174. Are You Being Driven by Fear?

After betrayal, life can feel like it's been turned upside down. Suddenly, you’re questioning everything: your relationship, your choices, and even your sense of self. Fear quietly seeps into the cracks left by infidelity, showing up not as panic, but as the subtle pressure to make sense of the chaos, to feel in control again.

In this episode of After the Affair, I unpack how fear can disguise itself as logic, urgency, or productivity, steering your decisions when you need grounding the most. You'll learn how to recognise when fear is at the wheel and how to start navigating life with self-trust instead.

If you’re feeling the weight of needing answers, clarity, or relief, this conversation will help you pause and recalibrate.

Key Takeaways:

• Understand how fear masquerades as sensible thinking after betrayal.

• Learn why self-blame can feel safer than uncertainty, and how to move beyond it.

• Discover the emotional cost of making rushed decisions for the sake of relief.

• Recognise the difference between fear-based reactions and values-based choices.

• Gain tools to honour your healing pace without needing certainty first.

💬 Reflection Question:

Have you noticed fear shaping your decisions or thoughts since the betrayal?

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 welcome back it's the After The Affair podcast I'm your host Luke Shillings and today you're listening to episode number 174. Today's episode is about something that can often shape far more of our behaviour than most of us really realise.

Fear. Not the obvious kind not panic or terror but the subtle everyday fear that sits underneath many of our choices especially after betrayal. When people hear the word fear they tend to imagine something quite dramatic.

Often it's scenes of being chased, being threatened, being in significant immediate danger but most fear doesn't announce itself like that. Most fear just blends in. It sounds reasonable, it sounds responsible, it sounds like common sense.

Fear often disguises itself as planning, urgency, logic, productivity, just wanting clarity and because it sounds so sensible we rarely question it, we just follow it. But at its core fear has one job. It's to restore a sense of control when something feels uncertain.

That doesn't mean that fear itself is bad, it just means that it's protective but protection isn't the same thing as wisdom. Fear doesn't ask what's best for me long-term, fear asks how do I make this stop right now. That distinction is really quite important and especially after betrayal.

But let's step away from betrayal just for a moment. I want you to think about everyday life. Perhaps you've heard somebody who or know somebody maybe even you who've stayed in your job not because you enjoy it but because well it's secure and at least you know what you're dealing with, you know what to expect.

Maybe you might know somebody who avoids a difficult conversation not because they don't care but because they don't want to rock the boat or they don't want to make things worse. What about somebody who keeps themselves constantly busy? Not because they're fulfilled but because slowing down would mean feeling something uncomfortable. Maybe it's just being with their own thoughts.

That's enough to motivate somebody to keep busy. Have you ever come across somebody who maybe researches obsessively particularly when they're making a new purchase? They read every article, they look at all the reviews, they listen to every possible opinion trying to help them define which is the best possible outcome. They ask everybody else what they do because if I could just understand enough I might feel calmer.

The thing is none of these people would say I'm afraid. Instead they'd probably say well I'm being sensible, I'm being logical Luke, I'm being careful, I'm just thinking things through. Surely that's what everybody does? But of course underneath all of this is the same driver.

There's a fear of uncertainty, a fear of discomfort and a fear of not knowing what happens next. This is important. The human nervous system is far more distressed by uncertainty than just by bad news itself.

Even though we don't particularly like bad news, bad news does give us something to orient ourselves around. It might be uncomfortable, it might hurt, but it's solid. Whereas uncertainty that leaves us floating.

That's often why people choose seemingly unusual situations. Maybe it's a painful truth over an unknown future. Maybe it's a bad relationship over being alone.

Maybe it's a rushed decision instead of waiting. Certainty, even painful certainty, can feel safer than ambiguity. And after betrayal, ambiguity well it explodes.

Betrayal isn't just emotional pain, it's a collapse of predictability. Before betrayal you may not have felt safe, but you felt orientated. You knew the shape of your life, you knew who your partner was, you knew what tomorrow roughly looked like.

But after betrayal the story fractures. The future blurs, trust becomes unstable, assumptions no longer hold. Your nervous system is suddenly operating without any kind of map, no GPS, no navigation system.

So it does what any nervous system would do, it looks for certainty. So let's slow things down a little bit and just name some of the things that fear might be trying to resolve. Maybe it's the hunger for answers.

Questions like, why did this happen? Do they still love me? Was any of it real? Will it happen again? These questions aren't just curiosity, they are attempts to stabilise the ground. Fear says, if I can understand this fully I'll be okay. But no explanation ever fully satisfies, because the pain isn't intellectual, it's relational.

Maybe another thing it's looking for is the pressure. Fear creates a pressure to decide. Many people feel an intense urge to decide quickly, stay or leave, forgive or walk away, commit or detach.

Not because they're ready, but because deciding feels like relief. Fear would rather you choose something than sit in not knowing, even if that choice doesn't actually fit yet. Then there's hyper vigilance and monitoring, really really common after betrayal specifically.

Maybe it's checking phones, reading somebody's tone, scanning behaviour, watching for changes. This isn't you being crazy by the way, it's fear trying to rebuild predictability in an environment that no longer feels trustworthy. Control feels safer than uncertainty.

This next one, self-blame. This one really matters. Fear will often prefer it was my fault over I couldn't have known.

Why? Because self blame gives the illusion of control. If it was your fault then you can prevent it next time, and if it wasn't then the world is less controllable than you thought. Fear is not a fan of that.

Now certainty can often feel like the solution. After betrayal certainty starts to feel like the answer to everything. If you could just be sure, like sure that they wouldn't do it again, sure you're making the right decision, sure that you won't regret this, then you could just relax.

But the truth we have to sit with is certainty is not available in situations that matter the most. Love doesn't come with guarantees. Trust doesn't come with proof.

Rebuilding doesn't come with certainty. Fear keeps promising something it simply cannot deliver. Fear is protective, but it's limited.

Fear absolutely is not an enemy, but it is somewhat short-sighted. Fear is concerned with relief, comfort, immediate safety. It is not concerned with, in fact it has no interest in meaning, alignment, or who you become over any extended period of time.

And when I say extended period of time I'm meaning anything beyond now or the immediate future, the next few minutes. That's why fear-driven decisions often feel relieving at first, but then constricting later. Not because you chose wrong, but because fear chose for you.

So instead of asking what do I need to feel certain, try asking what would I choose if fear wasn't driving, or what pace feels respectful of me right now, or maybe even what choice lets me keep my self-respect even if I'm scared. Fear doesn't need to disappear, it just doesn't get to decide. Think about it.

Certainty and uncertainty. I've spoken about this before on the podcast and I think it's a huge factor. Certainty isn't real.

I mean we can get very close to being certain about something, we can repeat scientific experiments and the results that we get seem to be consistent, providing all of the variables are controlled. But of course real life and relationships and connection and communication, they don't have all of these controllable variables, at least not in the way that we would like them. And even if we did, like what would that actually look like? Is that something we really desire? Just imagine if you could control every single possible outcome, be that in your work, in your just personal self experience, be that in your relationships, or anything else that you can imagine.

If you could control every single outcome, then what you are essentially doing is predicting the future. You are able to know with certainty that something is going to happen in a specific way. So when we turn the dial up on certainty, what we're left with is zero uncertainty.

Now I don't know about you, but for me actually some of my most wonderful human experiences are when I wasn't expecting them. Some of the biggest surprises, the joy, the moments of delight have been because I wasn't expecting them. When I've been in connection with friends and family, and there's been moments of humour that have just sort of exploded in this joy, and like love has filtered throughout the room just based on the connection that's been in that moment, well that didn't come from certainty.

If I already knew that was going to happen, it probably wouldn't have felt so good. So it might be worth asking yourself what else fear is protecting you from. It might be protecting you from some perceived danger, but it might also be protecting you from something wonderful that you just don't know about yet.

Like how many things have gone surprisingly well when you took a risk, you took a gamble, you took that leap of faith. You know that is so true for my life. There have been so many times where I've stepped outside of my comfort zone, by definition gone into a space where I felt very uncertain, very uncomfortable.

I can't dispute that, very uncomfortable, but in doing that I was forcing myself to grow. And then guess what? I almost always walk out the other side of that experience feeling like so much better, so much more confident about myself. Helps reinforce my own sense of value, yet fear was trying to kind of keep me away from that.

Fear is reactive, whereas values are directional. Fear asks how do I stop this feeling, values ask how do I want to show up while I'm feeling it. The thing is, after betrayal you don't need certainty to move forward, which is a good job otherwise you wouldn't move forward.

What you need is self-trust and self-trust is built by making choices that align with who you want to be. It's being in line with your values, even whilst the fear is fully present. It means you don't have to decide today, it means you don't have to know the outcome, you don't have to feel calm first.

You're allowed to move slowly, to pause, to gather information without forcing clarity. Fear can be there, it just doesn't get the steering wheel. If you've noticed fear driving your agency, your rumination or your need for answers specifically after betrayal, that doesn't mean you're weak.

It means your nervous system is trying to protect you in an uncertain landscape. The work isn't to eliminate the fear, it's simply to recognise it for what it is and to choose from a steadier place anyway. You don't need certainty to heal, you need permission to move forward without it.

If fear feels like it's running the show right now, support can help you slow things down and reconnect with your internal compass. Through one-to-one coaching and the After The Affair Collective, I help people navigate uncertainty without rushing themselves into decisions they're not ready for. You can learn more at lifecoachluke.com or reach out directly either luke at lifecoachluke.com via email or DM on Instagram at mylifecoachluke.

You don't need to outrun the fear, you just don't need to Alright, I'll talk to you all next week. Take care.