102. Doing the Work After the Affair

In this episode of 'After the Affair,' I delve into the concept of "doing the work" in the aftermath of infidelity, particularly in the context of the self-help world. Often, we think of self-help as something we turn to only when something in our lives has gone wrong, a reactive measure rather than a proactive one. But the bigger question is, what does 'doing the work' even mean?

I discuss the importance of committing to self-improvement, not just in times of crisis but as a regular practice. I also mention the first three lines of the self-coaching model: Circumstances, Thoughts, and Feelings, and explain how understanding these components can help us navigate the emotional landscape of betrayal and beyond. You can learn more about the self-coaching model on Episode 20 - How to Handle any Problem.

Whether you’re currently dealing with the aftermath of infidelity or simply interested in how self-help can be integrated into your everyday life, this episode offers valuable insights into the power of "doing the work" before life throws its curveballs.

Key Takeaways:

The Concept of "Doing the Work":

• Understanding what "doing the work" means in the context of self-help and personal growth.

• The difference between reactive and proactive self-help.

Self-Help as a Preventative Tool:

• Why it’s important to engage in self-improvement before crises occur.

• Building resilience and emotional strength through regular self-reflection and practice.

The Self-Coaching Model:

• Introduction to the first three lines: Circumstances, Thoughts, and Feelings.

• How these elements interact to shape our experiences and responses to betrayal.

Applying Self-Help in the Aftermath of Betrayal:

• Practical strategies for using self-coaching techniques to navigate emotional challenges.

• The long-term benefits of committing to "doing the work" consistently.

💬 Reflection Question:

How can you start integrating self-help practices into your daily routine, not just when things go wrong but as a way to build ongoing resilience?

Connect with Luke:

• Website: www.lifecoachluke.com

• Instagram: @mylifecoachluke

• Email: luke@lifecoachluke.com

Join the After the Affair community at www.facebook.com/groups/aftertheaffaircommunity

Episode Transcript:

The After The Affair podcast with me Luke Shillings is here to help you process, decide and move forward on purpose following infidelity. Together we'll explore what's required to rebuild trust not only in yourself but also with others. Whether you stay or leave I can help and no matter what your story there will be something here for you.

Let's go. Hello and welcome to episode number 102 of the After The Affair podcast. I'm your host Luke Shillings.

I think I'm probably gonna maybe wing this episode a little bit. So for any of you who are new to the podcast, first of all welcome. It's great to have you here.

I really appreciate you taking the time to to listen to some of the things that I have to say and I hope that whatever you gain from this podcast, be it this episode or any of the others in the backlog, that you are able to take something and hopefully make some positive changes to your situation, your circumstance, your relationship, like whatever that looks like for you. Because ultimately that is what this is all about. It's about creating a resource for people who have experienced infidelity in their life, whether that is as the betrayed or the unfaithful spouse and who can come and learn ways to deal with that pain and learn tools and techniques and hear other people's stories and experiences and look at it from all manner of perspectives in a hope that something resonates and helps you move forward in that journey, whatever that looks like.

And there's a certain type of lingo, if you like, that's often used in the self help type world and that part of the world, the community, and that is to do the work. You know we often hear that after a relationship has experienced a difficult time that doing the work is what's required to move forward. It's almost like, it's quite interesting because in some perspectives it's almost like we only do the work when something's gone wrong, which I find well.

A bit of a shame in all honesty because doing the work, or at least my interpretation of doing the work, is just showing up and living with intent and living life on purpose and taking responsibility and owning the things that we have in our lives, owning our own experiences, owning how we feel and how we think. And I've spoken many times across the podcast talking about the concept that it's our thoughts that create our feelings. This is something that was taught to me originally by Brooke Castillo.

She developed a tool called the self coaching model. I discuss it in more detail in episode 20 of this podcast so if you want to take a listen after this episode, if you've not already heard it then I highly recommend you do. But the very basic premise is that all problems in the world can be split into one of five categories.

Circumstances, which are the things that happen in the world, the neutral events that occur, things that people said, things that people have done, but usually something that's completely agreeable by everybody. There's no emotion, there's no adjectives, there's no descriptive explanation to give it any subjective meaning. It's something that we would all agree on.

And the next part is our thoughts. And our thoughts are essentially sentences in our minds that give meaning to the circumstances, the way that we interpret the circumstance. So let's try and put this into some kind of real-life context.

As you listen to this episode, or at least if you're listening to it on the day that it is released, it happens to also be the same day that my daughter starts her journey into secondary school. For those of you not familiar with the UK system, there's quite a big jump from the primary school, which is at age sort of 5 to 11, and then into secondary school, which makes up most of the teenage years. And this is something that concerns me a little bit.

I am genuinely worried and a little bit anxious and in moments of anticipation of what it's like for a young girl in modern society, growing up and making these jumps and, you know, making sure that or worrying about how her friendships will develop and the impacts of social media and all of these things. Now the circumstance is quite simple. The circumstance is my daughter starts secondary school today, or at least on the day that this episode was released.

That's it. That's the circumstance. It carries no emotional meaning, there's nothing attached to it.

It's just a thing that is happening. It's something that we could all agree on. Now everything I said beyond that, in terms of what I'm making it mean, why it's a problem for me, why I'm worried about it, well that's all because of how I'm thinking about it.

It's the sentences in my mind that are describing the situation, why it's something to be worried about, and what I'm worried about is my interpretation of it. And of course when I think those things, that creates my feelings. In this case, anxiety and maybe a little bit of worry or a bit of apprehension and these less than desirable emotions.

So what I'm really trying to highlight here is that we have these things that happen in the world and then we apply meaning to them in the way that we think about them. And this can also come from our pre-existing beliefs about things, maybe things that we were taught or we learnt growing up. And then it's from that place of interpretation, the meaning that we apply to the circumstance, that's where we get to feel.

So as much as I, or at least a historic version of me, would like to believe or would like to have believed that the reason I felt worry and concern and apprehension was because my daughter's starting secondary school, but that's not actually true at all. The reason I'm feeling all of those emotions is because of what I'm making that mean. It's all the things that I, all the worries that I have, it's like why is that a problem? Will she make friends? Will she get bullied? Will she get into the wrong crowd? It's like these thoughts that are creating the feelings of worry, not the fact that she's starting secondary school.

Because I could just as easily look at the same situation and give it a very different meaning. I'm really excited for her. She's going to meet new friends.

She's going to expand her knowledge. She's going to be exposed to opportunities that she wasn't previously exposed to. She's going to, like all of these other things that are also just as true.

And when I think those things, well I feel excited. I feel motivated. I feel supportive.

I feel compassionate. I feel, you know, thrilled at the idea that my daughter is going to have these experiences throughout the rest of her life, if you like, or at least the next stage of her life. So all of those thoughts are optional.

I can believe the ones that lead to worry and hurt and disappointment and anticipation and fear and all of those kinds of things. And I can also believe things that lead to excitement and hope and compassion and understanding. And this ultimately leads, at least for me, to explain what it is that doing the work even means.

It's about taking responsibility for your experience. And with tools like the self-coaching model then that can be available to you probably a bit easier than you realise. Now often when I teach clients the concept of the model, I've only covered the first three parts of it today.

If you want to go through the full model then, like I say, refer back to episode 20. But in learning this concept and learning this reality that actually it's our thinking that's creating our feelings, it's not the circumstances. The circumstances happen and we can often not control the circumstances.

So it doesn't help us to try and want to just change the circumstance to fix the problem. So if your partner has betrayed you, that is the circumstance. And no amount of wishing or wanting that to be different is actually going to change the thing that happened.

That is the circumstance. It was the circumstance in my relationship and and I know it will be the circumstance in probably everybody that is listening to this podcast at least to some extent. And if you can't think of, even if infidelity hasn't impacted you directly, there will be other things in your relationships that no doubt will have.

Now you could spend the rest of your life just wishing that it hadn't happened. You could spend the rest of your life saying that the circumstance, in this case infidelity, is what's causing you to have ruined your life, to have ruined the fairy tale that is your life, to have stopped you from being able to have all of the things that you had wished and hoped for and to make it mean something about you. Like you're not a good enough husband, or you're not a good enough wife, or you didn't show up properly, or maybe there was something about the affair partner that they had that you didn't.

You can make it mean all of these things. But when we come back to it, the infidelity itself, the betrayal, is a circumstance. And if it's a circumstance and therefore we can't change it, or it's very difficult to change, certainly if it's happened in the past, then what comes next is our interpretation of that.

Like what it means to us and what we want to make it mean about us going forward. If I say that infidelity is the reason I feel betrayed, then I have no power because I can't change the infidelity. It happened.

There's nothing I can do about it. If, on the other hand, I say that I choose to feel betrayed because of the infidelity, however, this is not how I'm going to live my life from this point forward, then I'm taking responsibility for it. I'm owning the fact that the reason I feel betrayed is because of what I'm making it mean.

I'm making it mean that I wasn't good enough, or I should have seen it coming. I'm taking ownership of the fact that the reason I feel that is because of what I'm thinking, not because of the event itself. And, of course, there are always many, many different ways to interpret the same event.

Now, okay, the vast majority of people I speak to are impacted negatively by betrayal. I think that is fairly true, and I think it's also quite painful for both people to go through betrayal, often even the unfaithful partner, even when that isn't always obvious to the betrayed partner in the moment. And it also might seem strange to hear, and again I've said this before, that actually my wife having an affair in many ways was probably one of the best things that could have happened to me.

I didn't realise it. I certainly didn't feel or think that at the time, of course. There was a lot of pain, a lot of hurt, and a lot of uncertainty, and a lot of fear, and lots of anxiety, and worry, and self-sabotage, and all kinds of emotional experiences at the time.

But when we zoom out and look at the bigger picture, well, for a start, I wouldn't be here talking to you if that hadn't happened. And at the end of the day, betrayal is going to happen many, many times in life, in the world. It's just going to happen.

It's going to continue to happen, unfortunately. But it's a reality that as long as there are relationships, at least some proportion of those will involve infidelity. And if my own experience has allowed me to create a platform where I can help other people move forward from their unwanted experience, then actually that's a pretty good thing.

And I feel particularly good about it. And when I receive emails, and comments, and things in the same light, of course that's something I choose to feel good about. It's something that I really am proud of, the way that I've taken a societally judged negative experience and turned it into something positive.

So when we think about infidelity, and when we think about what it is that we want to make it mean about us, well, ask that question. Who do I want to be after betrayal? Who do I want to become after betrayal? What does not being married mean to me now? Or what does our marriage look like now after betrayal? Like, what do I want it to look like? And start creating your own experience. Start taking responsibility for your own experience.

And really use the situation, the circumstance that you have been dealt, and use it to your best advantage. Because nobody else is going to do that for you. So, doing the work.

Doing the work, to me, is taking responsibility. Owning your own experience. Showing up with intent and purpose each day.

Knowing that you are not perfect. Knowing that you will make mistakes. You will stumble and you will fall.

And that's okay, as long as you are falling forward. Failure is not an option. The options are to either learn or to grow.

And in doing either one of those things, you are always moving forward. And you are therefore always doing the work. If you find yourself in a stage in life where you are no longer doing anything actively to either maintain, build, grow, nurture your relationship, your friendship, particularly that one with yourself, then maybe that's the point where you ask that question.

Am I taking full responsibility for my situation? Am I taking full responsibility for my lived experience? And am I okay with that? One additional way that I see people take responsibility all the time is both in terms of those who are listening to this podcast and those who take their experience from this podcast on to my After The Affair community, which you can find on Facebook. You can visit the community at facebook.com forward slash groups forward slash After The Affair community. I will pop the link in the show notes.

But when I set this group up just a couple of months ago, I wasn't sure exactly which direction it was going to go. I just knew that I wanted to create a space to allow the people who I know are listening to this podcast to be able to connect with each other and support each other and provide something that was safe, whilst also not only having the element of the affair in common, but also knowing that they've all come through the same source. They've come through through me and directly, I guess.

And as the community has started to grow, that's exactly what's happened. And it's a really lovely place to be. And it has got to the point where, as people introduce themselves or share particular challenges that they're facing, other members of the community quickly dive in and start sharing inspiration, ideas, support, nurturing, advice, and every all combination of things dependent on the specific example that is raised.

And I actually don't need to interact that much. Of course I still am present in the group and I show up live in the group every week, where anybody can come and ask me any question and we just explore and have a chat for half an hour or so. But really it's more than me.

That's not the thing. The thing is the community and the community is made up by you. So if you're not already a member of the After The Affair community and you are on Facebook, I appreciate for those people who aren't, cannot access it.

But if you are, then please come and say hello and join the community. It's a private community. You will only get entry if authorised by me after you've completed the membership questions.

And yeah, I look forward to seeing you there. And as always, if anybody wants to contact me to discuss their personal situation, if you'd like to see what working together looks like, then reach out. You can either visit the website at lifecoachluke.com or you can contact me directly either on the social media channels, Instagram, Facebook or you can email me at luke at lifecoachluke.com. Okay, have a great week and I'll talk to you all very soon.