Infidelity usually generates a crisis of significant emotional turmoil in a partnered relationship.  Strong feelings on both sides often roll out unchecked. Couples find themselves at a loss for how to move forward. Below are some common reactions to an affair and two steps to take to begin regaining control of your relationship.

Injured Spouse: Shattered Trust
The injured spouse most likely feels outrage from a deep sense of betrayal. Experiencing a volatile mix of anger and hurt is a frequent reaction. The injured partner may feel strapped to a roller coaster of out-of-control emotions. Often the injured spouse is haunted by many nagging questions about why and how the affair took place. Frustration flares as the more answers are demanded the more the offending spouse withdraws and/or repeats the bare minimum facts. While regularly getting angry at the offending partner may feel good in the moment, the fury of the injured partner can be destructive and result in more emotional distance. Meaningful communication can become difficult.

Offending Spouse: Guilt and Fear
The offending spouse often has strong feelings of guilt and remorse. The offending partner may also have conflicting emotions about the affair and may be mourning the end of the affair. Sometimes the offending spouse is at a loss to explain fully the reasons for the affair.  Fears intensify as the more the offending spouse explains or justifies what happened, the worse things become with their partner. Hopelessness and a sense of defeat may set in.

Step 1:
Take care of yourself. Find healthy ways to release your stress.
-Exercise your body
-Eat healthy foods
-Spend time with a trustworthy friend
-Get away for a few days to think
-Seek support/care from your clergy, doctors, therapist
-Keep a notebook of your thoughts, feelings
-Delay any major life decisions until you have had time to talk through things

Step 2:
Time to Talk. Communication is the key to feeling better.
Sit down with your spouse and make a mutual agreement to:

-Set up a specific private “talk time” each week for 30 to 45 minutes when you can come together to talk specifically about the affair and its consequences.

-Make an individual list of the questions you want your spouse to answer and/or things you want your spouse to know about how you are feeling. Bring your list to your “talk time” meetings.

-Exchange your list with your spouse and take turns addressing items on the lists. Let each partner choose what he/she feels they can handle addressing during each “talk time” meeting. Patience is important.

-Commit to being honest in your communication, and make only realistic promises to each other.

-Call an immediate “time-out” if either of you start shouting, name calling or showing other signs of intense anger or disrespect. When this happens, separate to cool off and come back another time when both of you have calmed down.

-Seek professional help if lines of communication continually break down.

Keeping stress in check and opening up communication are the keys to beginning the road to recovery from an affair. Remember even if the couple relationship ends, partners still need to communicate for the sake of their children and/or to facilitate making arrangements for how they are going to separate and move on.

Develop a keener sense of appreciation for what is going right in your life. You may need to hunt for these as they may be buried under your long list of woes. Be persistent. Write at least one entry a day and post your entry in your work area.

Give Compliments

Each day recognize a job well done by someone at home and/or at work and tell her/him so.

Engage in Enjoyable Activity

Identify 1 activity that brings you pleasure. (Also does you no harm.) Make plans to engage in this activity at least once during your week.

Exercise

Spend some time each week rhythmically moving your body whether it’s walking, running, weight lifting, swimming, dancing or yoga. Just do it. Even taking the stairs at work is a good start.

Get Support

Tell someone you trust that you are working on improving your mood and ask him or her to support you in some concrete way. For example, you might ask your husband to do the carpooling on Wednesday night because you have chosen to go bowling as your enjoyable activity for the week.

Coming in July…

“Anger Management: Get in Touch with Your Inner Anger before it gets you into Trouble.”

Anger is one of the most challenging and problematic emotions to handle skillfully in relationships. Learn to recognize your unique pattern of signals that indicate you are heading toward full-blown anger. This is a first step in gaining more control over how you manage your anger.

There is paradoxical comfort in misery. Misery may feel like a friend, yes, a miserable one but the devil we know is often better than the one we do not. We wear our habitual thoughts and feelings like a comfortable old sweatshirt and a pair of ragged jeans. They may turn others off, makes us feel sloppy and bad about ourselves but they are OURS. We know who we are when we are wearing them. And we feel downright naked without them.

Discover why misery is your best friend.

Ask yourself the following questions:

Does being miserable…

• Make others pay more attention to me?
• Give me an excuse for procrastinating?
• Protect me from taking risks and possibly failing?
• Make my relationships less intimate and therefore more comfortable?
• Prevent me from making the life changes I am afraid to make?
• Lower others’ expectations of me so I can feel more successful?

If you answered “yes” to any of the above, get some help in managing the feelings that are keeping you from enjoying your life to the fullest.

Coming in May ”Small Steps You Can Take on the Road to Making Friends with Happiness”

Often clients tell me they want more control in their lives. They want job security, a better family life, more peace of mind and less of things like anger, anxiety, sad feelings, stress-even less annoying traffic on the way to and from work.

First Roadblock:  Everything happens TO me.

We seldom recognize the potential for control we have. Even more rarely do we use it. Instead we are very good at worrying, feeling depressed, irritable, at the mercy of a cold cruel world. We continually surrender the power we have by convincing ourselves we have to react in our habitual ways. We repeatedly tell ourselves things like “I’ll just never get over being laid off like that.” We are good at getting stuck.

Everyone knows someone who seems to bounce back no matter what comes his way. She has setbacks like the rest of us but they don’t stick. We try to convince ourselves that her life is just easier than ours is but underneath we know this isn’t true. So how does she make that lemonade out of lemons?

In most situations there is at least one thing we usually can influence-how we choose to react.  We can learn to think thoughts and feel feelings that make the situation less toxic for us and for our families.
Many “bad” things that happen are not 100 percent terrible but it sure feels like it especially when blindsided. Making the best out of a bad situation means finding that silver lining, consciously choosing to uncover opportunities hidden under the chaos. Take being laid off from a job. That can be devastating to an employee whose thoughts and feelings are dominated by anger, resentment, and hopelessness. She continually thinks thoughts and feels feelings that keep her in a place of fear. The “I’ll-never-find-another-good-paying-job” mantra echoes in her head. Her laid-off colleague initially has those same thoughts and feelings but chooses to move beyond them. He searches for the opportunities this unwanted change brings-the possibility of a new career, more time for his children, greater appreciation for the housework his spouse usually takes care of, closer ties with his community, etc. Guess who finds employment first!

Exercise: Put yourself in the Driver’s Seat

Try the following:
Choose a situation that you are moderately upset about.

For example: Your son left his car blocking yours in the driveway AGAIN.

Now ask yourself: “What am I continually telling myself about this “catastrophe”?
(Write down three things that immediately come to mind.)

For example:
My son always does this.
He doesn’t care about inconveniencing me.
He is so selfish!

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Now ask yourself: “What feelings am I stuck with when I repeat my “catastrophe” story?”
(Write down two feelings that come up.)

For example:
Irritation
Resentment

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Now name at least two consequences to the “catastrophe” that are either neutral (“At least I …….) or are positive (Now I am/can….Now I realize that…).
Write the two neutral or positive statements down.

For example:
At least I saw his car in time and didn’t damage mine.
When I went in to get his car keys, I saw I had forgotten to turn off the oven.

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Now say these neutral/positive statements aloud and/or read them to yourself 10 times.
Notice how your feelings shift a little as you repeat them to yourself.
Write down any new feelings.
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Moving toward a more neutral or positive mood does not mean you no longer hold others accountable for their behavior. (For example, you still hold your son accountable for his careless behavior.)

Nor does it keep you from taking action (if appropriate) to try to prevent the situation from happening again. (For example, you take away your son’s driving privileges for two days.)

Bringing your thoughts and feelings more under control allows you to take effective action.  It keeps you from saying and doing things in the heat of the moment that you later regret.

Learning to shift your mood can be useful. The more you practice the better it gets.

Coming in March “Second Roadblock: ”Misery, Your Best Friend?”

Susan Wilner, cWC LMHC

Coaching is about creating the future and psychotherapy is about healing the present and past.

Coaching has a number of similarities with psychotherapy. Both strive to facilitate an increase in life satisfaction for the client. The most striking dissimilarity is that coaching has a different and stronger “future” orientation for clients than does psychotherapy. That is the coaching client is challenged to bring clarity to their life priorities in the service of creating a life plan or vision for their future. This envisioning process generates strong motivators to overcome the inevitable obstacles clients face in moving forward toward lasting change. The coaching agenda unlike psychotherapy does not include helping clients heal past wounds nor does it address management of chronic mental health issues such as that of depression, anxiety, etc. Coaching is perhaps most similar to brief solution therapy in that coaching is very action/goal oriented and thoroughly client-centered.

Coaches follow the client while many psychotherapists both follow and lead.

The role of the coach is also somewhat different from that of the psychotherapist. The coach is there to support even challenge the client but solely around the agenda the client has determined. The coach makes suggestions sparingly and if so, asks the client permission to do so. The coaching process is centered exclusively on what the client identifies as her goals. This is true to some extent in psychotherapy but many psychotherapists tend to be more directive than coaches in terms of giving advice, suggestions and their opinions about the problems clients present. There is emphasis on problem solving in psychotherapy and creating the client’s desired future in coaching.

When should I consider coaching?

You feel ready to make some concrete changes in your life and recognize that to succeed you need some support. Some parts of you life are working fairly well and you are optimistic that you can make changes that will increase your sense of well being. You have some history of succeeding and overcoming challenges.

When should I consider psychotherapy?

You are in emotional pain and need relief.

How can coaching benefit me while I am in psychotherapy?

Coaching can be a helpful companion to psychotherapy when a client demonstrates readiness to move forward to make specific life changes in the service of creating a more satisfying future. While at the same time the client continues to modify maladaptive behaviors from emotional wounds of the past. For example, a psychotherapy client may benefit from work with a coach in designing a wellness program with specific goals around exercise, nutrition, and stress reduction. At the same time the client continues in therapy to work on decreasing guilty feelings about putting her needs before those of family members.

When is coaching not enough?

Psychotherapy can be beneficial to the coaching client who repeatedly sabotages her coaching goals and becomes “stuck” to the point that little to no progress takes place.

Psychotherapy can uncover the roots of the client’s resistance and give the client the emotional strength to take back control. The client can then return to her coaching goals with renewed determination.

Psychotherapy can also relieve symptoms of anxiety and depression that prevent coaching clients from reaching their full potential in meeting their life goals.