16. Best way to Heal

Being betrayed by someone you love turns your world upside down. The emotional toll can feel endless. Anger, confusion, grief, and self-doubt all swirl together. If you’re desperate to know how to heal (what actually works, and what keeps you stuck), this episode gives you clarity through a real-life lens.

In this episode of After the Affair, I walk you through the true stages of healing, using James’ personal story to illustrate what helps, what hinders, and how to keep moving forward. Whether you're in the early chaos or stuck in the cycle of sadness and anger, this conversation helps you refocus, reconnect, and reclaim your healing journey.

Key Takeaways:

• Understand the three major emotional stages of infidelity healing.

• Learn why grief often precedes growth and how to avoid getting stuck in it.

• Discover practical steps like journaling and perspective-shifting to process pain.

• Explore the power of reconnection with yourself, your values, and others.

• Find out how to ask the most important question in your healing journey: Is this still serving me?

💬 Reflection questions:

What stage of healing are you in right now? And is what you're doing truly helping you heal or just helping you cope?

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 the After The Affair podcast with myself Luke Shillings episode number 16. Before we get into today's main topic I want to answer a question that is often posed to me and that is what is the difference between me a coach and a therapist? Well I'm a runner and on occasion I get injured.

When I get injured I tend to go and see a physiotherapist, a sports physiotherapist. They give me a set of exercises to do, they'll give me a deep tissue massage, maybe they'll offer some other kind of treatment or procedure but ultimately they help me get back to my normal running functioning self. If I was aiming to achieve a particular say time for example I wanted to run a particular time over 10 kilometres or maybe I wanted to train for a marathon so I would then seek out the support of a running coach, somebody who could help me better my running form, my diet, my food management, my mental mindset when it comes to the last parts of that challenging race or over longer distances, improve my training regime so that I'm not just ad hoc and doing little bits all over the place which I am definitely guilty of.

So the therapist gets me back up to that sort of normal functioning and the coach, there's an overlap for definite of course, the coach takes you from that place of where you are to where you want to be and this is done through a variety of methods. Obviously there are technical strategies, actual ideas and concepts but a lot of it is all about mindset and how you can change your view on any given situation and approach it from a different perspective. So a good example might be if you think to a magic, remember those magic eyes, you'd see a lot of them back in the, I'd say the 1990s, when you look at the magic eye initially it's a complete blur and there's just too much information to comprehend and you can't really make sense of it but then you apply some intentional adjustment in focus.

You cross your eyes if you can and slowly move the image away from your face until you can find that sweet spot and then the 3D image comes into crystal clear focus. Once the image can be seen you can relax your concentration and you're able to just study that crisp lines, the crisp detail of that previously hidden 3D image. As we go through our normal day we experience things both in blurred and crystal vision.

I personally have always been able to see things from a bird's-eye view, I'm able to take into account the bigger picture and this can be very useful of course but it has its limitations as sometimes it's necessary to be able to focus on the details. The concept of life coaching as a whole can be viewed much in the same way. When you're struggling to make a clear headway in any given situation, you're trying to get from point A to point B, it's akin to being unable to focus on either the bird's-eye view or the detailed view and therefore the image in our mind is blurred.

There are stages of mastery of course, or at least improvement, as we are able to at first focus on one thing at the time, bird's-eye or zoomed in, but with repetition and practise the ability to switch between the focal points becomes much easier. Think back to that magic eye, when you first do it it's very hard, it's like you can't quite do it and then you go away and you come back again and you're able to get the 3D image to appear in your eye, in your eyesight, much quicker, much easier. So once you have seen the world and your thoughts and your surroundings through this new perspective, this new filter, it then becomes much harder to unsee.

So hopefully for anybody who was wondering then that's just a, you know, one small slither of insight into what coaching can do for you and how it can really change your life. Okay, so back on to the main event. Let's not sugarcoat this.

Being betrayed by someone you love is painful. There are many emotions that describe the experience, ranging from anger to sadness, bitterness to resentment, blame to shame and heartbreak to self-doubt. From my experience there are at least 40 and probably more common negative emotions that we experience when a loved one breaks our trust.

But what's the quickest way to get through it, to heal? What's the best way? Let's look at one person's journey and see what can be concluded. James was a 40 year old father of three. His wife had a three-month emotional and physical affair with an old friend.

After she had admitted to the affair, James went through the following stages. First he experienced a strange combination of shock but also relief. Shock that his marriage was in jeopardy but also some short-term relief because his suspicions had been confirmed.

He wasn't going mad after all. This was the discovery stage, the very beginning of the healing process. This period involved intense emotional swings and was scary and unnerving for James.

Although this is often a relatively short period, its intensity can be frightening. James felt like he had lost all control. He spent his car journey to and from work each day in tears, often pulling into the lay-by to scream at the top of his voice one minute and then break down the next.

So before we go any further, what would be the best thing for James to do here? When we feel these intense emotions, the temptation is to react, to display anger and to scream and shout. There is nothing inherently wrong with displaying your emotions, quite the opposite, but when you're on an emotional rollercoaster, James's temptation to want to get revenge one minute, run away the next and plead desperately to save the marriage in the following minute would just not prove useful. His best choice was to allow himself the emotional space to acknowledge that what he was feeling, although terrible, would not benefit from him reacting and doing something that he would later regret.

After the days and weeks passed, he began to move into the next stage of healing, the grief stage. This is when things began to slow down a little. Although the emotions were still running high, they had migrated more towards feelings of sadness, loss, grief and uncertainty.

It was at this stage that he began to mourn the loss of the relationship as he knew it. He began to relive events and wonder what he could have done differently. He started to really question what was real for him anymore.

Was the past really as he remembered it? What would the future look like? Everything he thought he knew was now up for debate. From here, James would now spend his car journey to work, listening to podcasts like this one, trying to learn how to heal. He'd join internet groups and forums, watch YouTube videos, basically seek any guidance he could find because he didn't know what to do next.

This stage of the process is critical, but it's also the place that many get stuck in for far longer than you might imagine. Not weeks and months, but sometimes years, in fact even decades So let's interject again. How could James help himself through this situation? I think that we can universally agree that most people would prefer not to be experiencing these types of emotions.

When we think back to the motivational triad from episode 15, it's easy to find ourselves cycling between two undesirable emotions like sadness and anger. It requires the least amount of effort because we are just avoiding or resisting one feeling and then bouncing back and forth indefinitely as a result. There are numerous things that he could do.

He could start to write down what he's thinking and feeling. Seeing it on paper looking back at him is the beginning of separating himself from the experience and beginning to look at things more objectively. He could literally list all of the facts, nothing more.

Learn to recognise that there are many things that are not within his control, therefore direct his energy towards the things that he can control. If he has a close trusted friend or family member now would be a good time to talk. Finding someone who would listen, much like the piece of paper that he writes on.

This is not so much about finding someone to be on your side or collectively against your partner, but more to provide you an outlet, a way of seeing and clearing your mind out. If this isn't available then a therapist, a counsellor or a coach like myself would be ideal. This does not need to be done as a couple, although that can also be very effective if both parties are willing.

He could ask himself, am I searching to find validation about how I feel? Is that why I'm spending all these times on the internet forums? Is that why I'm going in these Facebook groups and following all this information and, you know, and making myself feel better by seeing the misery that other people are experiencing? Is that really helping me progress? Is that helping me heal? And that's the question, is it helping me heal? And I think that's a question that we can all ask ourselves at any part during our journey. It doesn't matter what stage we're at or where we're going with it, there's a point where you think is what I'm doing still useful? Is it still serving me? And if it's not, then maybe it's time to look to the next step. Let's move forward, let's carry on with our lives.

The work that James carried out in the grief stage was the real foundation for helping him move forward towards acceptance. You see, acceptance is beyond that anger, is beyond that deep grief. It's a time where he could come to terms and come to peace with what had happened.

He began to separate himself from the identity that he previously believed he had and more towards the new one in which he was the author. This is not necessarily about forgiveness, it's about understanding, appreciating, accepting and being ready to take responsibility for himself and then move towards the next step, which is the reconnection stage. This stage of the healing process is usually aimed at couples who choose to stay together, you know, couples who have got to a point where the betrayed spouse is, so James in this case, is well on the journey of healing and that he recognises that love and hate are not directly related, which is something that isn't always obvious.

Many people say that you can't hate someone if you don't love them, the only reason you hate them is because of the love and actually they're completely unrelated. Love is amazing and love always feels amazing. Hate is a completely separate emotion, comes from a completely different set of thoughts.

Now of course not everybody is planning on staying together or maybe they don't even have the option of renewing or continuing the relationship. If that's the case, reconnection is still extremely important, it's a really important part of the healing process. First of all to reconnect with yourself, to reconnect with your independence, to reconnect with your values and then check against your values when you make decisions in the world.

Is what I've just done, is this decision I've just made in a line with my values? Reconnect with your self-love, remind yourself that you are in fact worthy and a hundred percent lovable and finally reconnect with others, reconnect with friends, family, your children and then new partners. So what conclusions can we draw from what we've discussed today? No matter your situation you will travel through phases, different stages in healing. They might not be all exactly the same as those listed today but the likelihood you'll recognise things that relate to your situation, even if the ones highlighted in James' situation aren't exact mirrors.

There is no time constraint on the different stages that you go through in your healing process. There is no set, well this bit should take this amount of time and the next bit should take that amount of time and this bit should take this amount of time and if I haven't done it by then then I'm not doing it right and there must be a better way so I'll go back on the internet and find the next thing and you can go around in circles indefinitely. What I want to offer is that you pick a route and you make intentional decisions and you ask that question, is what I'm doing right now helping me heal? Is it still serving me? If not then I need to look for something else.

But I also need to give each individual thing that I try chance and not bounce from one thing to another just because it's the easiest thing to do. So the best way to heal from infidelity is to know that your situation is unique and you don't have to follow the same path as anybody else. In fact when you try and follow the path of everybody else you get confused very quickly because everybody follows a different path.

There is no one path. There are stages which you will go through, there are situations that will be familiar and relatable but your overall experience is still going to be unique just to you. You have the responsibility and the autonomy to navigate that experience.

You get to take this situation and turn a misfortunate set of circumstances into an incredible outcome. If you can learn the skills to manage your mind and deal with the emotional experiences that infidelity and betrayal bring then that will build resilience and strength and give you opportunity and optimism for the future like you have never known. You can completely change your story.

So let's go!