166. Why You’re Still Suffering After Betrayal

The pain after betrayal can feel all-consuming, like you’re trapped in a never-ending spiral of questions, what-ifs, and overwhelming emotions. But what if the real weight you’re carrying isn’t just the pain itself… but the meaning you’ve attached to it?

In this episode of After the Affair, I’ll guide you through one of the most transformational shifts in healing: the difference between discomfort and suffering. You’ll learn how to stop feeding the mental loops that keep you stuck and discover a grounded, compassionate way to start feeling better, without needing the pain to disappear first.

Key Takeaways:

• How to tell the difference between discomfort (which is necessary) and suffering (which is optional)

• Why your brain’s attempt to “solve” betrayal may be keeping you stuck

• A simple question to identify whether you’re trapped in emotional fantasy or present-moment truth

• Practical tools to shift out of rumination, self-blame, and fear-based thinking

• How naming your emotions and dropping into your body can start your betrayal recovery journey

💬 Reflection Questions:

Have you noticed yourself looping in painful thoughts that never lead anywhere? Are you feeling trapped in suffering or learning to sit with discomfort?

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. Welcome once again to the After The Affair podcast I'm your host Luke Shillings and today you're listening to episode number 166. Okay I want to talk about something that probably defines a fairly significant amount of your healing.

Yet it's something that I don't think many people really draw that much attention to. Maybe we don't really understand the difference between the two. Because after betrayal many people assume that they're drowning because the pain itself is unbearable.

But that's not quite the truth. What's unbearable isn't the pain, it's the meaning that we attach to the pain. It's the thoughts that spiral, the stories that grow arms and legs and the predictions, the comparisons, the self-blame.

Discomfort is the pain of reality. Suffering is the pain of interpretation and until you understand the difference everything feels ten times heavier than it needs to be. So today I want to talk about the key differences between discomfort which is welcome, might I add, and suffering which is less welcome.

So let's start with discomfort. Discomfort I suppose is like the raw emotional pain that comes with being human. It's unavoidable, it's honest and it is immediate.

Discomfort can show up as the grief of loss or the shock of discovery, maybe the sadness that washes over you, the fear of unknown, the anger of what has happened, the loneliness that hits at 2 a.m., the confusion about what's real and what isn't. This is the pain that arrives right in front of you. It's the pain that sits in your chest, it's tight and it's heavy.

It's the pain that stings your eyes and shakes your hands and makes you feel completely empty. It's real, it's immediate, it's part of being alive and even though it feels almost unbearable, discomfort always moves. It comes in waves, it rises, it peaks and it falls and if you allow it discomfort passes through the body just like weather.

It hurts but it heals. Suffering however is different. Suffering is the secondary layer that you unconsciously add on top of discomfort.

It's the mental chatter that refuses to let the pain complete its cycle. Suffering sounds more like this will never get better, I should have seen this coming, they chose them because I'm not enough, what if I never trust again, I must have been a fool, what if they're still lying to me, what if I make the wrong decision. Suffering is catastrophising, ruminating, replaying imagined conversations, it's trying to rewrite the past, worrying about a future that hasn't happened yet, attaching meaning to every emotional twitch, assuming that you know what other people think and creating stories to fill the gaps in information, something our brains are incredibly efficient at, just not necessarily that good at.

Suffering takes the pure pain of discomfort and it multiplies it. Discomfort belongs to the present moment, suffering lives in the past and in the future and that distinction alone changes everything. Betrayal is the perfect storm of conditions for suffering to really take hold.

Why? Well because the mind cannot tolerate an unresolved story, it hates gaps, it hates uncertainty, it hates unanswered questions. So the moment betrayal creates this void in your understanding, your brain quickly rushes in to fill it completely, but it fills it with guesses, fears, worst-case scenarios, distortions, comparisons, self-criticism, imagined narratives. The nervous system is completely dysregulated, your brain is trying to protect you from further harm and in the process it creates more harm mentally, emotionally, physically.

Suffering arises because your brain is trying to create certainty where no certainty exists and the truth is suffering feels inevitable because your brain thinks it's helping you survive but it's not, it's keeping you trapped in a loop of fear. There's a difference between thoughts and thinking. Thoughts are those sentences in our mind that just arise.

We can never predict exactly what thoughts are going to appear in any given moment and we have thousands of them every single day. Thinking on the other hand is taking one of those thoughts and expending energy in believing its truthfulness, in helping it base as a foundation for an additional narrative that's going to lead to usually more suffering. Suffering exists at the level of thinking whereas discomfort exists at the level of feeling and this is one of those really important distinctions.

Discomfort moves through you whereas suffering keeps you stuck. Discomfort it peaks and it ebbs suffering on the other hand loops. Discomfort hurts the body, suffering exhausts the mind.

Discomfort signals that mattered, this hurts, I need support whereas suffering says you deserved it, you caused it, you'll never recover. Discomfort leads to healing, suffering leads to self-doubt. Learning to separate these two experiences is the turning point in recovery.

Let's reignite the metaphor I used in last week's episode to really bring this into focus. So if you remember we imagine that we're at the bottom of a deep hole. It's dark, it's frightening and it's isolating.

You can't see a way out. That is discomfort. It's the raw immediate pain of betrayal.

Then one day remember we spot that rope, in this case therapy. You pull yourself towards it, you learn how to use it and slowly it helps you climb out of the darkness. That rope it saved you.

But here's the thing, once you're at the top the rope is no longer helpful. It can't tell you where to go next. It can't teach you to walk, rebuild, connect or choose.

If you keep relying on the rope the only way for it to remain useful is to climb back down into the hole. That is suffering. Slipping back into the mental loop that returns you to fear.

What you need now isn't another rope. You need tools, guidance, a new way to move forward and that's where coaching sits. Not in the hole with you but in the ground above you, helping you learn to walk again without falling back into suffering.

So an obvious question right now might be, how do I tell the difference between whether I'm feeling discomfort or suffering? So here's the simple way to tell the difference. Discomfort is felt in the body whereas suffering is created in the mind. So perhaps you could ask yourself, is the pain coming from what is happening right now or from what I'm imagining, remembering or predicting? If the answer is right now, you're in discomfort.

If the answer is anything else, you're in suffering. Discomfort feels heavy, physical but rooted. Suffering feels frantic, looping and chaotic.

Discomfort is finite. Suffering is infinite, unless we interrupt it. So that leads on to the next question.

How do we stop turning discomfort into suffering? Well, first of all, let's just get clear. We can't stop the discomfort and nor should we. You're not supposed to.

You can stop turning that discomfort into suffering and here's how. Start by naming the discomfort. This is sadness.

This is grief. This is fear. Simply naming the emotion gives you the ability to reduce the suffering almost immediately, at least to some extent.

Then we drop into the body. Where do you feel it? How strong is it? Is it moving or is it still? This interrupts the mental layer. It takes us away from all of the catastrophising, the ruminating, the wishing the past was different and panicking about the future and it focusses on what we are experiencing right now in this moment.

We can then shift towards separating what is true from what is our own internal narrative. It's the fact from the story. The fact might be they said they would be home by six.

The story is they're cheating again. Then we can remove the meaning and all we need to do is repeat this sentence. This emotion does not define me.

Continue by staying with that discomfort. If you allow it, the wave, it will pass. If you fight it, you create suffering.

Finally, focus on what's true right now. Not what might be true in an hour, a day or five years. Learning this distinction is the very difference between drowning in pain and surviving it.

So remember, name the discomfort, drop into the body, separate the fact from the story, remove the meaning, sit and stay with that discomfort and then focus on what's true right now. Discomfort is part of being human. It's part of healing.

It's part of recovering from betrayal. Suffering though, that's optional. Not because you can simply think positive, but because you can learn to separate what is painful from what is self-punishing.

When you stop feeding the stories, the pain becomes lighter, cleaner, more manageable and your healing becomes clearer, calmer and grounded in truth, not fear. You are strong enough to feel discomfort. You always have been.

What you don't need to carry is the suffering. That part you can put down. You have my permission.

If today's episode has helped you see the difference between discomfort and suffering and if you're ready to break the mental loops that keep you stuck, this is exactly the work we do inside coaching. Therapy can help you survive the hole. Coaching helps you build a life outside of it.

If you're ready for that next step, reach out. Contact me luke at lifecoachluke.com or come and join me over on Instagram at my lifecoach luke. You do not have to keep suffering.

You just need the tools to work with discomfort in a completely different way. So until next time, take care of yourself and I'll talk to everybody very soon.