I’m Andrea Giles, and you’re listening to the Heal from Infidelity Podcast,
Episode Number 156, Your Relationship to Trauma.

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.

Hey everybody. Welcome back to another episode. Today we’re going to talk
about your relationship to trauma. We’re going to talk about relationships
in general, and what that means. And I’m really hoping that by the end of
this episode, you’ll have some clarity for yourself of what your
relationship to trauma is so that you can decide what you want to do with
it. All right, here we go.

We have relationships with many things. We have relationships, for example,
with food. When you think about your relationship with food, what is it?
What’s your relationship with food? What’s your relationship with your
body? What’s your relationship with, say, alcohol. What’s your relationship
with your spouse? Or if you’re not married, your ex-spouse? What’s your
relationship to your children? It may be individual with each one depending
on them. On and on and on. There’s many things that we have relationships
with. The things that are meaningful, the things that are impactful. We
have thoughts that we have about that thing. We have experiences with that
thing, which then we have thoughts about and it creates our reality around
what we think our relationship is with that thing.

And today we’re going to talk about your relationship with trauma. We’re
going to talk about that. Why? I talk to so many people, so many people,
and often this is what I hear. I hear things like this. “I’ve been working
with my therapist for months, years, long time. My husband and I, we’ve
been working with our therapist, and it only got me so far. It really showed
me all the trauma. It showed me all the wounds. It showed me all the hurt
and all the things that need to heal. But I’m not sure when we’re going to
get better. I’m not sure how to get better. And one therapist said that I
probably hurt for 10 years.” Someone told me that this week, that the
therapist said that they might not actually feel better for 10 years. Those
are some examples.

You might’ve been told that it’s going to be a long time until you feel
settled again, until you feel a little more safe in your body again. You
may have been told that it’s going to be dependent on him and what he does
how safe you feel. All right. I’m going to give a couple examples of why I
decided to do this episode today based on some things that I have
experienced and based on my experience now of almost six years of coaching
and talking to so many people and hearing so many stories.

Story number one, when I was trying to heal, I felt so much whiplash. It
was just so much to heal from. So many things to heal from. And one thing
that I don’t do, that I have never done, is share the details of what my
marriage looked like in my first marriage, what the infidelity was, all of
that. Mainly because I have children. I have children, he has family. I
don’t think it’s relevant except to know that I understand it. And that I
understand, for example, elaborate lies. And I understand, for example,
years of things happening right under my nose that I didn’t know. I
understand all of that.

Now, I had the opportunity to go to this clinic, that the entire clinic,
the entire clinic, was based on betrayal trauma. Everybody there, every
single person there, that was their entire focus. And on the one hand, I
think that it’s a wonderful service and I met amazing people there. I loved
my therapist. She’s a wonderful, wonderful person. I was in a group with
another therapist that is amazing. Had a great experience overall, with the
people there, very wholehearted good, good people.

The problem that I had is that it left me every time feeling like a victim.
Feeling like it was just going to be hard and that’s just the way it’s
going to be. It almost highlighted the trauma. It almost highlighted this
is really hard and really complicated and really messy and really painful.
It’s like I put an exclamation point on all of that again and again and
again. And even though the women that I went with were women that were
wanting to make their lives better, and I have kept up with some of them and
they have made their lives better, they have, and I have made mine better,
what was missing for me, and I will just speak for me here, was I thought,
“Now what? I recognize that it’s a mess. I recognize all the pain.” But it
kind of accentuated it for me rather than really giving me a way to think
differently about the whole thing.

So I’ve been thinking about this a lot because I talk to people who have a
strong relationship with their trauma. They have a strong relationship to
it. And I have people who will make comments from time to time about this
space not being trauma informed. To be fair, I’ve only had one person say
that and it was in a podcast review. I’m going to throw that out there.
That’s the reality. I don’t know this person. I’ve never worked with her.
But I thought about that. Why would somebody say that? And here’s what I
think. Being trauma informed, and just for the record, I am. I actually got
a full extensive certification in trauma, betrayal trauma, all kinds of
different relationship trauma. I had to practice and do all kinds of things
with that. I’m pretty well-informed.

But that said, why would somebody say that? Here’s part of it. I think that
when we are being fed stories about how traumatic things are, we look for
sources that are going to validate that. We look for people that will tell
us why it’s okay for us. Not okay. It’s all okay. All of it’s okay. But
justifying and validating why we’re staying there. And justifying and
validating all the pain and yeah, it’s going to take years, that kind of
thing, and it can feel quite validating. And here’s my problem with it. We
become what we identify with.

If we identify with the trauma, if we have a relationship with trauma that
is, “This thing happened and it changed my life forever and I don’t know
that I’ll ever get over it. It’s too painful. I don’t know that I’ll ever
let go. I don’t know that I’ll ever move past it. I don’t know that I can
ever be happy again. I don’t know if I can ever trust again,” it’s going to
be very difficult to move forward. I see this all the time. I see people
who come and talk with me who it happened years ago and they still are
carrying around this pain as if it happened yesterday. They’re still
carrying it around.

I want you to know if you’re listening to this and this is landing as true
for you, I hope you can hear through here. There is not an ounce of
judgment. Only love. There is no judgment coming from me. We live in a
society that validates and highlights and showcases trauma. That’s the world
we’re living in right now. On the one hand, I think that it’s really good
that we have woken up and are talking about it. We’re talking about trauma.
I really think that’s great. I do. But what is missing is the piece where
we talk about what we’re going to do about it and how to change our
relationship with it so that we can move forward.

Now, I’m going to give you another very real example that as time has gone
by I’ve thought about the significance of this moment. Now, I think in an
earlier podcast, I shared this story because it was so pivotal, it was so
pivotal in my life. But there was something that happened that was
profound. The day I found out that my first husband died, I’m going to recap
for those of you new around here that don’t know this, I’ll give a little
bit of history here. So his family had had a family reunion the weekend
before he died and he had the kids. I went and got them on a Sunday morning
and I stayed back for a couple extra days. And we lived in the Bay Area. He
had driven back. It was out of state that we were.

He drove back and I stayed back and got on the road on a Wednesday morning
and was four hours into my drive going through the desert in Nevada when I
got this phone call. My phone kept ringing over and over and over from this
number in San Jose. And I finally like, “Who is this? Why do they keep
calling?” So I finally picked it up and for whatever reason, I did not put
it on speakerphone and I’m so glad that I didn’t. But the woman on the
other side was one of the county workers, and she’s actually the person
that went to the site and declared his death and the time and all of that
and it was her that kept calling me to inform me that he had died.

I want you to picture this. I had six kids in the car with me. I was alone.
It was me with my kids. I was four hours from where I’d come from. The
reunion was in Utah. I was nine hours from home. I was in the middle of the
desert, nothing in sight, no gas station where I could pull over, nothing
as far as you could see. Got this phone call and as you can imagine, it
rocked my world. There are so many thoughts going through my mind, so much
shock, so much, it was just so much. And again, as a reminder, we had only
been divorced for seven months. It was all a lot to take in and a very
short time.

And I remember I got out of my car and I was talking to this woman, like,
“What? Are you sure?” Just talking with her and looking at my sweet babies
in the car and knowing in that moment that their life just changed forever
and that we could never go back. And knowing that they would never see
their dad again, knowing that I would never see him again, this man that I
had been married to for 16 years and we kind of grew up together. I was 19
when got married. So much, there was so much. And this woman pulled up,
this woman pulled up, got out of her car, and she walked straight up to me,
right in my face and she said these words to me, “I’m here. For whatever
you need, I’m here.”

I relayed to her what had happened, and she was a rock. She was rock solid,
rock solid. She was calm as day. She offered assistance. She offered for me
to come to her home, this stranger. She offered for me to come to her home.
We went to her home. We spent the night in her home. And the next morning
she drove me home. She drove me home. This stranger drove me home nine
hours. And we put her on a plane and she flew back.

Why do I tell you this? What’s the significance? In that moment I had a
relationship, in that moment, with shock, with horror, with grief that
hadn’t even set in yet. So many intense emotions. And this woman offered me
another view. She offered me strength. She offered me courage. She offered
me, “You’re going to be just fine. You’re going to be okay. Those kids,
they’re going to be fine.” You know what? We got to their house and rather
than everyone moping around, they played with my kids. They gave stuffed
animals to my twins. They played games with them. They played the piano. She
told her children what was going on and they all played. They made us an
amazing dinner.

It was exactly what we needed. We did not need someone to remind us how
devastating. We did not need someone to cry, to tell us that our life would
never be the same. I already knew that. I already knew that. Just like you
already know the devastating blow that you are experiencing. You already
know that. You don’t need someone to tell you it. What she offered to me
was something to hold onto, another view. Another view. “This is not it for
you, Andrea. No way. This is not it for you. This is not it for your kids.
You’re going to be just fine.”

I needed her, exactly her, to show up that day. And what I’ve learned since
because she told me, is that that was not her normal demeanor. She says she
was really dealing with anxiety during that time and that she was feeling
really anxious and that usually she would be more emotional and reactive,
and in that moment, she knew that I needed her strength. I needed her
courage and strength and wisdom. I needed her exactly how she showed up.

So back to your trauma relationship, your relationship to trauma. I have
yet to work with a single person who has not felt traumatized by it. I have
yet. I have yet to work with one. I was traumatized by it. It was all a
shock. It was all like this wild, “Are you kidding me?” I never ever, ever
imagined. I know you all understand that to your core. Here’s what I want
you to hear me say. How you identify with this trauma is going to determine
how you grow, how you heal, how you live your life?

All of you have dealt with hard things. I look at my little girl who’s two,
and she is my only child that has not lost a parent. I have 12 kids between
the two of us and all of them but her have lost a parent. And so sometimes
I think she’ll be the one that doesn’t have to experience all the hard
things that the rest of our kids have. And you know what their reality is?
She’ll experience her own. She’ll have her own heartbreak. She’ll have her
own trauma because we do not get through life without pain. We do not. It’s
part of the deal. I don’t know what it will be for her. I don’t know what it
will be. But she will have her own crosses to bear. She will have her own
hard things to deal with. We do not get through without it. None of us get
to adulthood without trauma and none of us live as adults without
experiencing more, in various ways. It can show up in lots of different
ways.

Infidelity is one of the ways it has shown up for you. This is it. This is
how it has shown up for you. We don’t get to pick. None of us draw straws
and go, “Oh, I won. I got the infidelity straw.” None of us want it. None
of us want it. But just like none of us want death, none of us want
illness, none of us want poverty.? This is what’s yours, my dear, dear
listeners. It’s what’s yours. It’s what’s yours. And how you identify with
it is going to be the difference between carrying it around like a burden
that is so heavy and setting it down and reclaiming your life. It can be
this thing that broke me open, broke me open, and really pushed me to
surrender to something bigger than me.

Getting out of my own way, out of my own head, and into my body, into
listening to truth. Here’s the thing. You have all kinds of people that if
you wanted to, will tell you how terrible it is, how awful, how painful.
That you should just leave. How could somebody do that to another person?
You can go in any Reddit page. You can go in any Facebook group. It is
ample. It is there, so easy. There are support groups where you can
commiserate, where you can talk about it. And here’s the thing that I have a
problem with. What’s actually going to help you move forward is not those
commiserating spaces.

What’s going to help you move forward is looking yourself in the mirror and
going, “And what am I going to do about it?” If it’s all on me? If it’s all
on how I’m going to choose to see this, how I’m going to choose to let it
work for me, let it break me open, let it soften hardened parts. Let it
crack open and let out parts that have not been let out. Let it be an
opportunity to build from scratch. We get to decide that. We get to decide
that. As I grow in my mission and what I’m here to do and in what I believe.

There is such a narrative around infidelity that feeds that story of
trauma, of pain, of suffering. That is not what I’m here for. That is not
what I’m here for. There are plenty of places that you can go for that. I
am here to help my clients, to help you change your relationship to the
pain by talking about it differently, by thinking about it differently, by
opening up to it rather than resisting it, by surrendering to this whole
experience. That’s what I’m here for. You have this thing in front of you
that has the potential to be the biggest teacher of your life. If you are
open to it, if you are willing. How you identify with the trauma is going
to make the difference between what your life will be in one year, in two
years, in five years, in 10 years.

I want to be like my dear Julie, who is the woman who stopped that day. And
if I were standing in front of you, I want you to hear me. I want you to
hear me. This thing doesn’t define you. This thing has no bearing on your
worth or your value. This thing has no bearing on what a magnificent life
you are still meant to have. This thing has no bearing on the kind of
relationship that you can have, even the person who betrayed you. What
determines all of that is how you decide to stare it down and get to work
and go all in on this experience.

Yes, of course, so much is dependent on what he chooses to do. But that
comes down to is this a wise person to stay with or is this somebody that
is not going to do this work with me, who will not be cracked open? Either
way, you win. Either way, you win. Either way. What’s your relationship?
What do you think about it? Do you focus more on the trauma and the pain of
it or more on where you want to go, who you want to be, what you want your
life to be, and spend more time in belief and pursuit of what you are
creating out of this experience?

This is what I have for you today, my dear listeners. If this has spoken to
you, I invite you to come and apply to be in my program. Applications are
open. This is the work we do. It is not some support group where we sit
around and commiserate. We get to work getting our life back, reclaiming
it, re-establishing it, getting very intentional about it, getting the
answers that we need, growing our emotional capacity to go and live again,
on our terms. I want this for you. Come apply, come apply. There’s nothing
out there like this. There’s nothing out there like this.

I was in different spaces. I spent a lot of money to be in those spaces. My
space is very different and I can’t tell you how many clients have said,
“This was more helpful than any therapy I did.” If you go look through some
of my podcast reviews, you’ll see people put that in there, some clients,
some listeners, that it was more helpful to them than the therapy that they
paid so much money for. Go apply. Let’s shift your relationship out of very
focused on the trauma and more focused on where you’re going. It doesn’t
mean that the trauma wasn’t real, at all. It doesn’t mean that we don’t
have to face it head on. That is part of it. Part of it is surrendering to
it instead of fighting against it. But when we stop resisting and allow all
of this to be here, that’s when we start to heal, that’s when we start to
move. That’s when the world starts to open up for us again. I want that for
you. Apply. Come see me inside and I’ll see you next time. All right, 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 andreagiles.com/lies-about-infidelity/. Again,
it’s andreagiles.com/lies-about-infidelity/. I will see you next time.