SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

It's been 5 years now and having just gotten through the roughest part of the year in terms of triggers, that being the holidays (when I found out) and Valentine's Day (how I found out...a valentine's day card hidden), within the last week it's been another barrage: A story about a wife leaving her husband, an Instagram that was supposed to be humorous about a guy seeing his wife golfing with his mistress, a friend telling a story about how him and his wife tell their kids that after a certain time their bedroom is off limits (I've mentioned in other posts that our bedroom was like Penn Station with our kids just in and out of it, limiting intimacy), another dumb Instagram so now social media might be something else I give up. They just never end. As much as I try to follow through on my therapist's recommendations for coping which is to remind my brain that these aren't "fight or flight" threats, it's so difficult. The result is a day or so of me in a dark place and her walking on eggshells. I then type an email from work (can't talk at home since kids don't know) or we go for a ride so I can try and calmly vent about what's bothering me. She's doing everything she can and in her words, "hates herself everyday for what she did" (probably not healthy) but I just wish I knew when my responses to these would dissipate or what I can do differently to calm my brain. I'm not sure if this week it was just the sheer volume of them coming at me all at once or something else. It's incredibly lonely dealing with this on my own and incredibly frustrating to not yet find an effective coping mechanism. I guess I'm just venting at this point but if anyone else has gone through episodes like this during their recovery, feedback is welcome. When this isn't happening, we're making really good progress but when they do happen, I got to a pretty dark place mentally.

It is nice for a therapist to ‘suggest’ how you react, but as you’ve lived it all, it is different when a trigger lands hard.

Flight or flight kicks in again after a big trauma reminder — at least during those first five years.

At year ten, my brain knows why a movie scene or a song can send me back to the old trauma and it only takes a few seconds to redirect my thoughts versus hours or days in the early years of my recovery.

Focus is always easier said than done and for me, it took years of practice.

If I get hit with an intrusive thought or memory and the drill is still the same. These days, most of my reminders only hit when I visit here to see if any of my experience can help someone.

I appreciate the cave man brain being concerned about me, I know my mind is simply on alert for any signals or signs of trouble.

I then take a couple deep breaths, close my eyes and then it is my turn to remind my cave man brain, ain’t nothing bad happening in the now.

Then I pick a recent happy moment or cool memory, or maybe I just look up at the sky and see what colors or clouds are and think about that instead.

For the tougher triggers, I go with music or a walk, and the worst triggers, I hit the *&^$ out of a punching bag to vent out any lingering feelings.

After a while, you train yourself to understand you have a vote, a choice as to how long you ALLOW the reminders to be there.

It really takes time, not to cope, but to find the ways you move yourself back to center, to calm. Be easy on yourself too, it can be the old two steps forward, three steps back along the way.

Triggers will always be there; it's how memory works.

It took me a while to "master" a process that I learned here.

When a trigger occurs go ahead a feel it. Let it do its job. Then dive deep and figure out what thoughts or emotions that trigger evoked. Think about whether or not the resulting thoughts or feelings are something unresolved or something you've previously addressed.

If it's the former, an unresolved issue, you'll have to work through it. I found journalling to be effective. I also used to post about them here, just get other people thoughts and perspectives.

If it's the latter, then you can simply remind yourself that you've already addressed and resolved the trigger and it's no longer worth acknowledging.

The key, I suppose, is to disarm those triggers. They're still going to happen, for the rest of your life, but they will eventually become simple memories, passing thoughts unworthy of your attention.

It's a process, highly selective.

I can still get triggered hearing Blonde's "Heart of Glass." It brings up childhood memories of roller-skating at the rink, swaying to the music, doing fancy turns and flipping around to skate backwards. I was really good on wheels and loved every minute of grooving to the beat. No problems at all when those triggers occur. I've selected to embrace and cherish those memories.

Bos,

I would like to add a tibbit to the wisdom from Oldwounds and Unhinged.

…within the last week it's been another barrage: A story about a wife leaving her husband, an Instagram that was supposed to be humorous about a guy seeing his wife golfing with his mistress, …

Oh boy, do I know this one.

My wife and I struggled in pregnant silence when a TV show had infidelity as part of its storyline. She knew it was biting me in the butt, and I knew it was laying additional guilt on her. The silence was deafening. That went on for years, okay, okay, decades (I’m a slow learner.) Then one night I paused the programing and said we need to come up with a hack that lets all the plugged-up emotion disperse in a positive manner. We are both well beyond the need to suffer from something that no longer exists. So, we developed a strategy that has turned that situation around. It was a rather odd disrupter to the chaos and pain of old wounds, but it worked for us. We don’t really need to use this hack anymore but we find it fun to do anyway. For us, it turned something negative into a positive experience. I believe it is important to find creative ways to keep from being dragged back in time and place every friggen time infidelity is on the Boob-Tube….Which is nearly every romance, drama, or comedy show. Probably horror too, but I don’t watch those. 😊

As much as I try to follow through on my therapist's recommendations for coping which is to remind my brain that these aren't "fight or flight" threats, it's so difficult.

I know what I am about to say may seem picky as to the use of words. But, in my experience, when trying to process a painful memory or event, the subtleties of words do make a huge difference in how successful I am at addressing or applying an idea or new way of thinking.

I’ll give it a go. You say that you try to "remind my brain" and that makes perfect sense if the issue you are trying to work through is of low relevance. Say like, remind myself that, though I don’t get why, it is important to my wife that I take out the garbage without being asked. But, in the case of triggers, I found it paramount to "retrain my brain". Reminders are more about remembering to do something the way one typically does it or wants to do it. There doesn’t need to be a lot of thought or self-reflection. Retraining is hard. It is recognizing that what one is or has been doing isn’t working and that they need to put in the hard work to develop a new response that becomes natural with the goal of having it become automatic.

Just some crazy thoughts.

Asterisk

You guys are the best. These are probably some of the best responses to a post I've received. Thoughtful and insightful in all cases. I have a simple motivational quote app on my phone that I use since this happened and I popped it open as I was reading all of these: "Count your blessings today, not your problems". That doesn't mean dismiss your problems but maybe that's the way, like each of you said in one form or another, to disarm them: I have 4 great kids, 2 awesome grandkids, I'm gainfully employed where I"m able to enjoy things that maybe others can't. When the triggers hit, maybe that's the mantra for me, just a simple recognition of those things. Yes, I've experienced a major traumatic event but I also have all of these positive things in my world as well. I've been taking guitar lessons (at 54 years old ) so that's been an outlet for stress and grief as well. I think all of these hitting me in a few days, all at once was just a tough few days. Thanks all, it helped lift me up more than you realize. There's really no finish line this so we all have to be realistic that it's a journey but you can chose what the journey is. "Once in a while you get shown the light, in the strangest of places if you look at it right"---Grateful Dead

I don't know if there's much any of us can do about triggers - not just about affairs but about anything. I have a lot of things in my past that make me sad, would make me very sad to dwell on them. So I try to avoid them in advance. If I know there's stuff on TV that might trigger me in some way - and it could even be animal movies, I hate animal movies because something bad always seems to happen to them and I feel terrible...that has nothing to do with cheating but I know I'm likely gonna have some reaction I don't want, so I avoid them. So whatever I might have a bad reaction to....I try to avoid. Or minimize. I know some folks might say, well you can't go through life with avoidance....well, yes you can. Unless it's a major thing like being able to drive or going to a grocery store (and some people do have these issues), you can avoid a hell of a lot in life - and we should. Don't aggravate yourself and try to think in advance if something is going to upset you, and you....avoid it. You can try immersion therapy - just watching every film ever made on adultery for instance...but, I don't know if that really helps. I prefer avoidance. So try to be aware of what's coming up and how you can miss that thing. And if your spouse or whoever starts talking about something that hurts - unless it's an issue you need to resolve in this time period, not something from the past that can't be changed - just tell them you can't discuss it and we have to move on.

For things you can't avoid....don't let yourself be caught in a mood. Feelings are transitory things, you don't have to stay with them. You can let them past unless you allow yourself to focus on them and prolong them, dwell on them. I think a better way is to occupy yourself immediately with something else, something hopefully fun and/or engrossing, and stay with it until the mood passes. Sometimes that's the only way. We all have sad and disturbing things from the past.

I don't mean this as an exercise in just avoiding things that still need to be explored and resolved. You have to determine what actually NEEDS to be handled because it's been repressed and festering and what's just a sad trigger from the past that hurts like an old bone break but that will go away if you don't focus on it. That would be my distinction.