lean in. Okay? Alright. What happens when you start
embodying these things is you are able to practice the pause When things
come up, you’re able to feel an emotion without needing to try to hurry to
solve the emotion. You can just be in it. You don’t need to be in any hurry.
You can show up to a hard conversation differently, not perfectly, but
differently, powerfully. That’s what creates healing, and that’s what
rewires your system, okay? That’s when life starts to feel different. It’s
not because anyone else changed, it’s because you did my friend.

(18:47):

It’s because you did. Okay? Alright, so a couple examples that I want to
give you. I already gave you some for myself. I want to give you some
clients examples. I have some clients that are in my group that I love
dearly, I adore dearly, and they openly have shared that they avoid doing
the modules in my program because they’re afraid of what’s going to come up
for them, and so they openly come to the calls and talk about it and say, I
don’t want to. I don’t want to, because then I feel like I maybe would have
to soften towards him, and I don’t want to be pissed. I want to be angry. I
want to be raging. He did this thing. Why should I slow down? Why should I,
and I always offer so much love for this space because it’s like, yeah, of
course, of course.

(19:45):

We want to just blame and assume if they would just get it together, then
we would feel better and all would be well, right? And the problem is that
the problem gets louder and louder until my clients can’t ignore it
anymore, and I’m always there with so much love, always like, okay, are you
ready to go in? Are you ready to tap in? So I’ll say this about the work
that I do too. If everybody were just ready to do this work, you’d just be
doing it already, right? You wouldn’t need me. You wouldn’t need anybody. A
lot of what I do is I help my clients work through the parts that they’re
resistant to in dropping into this work, getting their brain on board,
getting their body on board, like, okay, we’re ready. Let’s do this thing
that we’re so afraid of. Let’s go.

(20:37):

We’re going to be okay. We can handle it. And coaching around those parts
of us that are so resistant to this integration, okay? We are going to talk
in a minute about why we’re so resistant to it. It’s a big deal. I also
have clients when I’m working with couples where they kind of want all of
the intellectual ideas first before they will do the more vulnerable thing
of integration. It’s like if I have all of the answers first, all of the
correct, professional, right answers, then I’ll do it. And the problem is
that there’s never going to be enough answers. It’s never enough. When
we’re in that head space, it is a decision. It’s a decision to say, I know
enough and now I’m going to practice dropping into this. I’m going to
practice. An example about this would be if you are really feeling like
your biggest growth move, your biggest growth is in choosing to stay,
you’re seeing enough evidence that you feel like it’s a good choice to
stay.

(21:47):

There comes a point where we have to be willing to practice staying where
we have to be willing to practice leaning in and dropping some of our
defenses and choosing to commit and choosing the thoughts that back
commitment up rather than looking for reasons why we shouldn’t. That’s one
example, and it goes the other way too. If we are choosing to leave, if we
are choosing to leave and are still rehashing all the details, constantly
ruminating, constantly replaying it all in our mind, we’re going to torture
ourselves, we’re going to make ourselves miserable, and it won’t actually
fix anything, we might as well have stayed. This brings me to the class
that I created, this $47 class. Why did I create it? Because so many of my
people get stuck in this space where they want to make a decision. They
might even make a decision, but it doesn’t feel like it.

(22:45):

They’re going back and forth and back and forth. They’ve only made a
decision in theory, but they’re not able to follow through with it because
they don’t know how to integrate it. They don’t know how to embody the
decision. That is what that class is about. It goes through with a very
clear, profound analogy that came from my own brain. It’s nothing I read
out of any book just to drive my point home. It came from my own brain when
I was coaching a client. It’s powerful. It’s about what these different
choices look like, where we get in our own way and what actually is
required to pull it off, okay? It’s worth so much more than $47. Go get it.
It’ll help you. It’ll help you do this. It’ll help you deepen into your
understanding of why you’re resisting and what to do.

(23:38):

Instead. Knowing something and living something are two very different
things, and they require two very different muscles. How many of you feel
like you’re an expert in all things in fidelity? How many of you feel like
you could teach some of this stuff? Maybe you could teach stuff about the
nervous system. Maybe you know more about the science of the nervous system
than I do. Many of you probably do, right? Alright, great. But are you
living it? Are you living the things that you know? They’re two very
different things. You can know, for example, everything there’s to know
about setting boundaries and still betray yourself every day. Ouch. Ouch.
Why? Because it requires a different muscle to actually set a boundary and
follow through than to just know about a boundary. You can understand what
triggers are in theory and still feel triggered most of the time when
you’re hurt because you haven’t yet learned how to embody a person who
knows how to handle triggers.

(24:53):

You can talk about trust and understand where it comes from and not even
feel safe in your own body. Integration means taking all of the knowledge
that you’re gaining and letting it change you, okay? Letting it change you.
Letting it live in your breath, your tone, your posture, your timing, your
heart, your decisions, your demeanor, alright? Another thing that I see
sometimes is when I see some of the unfaithful person, they’re doing
everything. They’re listening to everything, they’re doing everything, and
it’s like, I’ll do anything you want. I’ll do anything to keep you. I’ll do
anything to keep this together, and my problem with that is the same thing
here. It’s one thing to learn all the things. It’s another to have the
courage and vulnerability of dropping in. Okay? Why is it risky to drop in?
Why is it risky? Because there’s a part of us that has to let go of some
control.

(25:57):

There’s a surrender. There’s this dropping in, this surrender of I don’t
exactly know the outcome and it feels safer to just keep going on the
hamster wheel of learning, but now it’s up to me. Okay? One is putting the
responsibility outside yourself, and one is taking on all of the
responsibility yourself. It’s now up to me. Oh, it’s now up to me. My gosh,
that’s big, right? Okay. It’s risky, and this is where real transformation
happens. This is where it happens. It is not coming from outside you. It’s
coming from inside you. Alright? I’m going to ask you, what are you still
trying to think your way through? When you actually need to feel your way
through, what do you keep relearning because you haven’t let yourself
practice it yet, where in your life are you hiding in information instead
of moving into transformation? You don’t need more content; you need more
courage.

(27:13):

You don’t need more content, you need more courage, and I believe that you
have it in spades. You just need to decide to use it. What is this courage
for? To decide to pause, to get off the hamster wheel, to slow down, to
feel, to stay with yourself, to soften into yourself, to trust that you
already have the answers to do something different, even when your nervous
system is screaming, to go back to the default, okay, I’ll throw this in
here. I wasn’t planning on it, but my main program, my main program, that
is just the most powerful thing, my Get Your Life Back After Infidelity
Program. It’s a yearlong program and I’ve run different iterations of it.
I’ve done three months, six months, nine months, and I finally settled on a
year. Why? Because this integration piece is what’s actually going to
actually change your life.

(28:16):

You could come and go through all of the content inside my program four
months, five months, maybe you could go through all of it that quickly and
you could be on your way and know that you now have your brain full of that
content. That’s not good enough for me and it’s not good enough for you. My
clients in that group, what they came for is integration. The people who
are courageous enough to say yes, to invest, to pay the money for this
exclusive, powerful group of such bright, smart, ambitious, amazing, loving
women, and to invest their time to come to the calls week after week to
watch the content, until they get it, until they are integrating it. These
are the ones that are going to leave my space with a completely different
mind, with a completely different nervous system. It’s not just about
getting through infidelity, it’s about taking the opportunity that
infidelity is offering you.

(29:23):

It’s offering you an opportunity to learn to approach life differently.
Infidelity is a big enough thing. It’s a big enough shakeup that it is an
invitation to learn this stuff, to practice it, to change your own life,
which will then translate into every single part of your life because
you’ll be different from the inside out. It’s a year long program so that
you have the space to drop in so you can get on coaching calls with me or
my assistant coach or on multiple times a week to go, I don’t want to drop
in. I don’t want to have to offer compassion. I don’t want this, right?
Because we want to coach the parts of you that resist it. We want to coach
the parts of you that are avoidant so that you can ultimately have what you
want. Okay? It’s so powerful and it’s here for you going and binging,
whatever, anything, my podcast, anybody’s other books, whatever.

(30:30):

It might give you a temporary little bit of a reprieve. It might help you
in the moment. What’s actually going to heal you is dropping in, dropping
in, and learning how to integrate this stuff, dropping in and giving
yourself your own trust back that by you trusting a process, hopefully my
process, because my process is pretty darn good, that that is everything you
need to have the most incredible life on the other side of this. Okay, so to
wrap this up, if you’ve been stuck in the cycle of, I know this already, but
nothing’s changing, this is your invitation to do less learning and more
dropping in more, letting in, more leaning in. Let the knowledge that you
are learning drop from your head into your body. Let the growth be
something you feel, not just something you can explain. Let it change you,
not just your understanding, but your experience, because that, my dear
listeners, is where real healing lives.

(31:40):

Alright? Alright. Thank you for being here. As always, it’s such a gift to
be here with you. I invite you to drop down into the show notes and to get
that $47 class. It’s amazing. It’s powerful. I know it will help you. This
literally is for any of you, whether you already know if you’re staying or
going, if you find yourself flip-flopping, even if you feel pretty
committed, you’re still going to get a lot from it. It’s full. It’s full of
so much soul opening content that will help give you a deeper view into
where you’re going and what to step in next. You can go on the show notes,
check it out, and I will see you very soon. Take care. 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 https://andreagiles.com/lies-about-infidelity/. Again, it’s
https://andreagiles.com/lies-about-infidelity/. I will see you next time.