(00:01)
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 that possible? It is, and I’m here to show you how.

I’m your host Andrea Giles. Are you ready? Let’s dive in.

(00:38)
Okay, so today I want to address a question that I get a lot that I want to shed some light on here. The question is, will it always hurt? Will this pain ever go away? Will I ever feel normal again? So before I get into it, I want to ask you a question. Have you ever in your life had an experience that you thought you would never get over or move past? You just thought that it would always kind of just sit there and hurt.

Maybe it was a breakup, a really painful breakup, a divorce, a big error at work, a misstep with a child, or maybe death, the loss of a loved one, or an injury that you sustained. There’s so many different things. You may have felt a big sting of pain or fear or regret and thought that maybe you could never move past it. And somehow you have.

You may not even know how it happened, but it did happen. So today we’re going to talk about this in regards to infidelity. And I’m going to give you some steps to take to help you heal, to help it not hurt. Okay. So to answer the question, no, my friends, it will not always hurt. It won’t. If you follow the steps I’m going to teach you today. Number one, understand why it hurts so much.

For every single person, infidelity hits differently based on your own past experiences. I have shared before some of my own experiences from early, early in my life that have just compounded with experience with different things that have happened to kind of have this overriding story in my head about being not worth protecting, kind of being second best. And so for me,

Infidelity hit really hard on some of those deep child wounds and fears and brought them to the surface. Okay. You have your own things that this is hitting on your own wounds that this is hitting on. will sound different than mine based on your own stories that you’re the meaning that you are attaching to it to it. Okay. You might be making it mean that you failed in some way that you weren’t good enough that you made a mistake in marrying them in the first place or being with them that you.

(03:03)
You know, must not be worthy in some way. So what have you made it mean? The answer to this will help it to stop hurting. Okay. When you have a clear idea of what you have made it mean, you can start challenging that. So I can go look at that story of not worth being protected and I can use my brain and go, is that actually true? Like, of course it’s not. Of course I was worth protecting. I just didn’t have.

I didn’t have the people in my life as a child who could, I had a dad who died and then I had a stepdad who had his own mental health issues and my mom was trying to survive and ultimately she divorced him. And then I had a third dad and they were also in survival mode, really struggling financially, struggling to blend families and there just wasn’t a lot to give me.

And it never was anything about my worth or not being worthy of protection. It was more that those resources were not available for me. And that’s just my interpretation of it. So each of you have interpreted things in a way that makes it hurt more. It’s making some story that you have in your brain more true. Okay. So it’s like a wound, like a way that we get hurt physically. So let’s say that you keep stubbing your toe really hard.

every time you walk by a certain chair at night. Okay, we can believe that we are clumsy. We can hate that we keep hurting our toe and keep nursing our aching toe. Okay, it keeps bleeding and we’re washing it and putting band-aids on it, maybe some Neosporin or something. And we can be mad that it keeps happening. But until we actually stop and go move the chair, right? What it’s not…

us that’s off, there’s nothing wrong with us, it’s that our foot keeps smacking a chair. So we have to move the chair and let our wound heal. Okay. Our hearts and minds work the same way. There are thoughts that are causing the pain. There are beliefs that are causing the pain. We have to notice what they are. And instead of treating the hurt toe, we need to go move the chair. Okay. It’s not the infidelity itself. It’s what we make it mean.

(05:22)
Okay, number two, understand that hurting and remembering are two separate things. Sometimes we want to forget something because we think the memory of it is causing us pain. So we just kind of want to go numb to it. We want amnesia. That would be great, right? Let’s just have some amnesia. In reality, like point number one, it’s all the thoughts that we attach to the memory that are hurting us. So if you notice yourself remembering that it happened, that is actually not the problem.

And it’s also not the source of your pain. And sometimes remembering is a good thing. Let me explain. We recently had 9-11, September 11th, and that was a pretty traumatic day for Americans several years ago, right? Lots of people died. We were under attack and we went to war as a result of that attack. Many of us were watching in real time.

Like I was watching the news when I saw the second tower struck and knew I just started to cry because I knew that it was no accident and that we were under attack and knew that many people had just died. Okay. So right after nine 11, many of us felt a lot of fear, grief, horror. I’m sure many of you listeners experienced some of those things. Okay. But now years later,

It’s a day to remember. It’s a day to ponder. It’s a day to think about, to question how far we have come and what we need to do better. What I can do better to be a good citizen of my country. Okay. The same can be practiced with infidelity. Remembering can show us how far we have come. It can show us what we still want to work on. It can keep us in line. It can keep us accountable. It can help us keep our spouse accountable if we are still in that relationship.

Okay. It can help us to see how we want to move our relationship forward and how to best help ourselves move forward. You don’t have to forget to stop hurting. That is not the goal. Here’s the thing is the pain subsides and you don’t hurt all the time. The memory will actually fade and you won’t remember it all the time. There will be days and weeks where it doesn’t pop up at all. You will reprogram your brain. Okay. I remember right after 9-11.

(07:48)
For several months, whenever I saw an airplane flying in the sky, I couldn’t help myself but imagine it going and crashing into a building. That’s where my brain went every single time. I had a new association with airplanes of being hijacked and crashing into buildings. And that was for a long time. And I remember wondering if I’d ever lose that association. And here, 21 years later, I don’t think about that at all. I just see an airplane in the sky and sometimes it goes

think, I wonder where they’re going. I wonder, you know, asking my questions about it. Just notice it. It’s the same with infidelity. It will take up less space in your mind. It will not hurt as bad. Okay. You will just notice it, but fighting ourselves to stop remembering will ultimately create more problems for ourselves. We’ll be resisting it. So you can let it be there and notice in like step number one, you know what you’re making it mean.

that it’s there. Remembering is not the problem. It’s the meaning that we attach to it that creates the problems. Number three, set boundaries around your thoughts. If you have a wound, you will be tempted to pick at it. Maybe it’s uncomfortable and it itches. Maybe it stings. So you want to massage it and pamper it. You might want to peek at it constantly to see how it’s doing. What wounds really need is to be left alone. Right? How many of you have ever had a wound?

that the doctor’s like, you need to leave it alone. You need to just let it be rest. Stop trying to do things with it. Just let it be. Our bodies know how to heal. are remarkably resilient. Okay. We are meant to heal. Our thoughts are much the same. We want to itch that scratch, right? Check on it. See how our tender hearts are doing. And while it may be deceptive and looking like self love or self compassion,

Sometimes we are massaging and nurturing the very things that need to be left alone. For example, I have many clients who think that the way to help themselves is to be very diligent in thinking about the affair daily, often multiple times a day. Or when some interaction happens with their spouse that they don’t love, maybe their spouse was short with them, something like that, some remark, our brains can easily, and this is something my clients do,

(10:12)
make it mean that, my gosh, my spouse was just short with me. They must be up to no good. There’s probably things are hiding from me. And suddenly in their brain, they go from a two to a 10 pain, fear, and doubt. When in reality, this nippy comment may have been because the spouse is tired, stressed, or someone was rude to them at work. Okay. It doesn’t make it okay. And it can still be addressed.

But we compound everything when we take one interaction and file it in the infidelity inbox, just take it and go up is this definitely has to do with infidelity. Let’s just add it in with this other massive stack of things in here. And suddenly we’ve created this mountain for ourselves when really it goes in a separate file and may need to be looked at, but it doesn’t have to be in the same space as infidelity. Okay. This is where brain boundaries come in.

When you notice something that happens that bothers you or reminds you in some way of the infidelity, notice how you feel. It will become very familiar over time. The feeling will become familiar. You can notice it, see it, and decide if you want to take the bait, so to speak, and make it mean something about the infidelity. Or if you want to see it as someone interacted with you in a way that you didn’t love, he did, and he didn’t love it or she did, or whoever it is that you’re talking to.

You get to choose where you place it. You get to choose how much you want to stoke that flame. Decide beforehand what boundaries you want to set in your own mind. You can have a protocol for yourself that helps you decide what to do when your brain makes it really important to remind you of all the pain and the hurt. Okay. Your brain is doing what brains do. It is likely there to protect you from further harm, but

Tell yourself the truth by nurturing that by massaging that by listening over and over to the same stories that keep showing up. You’re actually just hurting yourself over and over again. Whether you are still married or not, this process works the same. You can be separated and divorced and still play out all the painful details and remind yourself constantly how much you hurt. Or you can try these three steps and they will help you. And over time,

(12:34)
The wound does heal. will, you will not hurt all the time. You’ll notice that you go several days without hurting. Okay. Back to the question at the beginning, what is something you thought you may never heal from or feel better about? And then you do get better and you do heal. And it’s not something that you think about constantly. It’s not something that you wake up and feel the dread of. Okay. You can heal this too. And you have so much power to do so. You do not have to wait for your spouse or partner.

to say the right thing or do the right thing to help you heal. Now to be clear, the way they show up can certainly make a difference in helping you move forward. Okay. I don’t want to undermine that, but you get to determine the meaning you are giving to the way they are showing up. You can remember without stoking the flame of that memory until you’re suddenly in bed crying from the pain of it. Okay. You can remember and not hurt.

And you can set boundaries around where your brain goes, where you allow it to go to. And lastly, my friends, sometimes we will have memories or significant dates come up or times of year or any number of other things that will take us back. And the pain will just appear seemingly out of nowhere. In those moments, treat yourself like you would a child. You would never say to a child, why are you still crying over this? Get over it already. You would hold that child.

You would love them. You would listen to them until they felt secure and calm. Please give yourself that same love and grace. Nurture yourself, love yourself, have compassion for yourself. Sometimes there are emotions that need to be processed. Grief that needs to be felt still. It’s all part of the process. And guess what? It means that you’re healing because as we heal different layers, we create safety for new layers of healing to occur. When we

Show our bodies than our brains that we will address it, that we will take care of it. That’s when trauma can be healed. That’s when it can come to the surface and be seen and listened to and heard. Okay. So treat yourself like you would treat a child. Eventually you will notice that you haven’t cried in a long time. The thing that seemed like it would ruin the rest of your life is no longer taking up precious real estate in your mind or your heart.

(14:57)
My friends, this is healing and it is available to you and it will happen for you if you work this process. Okay. You’ll have so much power here to heal yourself. All right. I love all of you. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you for sharing. Thank you for reviewing and I’ll see you next time. Bye bye.

(15:22)
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 andriagiles.com forward slash lies dash about dash infidelity forward slash. Again, it’s andriagiles.com forward slash lies dash about dash infidelity forward slash.

I will see you next time.