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Wayward Side :
How did you find your IC?

Topic is Sleeping.
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 Seekinghelptoo (original poster new member #79848) posted at 11:13 AM on Wednesday, February 9th, 2022

I’m looking to find an IC and didn’t know if there was a group that others found helpful. Or did you just look up local therapists in your area? How do you find someone who keeps you accountable? I just meet with someone who said, "it’s not even that bad because you didn’t even have sex". I don’t want justification I want to find change.

posts: 9   ·   registered: Jan. 27th, 2022
id 8714907
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foreverlabeled ( member #52070) posted at 1:50 PM on Wednesday, February 9th, 2022

Trial and error.

I was desperate at first to get in anywhere. I was spiraling, and had major issues with catastrophic feelings and thoughts. I needed to get that under control. I ended up, through a recommendation at a church, even though I'm not religious I jumped at it. She helped me greatly with the onset. But, after a few sessions it turned into a one-sided MC and then religious overtones crept into the conversations. And it just wasn't useful.

I moved on. Found another and she was helpful for a bit, but was very sympathetic for me and would have enabled blame-shifting and justifications. So I fired her.

Another "graduated" me after like 3-4 months. Um.. ma'am I am not ok. Lol

Then I began to interview them just as much as they were interviewing me. That was useful to weed out anyone who wasn't exactly qualified for the issues at hand.

So you just keep going until you find a good fit. They are out there but you may have to work for it. Don't be afraid to say this isn't working for me and move on.

posts: 2597   ·   registered: Mar. 1st, 2016   ·   location: southeast
id 8714930
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DaddyDom ( member #56960) posted at 4:24 PM on Wednesday, February 9th, 2022

Same here. Went through several IC's (and MC's) and had to just keep trying until we found the right one.

I'd like to offer some personal advice however, not everyone may agree with it, so do with it what you will.

I suggest that you find an IC to work on YOUR issues. NOT the marriage. Not the affair. At least, not directly.

I know it's tempting to want to "jump to the end of the book and see how it ends" when we consider therapy. We want the therapist to tell us what we need to do in order to improve or save the marriage, but that's just not how it works.

Reconciliation after infidelity is hard even under the best of circumstances, but it's impossible if the people involved aren't in an emotionally stable and healthy frame of mind.

I spent years in therapy. We looked at the ways/whys of how I respond to and deal with conflict. We looked at my non-existent self-respect and figured out why I had such low self-esteem, what caused it, what triggers it, what enforces it, and how did I use it to keep myself stuck in grief, and why it scared me to NOT feel that way. We examined how I form relationships, and if those relationships were based on healthy or harmful factors. We discussed how I put my wife into a "mother role" and how that affected how I saw her, treated her, and what I expected from her. We looked at my history of shame, where that began and how it affects me, and came up with strategies to help overcome that fear and shame. We dug deep into why I live my life feeling like a victim and living in a needy way where all my value was obtained from others. We dealt with heavy issues of childhood abuse, neglect, sexual abuse, bullying, and the many long-term after-effects of my very broken family life and school life. This is just the tip of the iceberg.

I've said it before and will so again... affairs do not begin the day the WS cheats on their spouse. That's the END of the story, it's the outcome of everything that came before then. If you want to understand why and how the outcome came to pass in the way that it did, then you need to start at the beginning, and that... all happened BEFORE you ever cheated, maybe before you even married.

A good IC, in my opinion, will recognize this and help you address it.

Fix YOURSELF first. Don't worry about the marriage for now, because you're in no shape to deal with it in a healthy and supportive way. Go get healthy. Then, when the shame is manageable, and when the empathy returns, and you have clear, healthy boundaries, and tools for dealing with stress and grief and conflict... THEN you can work on the marriage.

Just my 2 cents.

Me: WS
BS: ISurvivedSoFar
D-Day Nov '16
Status: Reconciling
"I am floored by the amount of grace and love she has shown me in choosing to stay and fight for our marriage. I took everything from her, and yet she chose to forgive me."

posts: 1446   ·   registered: Jan. 18th, 2017
id 8714970
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Bulcy ( member #74034) posted at 11:39 AM on Thursday, February 10th, 2022

Hi,

I echo the trial and error. Reading the profiles of IC and MC they will say they have experience in infidelity. They don't. First MC for us blamed my wife and said I was after "titillation". My first IC, while not blaming BS, did not work with me to dig onto the whys or whats or anything. His focus was on my well being (a good thing) but nothing else.

New IC is better, but started going down the route of "moving forwards" assuming I had done all the work on myself and the whys. An e-mail and a discussion later we seem to be back on the track I want.

Don't be scared to leave an IC if you don't feel they'tr beneficial and make sure you tell them what you need

WH (50's)

Multiple sexual, emotional and online affairs. Financial infidelity and emotional abuse. Physical abuse and intimidation.

D-days 2003, 2017, multiple d-days and TT through 2018 to 2023. 28 years of destructive and health damaging choice

posts: 375   ·   registered: Mar. 12th, 2020   ·   location: UK
id 8715148
Topic is Sleeping.
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