3 Ways To Control How Much The Affair Gets To Rip Away From Your Life
When the dust from the initial life-shattering bomb has begun to settle you’re shocked to hear yourself ask, Okay, now what?
It’s been weeks of night sweats and devastating pain that threatens to bring you to your knees every time the truth telling reel begins to play in you head. You know that you’re not ready to reconcile with your partner, but at the same time you need to start to explore a path of healing. Because you sure as hell can’t stay in this state much longer.
Next Baby Steps (Working Towards Phase II) And Healing Your Mind
Step #1: If you have evidence that you review, such as emails, texts, or if you stalk the other person on Facebook, STOP. You’re only re-traumatizing yourself over and over again.
It’s a constant reminder that you can’t trust your partner and that they made the biggest mistake of his or her life. And it makes you question your intentions for hanging around. You begin to ask yourself, is there sometime wrong with me for staying? It’s unhealthy and it seizes all progress.
Once you get rid of the tangible reminders (within your control) you can begin to move forward and make attempts to manage how much time in your day is spent thinking about it.
Step #2: Is a containment skill called the Stop Sign Technique, which basically helps stop your mind from whatever it’s thinking about and replaces an unhealthy disturbing thought with a healthy happier one.
Here’s what you do, if you’re closing your eyes to fall asleep and an intrusive thought pops into your mind, I want you to say, STOP (inside your head or if you are alone out loud). When you say the word, I want you to picture a bright red stop sign fill your entire field of vision. The only thing that you can see is bright red and white letters.
Next, think of a time that isn’t linked to the infidelity. Maybe it was your son’s first concert at school or your daughter’s birth. Something that will make you think of something else and something better.
Be prepared to do this about 5-10 times a minute until your mind gives up and allows you to stick with happier thoughts. Trust me, eventually your mind will give up as long as you don’t first.
The consistency of this intervention tells your brain that in the future this stand off will continue for as long as you need it to until you win and the intrusive thought stays out.
Step #3: Another containment skill that is widely used because of its effectiveness is more like a prescription than a generalized tool. This intervention gets very specific and is written up just for you. The end result is that you’ll gain more control in deciding how much and when you’ll think about the betrayal.
How To Customize Your “Think About It” Plan
This plan is designed to create structured time that you dictate, where all you do is sit and think about the fact that your partner cheated. When your time to think about it is over, you simply put those thoughts into an imaginary container and save it for your next designated time to review the trauma. No matter how many times the thoughts creep in before your designated think session, you consistently remind your brain that it’s not time yet, but you will think about it when the time is right.
To get started, answer the following questions honestly:
- How frequent do the thoughts come up?
- About how much time per day would you say that you think about it (controlled and uncontrolled-such as intrusive thoughts can’t be controlled they just pop in to your mind)?
- When do you most think about it?
For example, let’s say that you think about it on average six-hours per day. The majority is of the time is spent at night once the kids are in bed. But when you truly sit and reflect, it also happens in the shower, preparing breakfast and bagging lunches, sitting in the car waiting for your oldest to climb in, and on and off through out your work day, etc.
You know that you mainly think about it at night. But when you review your day, there are healthy amounts of disruption hijacking your precious time all day long.
What you need to do is come up with a plan that incorporates pockets of time throughout the day to think and focus strictly on the betrayal.
Please note that in order for this intervention to work you must follow the directions accordingly and only think about the pain stricken circumstance you are in right now.
Let’s say you think about it an average of six hours per day. If that is the case this would be a sample plan for you to begin:
- Wake up 20 minutes early, stay in bed and only think about the affair. Don’t think about what the day will bring simply focus on all the details that ravage your mind day in and day out (set your alarm for 20 minutes so you know when to come back to the present and proceed with your morning).
- Do not think about it when you shower, make and eat breakfast, or in the car ride to work.
- Once you’re at work pull into the parking lot and sit for a good 10-minutes and only think about the affair again. Don’t listen to the music, or answer any messages that ding through on your phone. Only focus on where your mind always wants to take you, the infidelity and what your partner did.
- At work take a 10-minute breaks, as often as you can, to go outside, hide in the bathroom, wherever you can to isolate and focus. Again run through the scenarios and fantasies that you have created to fill in the missing information from the chunk of your life that’s now missing.
- After work and before heading home sit in your car and again focus on the affair for 10-minutes.
- Do not think about it during the car ride home or connecting with your kids
- Take a good 10-minutes to think about it before dinner.
- Don’t think about it during dinner, clean up, or bath time.
- After the dishes are done, think about it for a solid 30-minutes. All you do is run through everything again. Where did they go? Did the other person laugh harder at the jokes, how did they meet up? Etc.
- Don’t think about it before you get into bed.
When it’s time for bed, rather than running through what you already know, I want you to practice focusing on the here and now by doing the Five Sense Mediation.
READ: The Five Sense Meditation
Weaning Off The Prescription
As with any prescription the intent is to not have to rely on one in order to live a healthy normal life. You’ll know that you’re ready to cut down on the length of time spent thinking about it when you start struggling to last the entire allotted time.
When that happens, simply cut back on your time about 25 percent. So let’s say you have the set schedule as laid out above, that’s roughly 110 minutes, cut it down to about 85 minutes of focused time per day and see how that goes for you. Continue to trim down on the time until you can toss the prescription because you simply are all thought out.
There You Have It
In your efforts to begin healing, you first must take back control over your thoughts and how much you’re triggered. Don’t forget that this will take a lot of time and you must remain diligent for your brain to take you seriously. So be kind to yourself as you continue to muddle your way down this unknown path that has chosen you.
Jessica M. Miller, M.A. is the author of Back 2 Love and How to Start a Mental Health Private Practice. She owns a practice in New Prague, Minnesota where she lives with her husband, two kids, and two pups. For more relationship advice subscribe to her YouTube channel: Super Living. Follower her on Twitter where she regularly post about happiness, marriage tips, and personal identity.