74. 8 Steps to Healing part 1: Laying the Foundations

After betrayal, knowing where to start can feel overwhelming. The emotional weight, the unanswered questions, the deep grief; none of it is simple. But there is a way forward. In this episode, I share the first four steps to healing I took after infidelity turned my life upside down.

These aren't fluffy ideas or abstract theories. They're practical, transformative pillars that help you find clarity, rebuild belief, and gently open the door to forgiveness and growth. If you're looking for a structured yet compassionate way to move forward, this episode is your starting line.

Key Takeaways:

• Clarity is everything: Learn how to separate fact from emotional narrative and create a clear view of your reality.

• Rebuild belief in yourself: Discover how to restore self-worth and internal validation after betrayal.

• Forgiveness starts with you: Why self-forgiveness is essential, and how forgiveness doesn’t mean forgetting.

• Transform pain into growth: Use the hurt as fuel for personal insight, deeper self-awareness, and long-term healing.

• Foundations before fixes: Understand why healing must begin from within before trust or relationships can be rebuilt.

💬 Reflection Question:

Which of the first four steps are you currently navigating: clarity, belief, forgiveness, or growth?

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 74. I'm Luke Shillings and this week I want to offer a strategy, a framework if you like. Nobody said the path to healing would be easy.

In fact many destinations worth travelling towards often include obstacles, setbacks and unforeseen challenges. The journey through the aftermath of infidelity is no different. It's a path marked by true pain but also by the potential for profound growth and transformation.

In navigating my own journey of healing from betrayal I discovered that it's not just about moving away from the pain but moving towards a new understanding of self, of relationships and what it means to rebuild trust and love. This week I want to share with you the eight key steps that I went through in my healing process. These steps provided me with a roadmap through the wilderness of betrayal and into a place of renewed strength, clarity and hope.

So step one, clarity. We start with gaining clarity. It's about what happened, its impact on us and what we truly value.

This step is about cutting through the fog of the emotions to see the situation and our paths forward more clearly. Step two, belief. Next we build on the foundation of clarity with belief.

Belief in ourselves, in our resilience and in the possibility of a brighter future. This step is crucial for restoring our self-esteem and nurturing the hope necessary for the journey ahead. Step three, forgiveness.

Forgiveness is where we really begin to release the burdens of the past. It involves forgiving ourselves for any misplaced blame or guilt and when ready moving towards forgiving the one who betrayed us. This step isn't about condoning the betrayal but about freeing ourselves from the chains of bitterness and resentment.

Step four is growth. Growth is about turning the pain of betrayal into a catalyst for personal development. This step is where we learn from our experience, gaining insights into ourselves, our relationships and how we can emerge stronger and far more self-aware.

That leads on to step five which is rebuilding. Rebuilding is focused on trust, either in the context of repairing a relationship or in preparing ourselves for future relationships. This step is about establishing new healthier patterns of interaction and communication.

To move beyond that we need a vision and step six is just that. With a foundation of healing in place we turn our attention to defining a new future. This step is about envisioning what happiness and success look like after betrayal and setting the goals that align with our true selves and our real core values.

Then step seven, connection. Of course nobody should walk this path alone. In this step I really want to emphasise the importance of building a support network and fostering new meaningful relationships based on mutual respect and shared values.

And then finally step eight, celebration. This is where we can celebrate our progress. Acknowledging and honouring each step forward helps us really reinforce our growth and maintain momentum on a journey of healing and self-discovery.

These steps aren't linear, they're iterative. Each one building on the last. Sometimes overlapping or revisiting as we grow and as our needs change.

They're not a quick fix but rather a framework for understanding and action that can guide us through the darkest times towards a future filled with new possibilities. So in this episode I'm going to dive much deeper into steps one to four. Clarity, belief, forgiveness and growth.

And then in next week's episode we'll continue on that journey following up with rebuilding, vision, connection and celebration. So be sure to check out that episode when it airs. But now let's start with clarity.

I like to think of clarity as like a beacon that guides us through the fog of confusion and pain that follows betrayal. It's about really peeling back the layers of the emotion and the facts and trying to really understand the raw truth about our situation. It's one of the reasons that when people come to work with me one of the first things we do is go through the process of facts versus stories.

We're separating the truth, the unquestionable elements of our situation from the emotional narrative that our minds create that often lead to an overwhelming sense of discomfort. To achieve clarity we must first confront the reality of the infidelity itself. However painful that might be.

This means acknowledging what happened, understanding the sequence of events. Now I don't mean going and trying to establish every individual thing that happened between your partner and the affair partner, every single detail of the affair. That's not necessary.

But understanding your part. What happened for you? When did you have suspicions? What did you suspect? Why did you suspect those things? What happened? When were you told? When did you discover? What are the definitives about your situation? And really recognising the impact that those things have on our emotional well-being. But clarity goes beyond just understanding the betrayal.

It's also about introspection. Really examining our values, our needs and our desires. What do we truly value in our relationships? What do we truly value in ourselves? What are our non-negotiables? This introspective journey helps us to define what's most important and guides our decisions in moving forward.

To really gain clarity I encourage journaling as a tool. I recommend the method of the thought download. This is writing down your thoughts, thinking of thoughts a little bit like sentences in your mind.

I've spoken about this on the podcast numerous times before but this is really a really effective way of getting what's in your head out on paper so that you can reflect back on it. It's a really powerful way to start that introspective journey. Particularly if it's something that you either don't do naturally or is something that you've just not done before at all.

This can really help to process the complex emotions and thoughts that are often swirling around after betrayal. Additionally setting aside quiet time for reflection can also aid in gaining insights into what you truly want and what you really would like your future to look like. Okay so step two, belief.

So once we've gained clarity, actually just before we move on to belief, there's a reason that clarity is step one. Out of all of the eight steps that I'm going to talk about there is no true order with the exception of step one. I believe that clarity, getting crystal clear on your situation, understanding it very clearly is the most important part.

In fact actually I dug out one of my old notepads, one of my own journals from shortly after my separation and it was what are the facts? Well the facts that I wrote down back then were the marriage is over, I no longer live with my children and my wife, my partner is now my ex-partner and will be my ex-wife, she will always be our children's mother and always be in my life in some capacity, her relationships and friendships are no longer affected by me, she can do as she pleases, I no longer live in the family home, I love my children, I didn't cause this, I should not feel guilt and her and the affair partners decisions were theirs, they chose to have the affair, it was not me. Now this is obviously not an exhaustive list but it goes some way to explain what I was trying to do. I was trying to really get clarity on my situation so that I could understand I had a foundation of which I could then move forward.

Okay so back on to belief. The next step is to build a foundation of belief. Belief in ourselves, in our resilience and in the possibility of a brighter future.

This step is crucial for overcoming the self-doubt and the shattered self-esteem that often accompany betrayal. Start by really affirming your worth, you are not defined by your partner's actions. In fact I was having a conversation with a guy just yesterday, he was talking about how he often put his worth into the hands of other people, he'd always sought external validation throughout his life and meant that trying to be in a relationship where he wasn't getting that validation didn't feel fulfilling and therefore would lead him to, you know, seek that validation elsewhere in a variety of different ways.

This is often because people don't believe they are worthy, they don't believe that they deserve respect and love and fidelity and this is obviously magnified after we have been betrayed because it's almost like, see look you're not worth it, but of course that's absolute rubbish, that is not true at all. Your worth is not about you and what I mean by that is you are all, every one of you are a hundred percent worthy and your worthiness really comes from another person's ability, another person's capacity to see your worth. You are always worthy but we can choose to be around people or choose to not be around people who see the worth in us.

Now this isn't the same as seeking validation, this is about really believing that you are worthy regardless of their opinions, regardless of their actions and their behaviours and what you notice as you start to strengthen and deepen that self-worth, the people that can see that for really what it truly is start to gravitate towards you naturally and the people that can't start to move away. Now of course we're sometimes tied with familial relationships which can make these things a little bit more complicated, at least on the surface, but the basic premise still remains. So you can practise things like self affirmations that really reinforce your value and your strengths and remember healing really does start within.

Belief in your resilience is key. Reflect on the past challenges that you have overcome. Sometimes it's easy to forget all of the things that we've achieved, we only focus on the handful of things that we believe that we failed at.

But this actual history of resilience, the things that you have achieved no matter how small, is proof of your ability to navigate adversity. Believe that you have strength to overcome this too. Cultivating a belief in a better future is also vital.

It might be hard to imagine a positive future in the midst of pain, but maintaining hope is essential. Hope is not something that you should depend on, but it is something that you can have. It's certainly a guiding light, it's something to drive and strive towards.

It's like having the destination popped into your sat-nav, even if there's roadworks and distractions on the way. It's that guiding, it's something that you are aiming for, but you are not dependent on it. Visualise a future where you are happy and fulfilled.

There's a great exercise where you can write a letter to yourself from your future self, imagining that you are five years ahead, three years ahead, ten years ahead, whatever it is, some distance in the future and you've healed and you've moved forward and you've moved past everything that you're currently experiencing and you're writing a letter back to your current self. What would that person say? I'm not gonna put words into your mouth, what do you think that person would say? Try it, it's a well worth exercise. If you need some templates or some prompts then please reach out and I'll send something over to you.

This vision will really serve as a powerful motivator on your healing journey. Okay, on to step three, forgiveness. Forgiveness is complicated.

It's also a very deeply personal step. It involves two dimensions really, forgiving ourselves and forgiving the person who betrayed you. Self-forgiveness is about releasing the guilt and self-blame that we carry ourselves.

It's common to wonder if we could have done something differently or to blame ourselves for the infidelity. But it's important to understand that the decision to be unfaithful was not ours, it was not yours, it was your partner's. Forgive yourself for any perceived shortcomings or mistakes.

This is crucial for healing and really important in the whole process of moving forward. Forgiving the partner is a more complex process and also doesn't happen overnight. There are differing schools of thought as to whether forgiving the partner or forgiving the other person is a true requirement for healing.

I don't believe that it's necessary for all of the other seven steps that we're talking about. I believe that we can still work through all of those independent of forgiving the other person. Ultimately forgiveness of the other person really is more about letting go of the hold that that resentment and that anger that you are experiencing has over you.

You are the only person experiencing the resentment and the anger, the other person isn't. So it's actually in your best interest to forgive because it releases that. Now I think some people get tied up between the forgiving and trusting.

Now because you have forgiven somebody, because you have forgiven their actions, maybe you've understood it, you've accepted it and you've forgiven it, it doesn't necessarily mean that you are then willing to choose to trust them the same way that you did before. That can be edited and adjusted dependent on, well, all manner of things. There is no right or wrong way.

But I really do think it's important to remember that forgiveness is a gift that you give yourself, not the other person. It's not about the other person, it's about you. Okay, step four, growth.

The pain of betrayal, while obviously devastating, can also be a powerful catalyst for personal growth and personal development and completely change everything beyond the betrayal itself. I know that's certainly what's happened for me and I know everybody's journey is going to be different and there's going to be different circumstances and details at play, but it really truly provides an opportunity to look at the future in a way that perhaps you haven't done before. Really taking ownership of your own lived experience without the necessity and dependency of the other people that are involved.

I'm not saying that you don't want to include those in your life, but sometimes we can get so tied up into the mundane, routine, groundhog day type experience that some people definitely do live in in their relationships. I know this is not everybody, but for many people this is true. But this step of growth is about turning adversity into opportunity, learning from the experience and emerging stronger.

Growth involves gaining a deeper self-awareness, understanding your strengths, your weaknesses and the patterns that govern your relationships. It's an opportunity to re-evaluate what you want from your relationships and how you relate to others. This step also involves developing new skills and new insights, for instance improving communication, becoming a better listener, learning effective conflict resolution strategies or just setting healthier boundaries.

These skills not only help in healing but also in building a more fulfilling relationship in the future, either with your existing partner or into new relationships. Try to engage in activities that promote growth. This could be reading books, attending workshops or seeking professional support.

Each of these activities offers a new perspective and new tools for personal development. So there you have it, steps one to four. Gain clarity, form your beliefs, acknowledge that forgiveness is really an option for you and highly recommended and begin that journey of growth.

Next week we'll dive deeper into rebuilding, vision, connection and of course celebration. So I look forward to going into those in much more detail next time. But just just a thought, are you a subscriber of my mailing list? Give it a try, look I don't expect you to hang around forever, adding these pillars to your healing journey can really make a difference.

So if you want to check it out just visit lifecoachluke.com forward slash subscribe and sign up today. Otherwise I'll speak to you all next week.