Fear Will Keep You Small: How to release it...and blossom

And the time came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom. ~Anais Nin

"Every problem is just fear." That was a recent tweet I read. And while I don't know if it's factual, I do believe it's true.
Certainly true with infidelity.
Infidelity trips the wire in our brain that unleashes every fear we've ever had. Of darkness. Of loss. Of abandonment. Of craziness. Of unworthiness. Of being revealed as deficient or not enough.
If we've been lucky enough as children to have healthy parents, we learn to trust our place in the world, to feel a sense of belonging, to believe ourselves worthy of others' love and respect. If we're then faced with infidelity, the fear wire may be tripped but, in many cases, we fairly quickly regain our equilibrium and are able to recognize the cheating as reflective of our spouse's character, not our own.
Those of us, however, whose parents were unable to provide that healthy support, often come to adulthood with buried injuries and hidden fears.
Commitment is a huge leap of faith for us. We allow ourselves to jump, trusting tentatively, finally, that there's someone to catch us.
So when our spouse isn't there for us; when, in fact, it's our spouse who pushes us into the abyss, the terror is real. Our childhood fears loom large. Abandonment. Loss. Unworthiness.
For some of us, even coming from healthy homes, the fear wire tripped by infidelity stays tripped. It doesn't reset. It creates in us all the symptoms of post-traumatic stress: hyper-vigilance, a sense of foreboding, anxiety, flashbacks, emotional numbing. In one word, we can pretty much wrap up all those feelings as "fear". The world suddenly feels terrifying.
It's crucial to tackle this quickly. We need someone to moor us to reality before we drown in the stories we tell ourselves about the myriad ways in which we're unlovable, undeserving of kindness and respect, the ways in which we've failed.
A good therapist (or a particularly wise compassionate friend) will help us understand that our stories, which are rooted in fear (I'll be alone forever, nobody loves me, I'm not [fill-in-the-blank] enough, I'm too [fill-in-the-blank]...) aren't reality and get in the way of healing. In fact, that fear-based narrative prevents healing and pushes us towards betraying ourselves for the sake of "safety".
While fear is a reasonable response to the emotional trauma of infidelity, it's a dangerous one if we let it govern our actions. We need to fight hard to understand that infidelity, while it deeply affects us, isn't about us. Infidelity is about one partner's choice to seek outside the marriage what they're missing in themselves. It's about emotional immaturity. It's about escape and fantasy.
Your task is to challenge our cultural convictions around cheating and examine your own beliefs. What do YOU believe your partner's cheating says about you? My guess is that your beliefs about infidelity are rooted much more in fear than in truth. Fear will keep you wrapped tightly in that bud. The truth will allow you to blossom.

Guest post: Awesome advice from a betrayed wife

"Steam" often comments to this site, offering up her experience as a guide to others, and supporting those who aren't as far along the path as she. 
She wrote this awhile back and it's so succinct and compassionate, that I requested her permission to re-post it so that more can read it.
I love that this site has become a hub for so many who feel isolated and confused. I love how respectful we all are of each other's experiences, always recognizing that we each need to walk our own paths.
Thanks, Steam, for helping make this such a great space.
~Elle


I was immediatly diagnoised with PTSD in our 1st MC session. Our counselor made it very clear to my husband that my reaction to his selfish and fucked up action was completely NORMAL, not that that makes you feel instantly better, but it was good to have a name for it. Reliving it over and over again is hard to avoid when you cannot stop thinking about it. I am 10 months out this week and I have done my best to "reclaim" the places and things that gave me joy, that he stole, that I thought he had stolen forever. Since most of his affair was online with only three in-person meetings – when they met (in another country) and two months later when they had sex twice (in another country) –  there is not much to reclaim. All I have asked is that he NOT take me to the place they had their one dinner. He said it was bad anyway and he would never go again, good I dont need to go there, it was never mine to begin with. I am starting to feel safe again, and although I cannot ever trust him again like I did when I was blind, I do trust him a lot more. I no longer hit every e-mail address and social media page of his every day or even every week, I no longer search for her online. But I watch the cell phone bill like a madwoman. Something I never ever checked which had all I ever needed to know.
I feel a lot more like a better me, and our relationship has changed so drastically it's almost a miracle. And the hardest part to admit? It was not just him who had to change. I had to do my part too.  

If you are brand new to this, don't think YOU need to do that immediately. You need to heal and he needs to help. It's only then that you can find a better version of yourself...she is in there, I promise. 

It's not your fault, it was never your fault, you are not the one who cheated. You are not the one who risked everytihng, so just take it minute by minute – don't rush it – go through it, not around or over or under it, and if you have a new relationship with your partner (we could never have found one without counseling, relish it. 
BTW, I had EMDR about 20 years ago and it was quite astonishing. If I was still living in the land of PTSD I would not hesitate, but first I wanted to beat my H up in counseling for a while. 
lol  
Look at that, I just laughed. You will too...you will get through this unless your husband is an absolute a-hole and you are with a bad man, not a good man with issues and mistakes. Hang in there if he is worth staying with – and he will show you if he is – and thrive.  

All I have wanted to do other than save my own relationship was to be able to help others who have been through this. The spark came while I was googling within hours of finding out on that horrible d-day. I was of the school "once a cheater, always a cheater" and "if anyone ever did that to ME, he would be gone SO fast".  

Arent we all?

But when he DID do that to me, I gave him an immediate (and I add, loud and hysterical) choice he had to make – her or me. When I saw the absolute devestation in HIS eyes, seeing what he had done to ME, seeing his tears, hearing his words, feeling his absolute remorse, sadness, and looking into an opening into his soul I had never ever ever seen before. When I locked myself in the bedroom and he sat outside talking to me through the window, I surprised mySELF when I realized that even though I could not touch him or look at him right NOW, I wanted him to stay.
I wanted to know if we could survive this.  
I wanted to know I would be ok (because how could I EVER be ok again??) 
I wanted HOPE. 
and this was the only place I found it.  

I hated the name "club" – lol. I thought it would be just another husband bashing site, but it was not. [Elle's] words, as someone who had been through this, gave me HOPE – her essays and her links and her answers to others – so much wisdom and compassion, smart funny and sarcastic, but not bitter – it gave me what I needed. I wanted to get "there" where [she is], and I am on my way.  

No one could have told me that I would ever get through this, but honestly, somewhere on this blog that very first day – [Elle] actually did.

~Steam

When Remembering Becomes Reliving

I was listening to a radio program recently about PTSD – post-traumatic stress disorder.
I talk a lot about PTSD on this site because it was the paradigm that felt the most right to me after D-Day. After a friend of mine, who counsels those with PTSD from childhood sex abuse, suggested I was experiencing post-trauma, my response to my husband's infidelity began to make sense. Well, as much sense as PTSD ever makes.
It was a tough sell at first. As I've noted on this site before, PTSD seemed so...dramatic. As if I was exaggerating my experience. PTSD was for veterans and rape victims, domestic abuse survivors and people who fled the Twin Towers.
There's increasing research, however, that PTSD is more common than that. That those of us who experience a sudden, shocking event (infidelity anyone?) can come away with PTSD. Not all of us, of course. But some of us. Too many of us.
PTSD is created, explained the doctor on the radio program, when the feeling we experience during trauma (fear, grief, shame, for instance) becomes linked with certain stimuli (a sight, a smell, a sound).
As the doctor on the radio program put it, the neurons that "fire together, wire together."
It explains why a certain song can suddenly transport us back to that moment of finding out and suddenly our heart is racing, our blood pressure is skyrocketing, our hands are tingling. We're not just remembering the trauma, we're re-living it.
Maybe it's the sight of a certain model car. The voicemail message on a husband's cell phone (which I'd listened to roughly 30 times as I tried to reach him, knowing he was with her). A certain time of year. A snowstorm.
At first, it's normal for the entire experience to feel like a nightmare from which you can't awake. For some of us, however, that feeling lingers...and sometimes gets worse.
While we might become more functional in some ways, we have periods of the day when we're immobilized. When we're flashing back. When we're not remembering what we know but reliving it.
The most important thing to know is that this, under the circumstances is normal. Know also, that it's surmountable. Life will not always feel like a war-zone in which you're unsafe and insecure.
But it's important to get treated so that you can begin to heal. To have memories, including bad ones, without trauma.
Infidelity is so much more devastating than most of us could have imagined. Far more devastating than our culture understands. Unless, of course, you've lived through it.