Why Marriage Counseling Can Backfire After Infidelity

Lora Cheadle in black blazer podcast cover

Why marriage counseling can backfire after infidelity is something more women need to understand. After betrayal, almost everyone says the same thing: “You two need counseling.”

But what if rushing into couples therapy immediately after infidelity is actually making things worse?

In this deeply honest and eye-opening episode, Lora Cheadle shares why betrayal is not simply a marriage problem — it’s a nervous system injury, an identity crisis, and a reality-shattering trauma that requires stabilization before relationship repair.

Drawing from her own experience recovering after her husband’s multiple affairs, Lora explains why so many betrayed partners leave counseling feeling blamed, overwhelmed, emotionally flooded, or even more disconnected from themselves. She explores the “assumption trap” that infidelity is caused by relationship problems, why traditional couples counseling can unintentionally backfire early on, and what healing-focused support should actually prioritize first.

This episode is not anti-therapy and it’s not anti-marriage. It’s a compassionate, trauma-informed conversation about why healing begins with you — your safety, your nervous system, your clarity, and your self-trust.

If you’ve been betrayed and feel confused, pressured, dysregulated, or like you’ve completely lost yourself, this episode will help you understand why.

 

Top 3 Takeaways

  1. Infidelity is not just a marriage problem.

Betrayal shatters your sense of reality, identity, trust, and nervous system safety. Before working on the relationship, the betrayed partner often needs stabilization, orientation, and emotional safety first.

  1. Traditional couples counseling can unintentionally backfire early on.

When therapy focuses too quickly on “relationship dynamics,” many betrayed partners leave feeling blamed, self-monitoring, emotionally flooded, or pressured to fix the relationship before their own trauma has been addressed.

  1. Healing starts with rebuilding yourself — not rushing decisions.

Before deciding whether to stay, leave, forgive, reconcile, or rebuild the marriage, it’s essential to regulate the nervous system, reconnect with self-trust, and create clarity from a grounded place instead of survival mode.

 

Favorite Quotes

“Infidelity is not a marriage problem. It is an individual’s problem.”

“People cheat because they can’t meet their own needs.”

“Marriage counseling assumes two regulated adults discussing relationship dynamics.”

“Betrayal involves one deeply dysregulated person trying to survive the collapse of their reality.”

“It’s not about pretending everything is okay. It’s about rebuilding you and your truth.”

“When you’re bleeding out, you stop the blood flow first.”

“You don’t need to rush your healing. But you do need to take care of yourself first.”

Free Betrayal Recovery Guide

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Ready for More?

I'm Lora Cheadle

I’m Lora Cheadle, JD, CHt—a betrayal recovery expert, attorney, TEDx speaker, and author of FLAUNT! and It’s Not Burnout, It’s Betrayal. After uncovering my husband’s 15-year affair, I turned my own pain into purpose, helping high-achieving women reclaim their identity, power, and joy. As a trauma-aware coach and somatic therapist, I blend legal clarity with emotional and spiritual healing to guide women toward full-spectrum recovery.

Lora's Books

Flaunt! by Lora Cheadle
It’s Not Burnout, It’s Betrayal: 5 Tools to FUEL UP & Thrive

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  • Intro/outor [00:00:01]: You’re listening to Flaunt. Find your sparkle and create a life you love after Infidelity or Betrayal. A podcast for women who’ve been betrayed by their intimate partner and want to turn their devastation into an invitation to reclaim themselves and their worth. Tune in weekly so you can start making sense of it all and learn how to be okay on the inside, no matter what goes on on the outside. Download your free betrayal recovery toolkit@betrayalrecoveryguide. Lora Cheadle [00:00:32]: Foreign. There’s a moment after betrayal where almost everybody says the same thing. They say something like, you two need counseling or are you seeing a marriage counselor? And honestly, on the surface, that advice really does make sense. Because if the marriage is broken, how are we going to fix the the marriage if the marriage is hurting, somebody’s had an affair. We’ve got to fix the marriage. The marriage is the problem. But here’s the thing. After years of working with women, recovering from betrayal, and after living through my own husband’s multiple affairs, I have really come to believe something very different. Lora Cheadle [00:01:26]: I don’t think that infidelity is a marriage problem. Infidelity is not a marriage problem. It is an individual’s problem. It’s not a marriage problem. It injures the marriage, absolutely. It creates an identity crisis for the person who has been betrayed. It injures your nervous system. It completely shatters your reality and your perception of your past it in the future. Lora Cheadle [00:01:56]: But it is not a marriage problem. Now. That’s not to say your marriage didn’t have problems. I think all marriages have problems. My marriage was great in a lot of ways and also was really toxic in a lot of ways. But the infidelity and the marriage are very separate things. And when we rush straight into couples counseling before stabilizing ourselves as individuals, we can really create more confusion. We can create more self doubt and self blame. Lora Cheadle [00:02:36]: Like what was I not doing in the relationship? We can create pressure to show up for the other person to show up for the marriage before addressing our own emotional harm. And I want to be really, really clear that when you have been betrayed, there is huge emotional harm. It is completely disrupted your identity. And the very first thing to do is to take care of yourself, not launch into fixing the marriage. Especially because so many of us have been the fixers in the relationship anyway. We have been the ones who bite our tongues, who swallow our needs, who lean in, who drive the relationship train. And when we’re injured and we go to marriage counseling or couples therapy so often, it just puts us right back into the role of, now I have to do more to fix this thing. Now I have to do more to fix this problem that was not my problem, that I did not create. Lora Cheadle [00:03:56]: And it ignores the reality of how injured and how hurt we are. I remember we. Because we did the same thing. We went to our couples therapist, and I remember walking out of sessions stressed. I remember driving two sessions, being anxious, like, having that knot in my gut feeling. This combination of having to prove that my husband did something really bad to prove he was the bad one, not me. And, like, this underlying belief that I needed to get the counselor on my side so they could see my story, so they could see how hurt I was. And it’s not that I was. Lora Cheadle [00:04:48]: It’s not that I was just willing to let myself be seen. I had this sense that I had to prove my injuries. And I was also so afraid that I would be blamed. I was so afraid to talk about all of this stuff in the past because I didn’t want to hear from the counselor, like, oh, you should have done this. You were so bad not knowing this. So I also didn’t want to feel horrible with my husband. And so often we would leave a session and then we’d have a fight about something because we drug up all this stuff from the past. And then I’m fighting about when the kids were three years old and the sippy cup of milk spilled. Lora Cheadle [00:05:40]: But what I needed was somebody to take care of me because I had just been betrayed. Hello. My whole world had just fallen apart, and here we are talking about sippy cups. And when the kids were four. Like, that is not helpful. That was flooding my system completely. Suddenly we’re talking about what I could have done to calm his nervous system when the kids were little. But wait, wait, wait. Lora Cheadle [00:06:08]: I had just been betrayed. Shouldn’t this be about me? And that experience is so common. And I hear so many people saying things like that, like, counseling is not working. I’m so uncomfortable. I’m so stressed. We get in fights afterwards. I hate it. It brings up all this stuff. Lora Cheadle [00:06:30]: I hadn’t thought about that in years, and now suddenly we’re focusing on that. And that’s what I want to talk about today. Because marriage counseling, couples therapy, it can sometimes really backfire after infidelity because it’s not about you, and it’s not about your nervous system, and it’s not about treating your most immediate injury. It’s like going to the emergency room, going to the ER because you’ve just had your hand cut off and you’re bleeding out. And the doctor’s focusing on the fact that you have diabetes and that you’ve had high blood pressure and that your cholesterol’s off and, like, all of these other things. And it’s like, okay, yes, that might be so. But right now we’ve got to stop the blood flow out of my arm because my hand has just been cut off and I’m going to die from this. Cholesterol, blood sugar, all that. Lora Cheadle [00:07:26]: We’ll deal with that later. So, yeah, that’s why so many women, so many couples leave therapy, leave counseling right away feeling worse instead of better. Because it’s like, oh, gosh, all of a sudden, they’re confronted with all of these other things. It’s triage. They’re confronted with all of these other things that are way down the list and they’re bleeding out, has not been stopped. Again, I want to be clear. I’m a huge fan of therapy. I think it’s vitally important later on to dig back into the marriage and to talk about things. Lora Cheadle [00:08:12]: But when you’re facing infidelity and betrayal, oh, honey, it’s about you. It is about you and making you feel better right now. Because unless you can feel better, everything else is truly secondary. And then, same thing. If your partner is in the game, if they’re wanting to work on this, they need to work on themselves first. They don’t need to be distracted by what happened a hundred years ago. They don’t need to be distracted by, I can communicate better and I can show empathy better, and I can do all that right now. They need to manage themselves. Lora Cheadle [00:08:52]: What is going on with you? What is going on with you that you thought cheating was going to be a good idea, that you abandoned your own set of values and your own integrity and you trashed your marital relationship? Like, what is going on with you? You need to work on you. They need to work on them. Then when you’re each more stabilized, then you can come together and you can talk about the marriage. You can talk about better communication skills. You can talk about meeting each other’s attachment needs. You can talk about love, languages and acts of service and like, all of those great things later on. But right now, it is about you. I am not anti therapy. Lora Cheadle [00:09:39]: I am not anti men. I am not telling you whether to stay or go. But what I am telling you to do is to take care of yourself first. You have been vitally injured. You have been, I don’t want to say mortally wounded, but in a way, you have been and when you’ve got a wound this deep, it’s about taking care of. Of that wound. This is about understanding what betrayal does to the human psyche, to our mind, to our body, to our spirits, to our whole sense of reality. So you can stop making decisions from panic, from pressure, or from being in survival mode. Lora Cheadle [00:10:22]: This is about taking care of yourself so you don’t make decisions that you will regret later on. And that is what we are going to talk about today. I’m going to pause, climb down off of my soapbox, and before we move into the rest of the show, I want to say, this is what I do when I work with people. One on one, we sit together. I hold space for you. I help you get clear. I help you learn how to advocate for yourself. I help you say things like, whoa, pushing back on that. Lora Cheadle [00:11:03]: That is not a priority right now. What is a priority right now is me feeling. Feeling safe in my own home. What is a priority right now is me being able to sleep again and eat again and think again. That’s all fine. That’s all wonderful. We’ll deal with that later. But right now, it’s about me. Lora Cheadle [00:11:22]: And that is what working with me gets you. It gets you that clarity, and it gets you the ability to speak, to name what you want, to ask what you want, and to regulate yourself so you are in a place of power instead of a place of victimhood. Here’s how we start the process of working together. You go to introductory session.com. introductory session. Com. You book yourself a $97 appointment. That is nothing. Lora Cheadle [00:11:55]: It’s a $97 appointment. We get together over zoom. We talk. We. We figure it out. You let me know where you’re at on the journey. You come to me with whatever it is that you need most in that moment. I help you break it down. Lora Cheadle [00:12:08]: Okay, this is your most immediate next step. This is what you need to do. This is how you’re going to regulate your nervous system. This is what’s going to happen from that point. Most people say, this is incredible. We need to work together. And I say, yes, I think you’re right, or no, actually, where you’re at is not the right fit for me. But here’s where I think you would be a good fit. Lora Cheadle [00:12:33]: And then I pass you on to somebody who would be a better fit for you. But if you are a good fit for me, we can continue this relationship. We work together in a variety of ways. Most people are with me six months. Most people have daily contact over voxer with me we have monthly sessions, we have almost daily contact on voxer. I give you small doable tools, steps, insights, so you can learn how to regulate yourself, advocate on behalf of yourself so you know what those next steps are. And then within six months time, you’re like, yeah, I got this. I’ve remembered who I am. Lora Cheadle [00:13:16]: I know who I am. I know how to regulate myself. I know how to ask for what I need and, and I know where I’m going, I’m legally protected, I’m emotionally safe, and I am very clear with who I am. So that is why you want to work with me. That is why most people work with me. And it all starts with the introductory session. Introductory session dot com. Now, on to the rest of the show. Lora Cheadle [00:13:45]: The first thing I want to talk about is the assumption trap. And I talked about this a little bit on my show two weeks ago, I think it was. But again, it’s around that misconception that infidelity is about the marriage, that infidelity is about something that he wasn’t getting, something that you weren’t doing. It’s this assumption that there was something wrong with the relationship so the person went outside of the marriage to get the their needs met. So when that is the assumption, which is an incorrect assumption by the way, it makes sense that the focus becomes, oh, well, you need to communicate with each other more. You need date night. You need to figure out how to resolve conflicts. Let’s talk about attachment styles and love languages and ooh, we need to get the spark back and have better sex. Lora Cheadle [00:14:43]: Like, if there’s a marriage problem, that all makes sense. And later on down the road, if you choose to stay with your partner, it’s really important to address those things. But betrayal is not about a relationship conflict. It is not a relational conflict. People betray because they have a conflict with themselves. People betray because they can’t meet their own needs. Listen to that. People cheat because they can’t meet their own needs. Lora Cheadle [00:15:22]: It’s not about you not meeting their needs. They can’t meet their own needs. Whether they can’t meet their own needs because they can’t identify what their needs are, or for some other reason, it’s kind of immaterial. But they can’t meet their own needs. Cheating is a way to get their needs met, but it’s their needs within themselves, it’s not their needs about you. And that is such a life altering distinction. Once you really get that. I didn’t fail as a wife, I didn’t fail as a partner. Lora Cheadle [00:16:05]: You didn’t fail as a partner. You did not fail in this relationship. They failed themselves. They failed themselves. They could not meet their own needs. Get that? Yeah. It feels so different once that realization worms its way into your body, doesn’t it? Here’s the thing. Betrayal shatters our orientation. Lora Cheadle [00:16:44]: It shatters our reality. When we find out our partner has been cheating, suddenly we don’t know what’s true. We don’t know what’s false. We don’t know what else we’ve missed. We say, my partner is a stranger. I don’t know who they are. But the thing is, we also question our memories. I want to be clear on that. Lora Cheadle [00:17:13]: And then we also question our intuition. Like, we question it all. But the thing is, when we say, I don’t know who my partner is anymore, that is that weird clarity point where we see that they don’t know who they were anymore. Suddenly we see clearly who they are. They are somebody who can’t trust themselves. They are somebody who can’t meet their own needs. They are somebody who has allowed themselves to walk away from their own integrity. They are somebody who. Lora Cheadle [00:17:56]: Not us, them. But when we’re in this state of thinking that it’s about us thinking that our partner was rational and reasonable, thinking that the narrative around infidelity is true, and that it’s about hot sex and us not doing enough, it destabilizes us. So fundamentally, it destabilizes us to the point that if somebody tells us, you need to go work on the relationship, we’re like, okay, I’ll go work on the relationship. It’s not about the relationship. It never was about the relationship. Your focus is on trying to understand this new reality. Your focus is on trying to understand. Whoa. Lora Cheadle [00:18:57]: Life is not a fairy tale in the way that I thought it was. Notice that I said in the way that I thought it was. Because. No, it’s not that. We all think life is going to be a fairy tale, but we, most of us don’t think this is going to happen to us. Most of us grow up thinking, this is not going to happen to me. My relationship is different. I am competent. Lora Cheadle [00:19:17]: I am capable. I’m a great communicator. My partner is so ethical. My partner is so smart and he loves his family so much. And then I’m intuitive and I’ve got this, and bam. The betrayal smashes our reality. And the first thing we have to do is reorient ourselves to that new reality. We have to see the reality that we are living in and completely change all the lenses that we were looking through. Lora Cheadle [00:19:59]: I’ve used this example on this show before. The movie the Truman show, it’s an older movie with Jim Carrey, and it’s quite disturbing. And it describes betrayal perfectly. He. I think he was born and raised with a fake reality. His whole life is being filmed on tv. It’s like the premise of the show is. It’s like it’s the ultimate reality series where everything is filmed 24 7. Lora Cheadle [00:20:34]: His whole world is a set. His relationships, his job. His whole life is fake. And the viewers know it. And all the actors in the show know it too, but he doesn’t know it. And then at some point he finds out and he gets in this boat and he, like, rows out in the ocean and he comes to the end where he thinks it’s like the ocean going on forever in the real world. And he hits the set wall and it’s like this whole reality comes crashing down that nothing is real. His wife is not real. Lora Cheadle [00:21:11]: His job, his life. Nothing is real. And that’s what you have just gone through. I mean, oh, my goodness, compassion for yourself. You have just gone through that. Watch this movie. Think. Feel the compassion for him. Lora Cheadle [00:21:29]: Feel the anger. Like, that is you, my dear. That is you. You have just gone through something so hard and you were so destabilized. So think about Truman in the Truman show when he finds out this is not even the world. I live on set. He is way too destabilized to suddenly work on the relationship with his pretend wife. Like, that doesn’t even make sense. Lora Cheadle [00:21:55]: It’s not about him arguing with the producers about how unfair this was. It’s not about him doing anything with anybody. It’s about him and him. And that’s how it is with you. This is about you and you and how do you restabilize yourself? How do you make some peace with this new reality? That’s where you start. Because this assumption that infidelity is a marriage problem is just not true. And here’s the thing, too. Marriage counseling assumes two regulated adults discussing relationship dynamics. Lora Cheadle [00:22:38]: Betrayal does not ever involve two regulated adults discussing relationship dynamic dynamics. Betrayal involves one deeply dysregulated person trying to survive the entire collapse of their reality. When you are trying to survive the collapse of your reality, you need help understanding. You. You need help surviving, you need help reorienting. And then same thing with your partner. In fairness to them, holy cow, their world has just crumbled too. All of a sudden. Lora Cheadle [00:23:19]: They have been seen for who they are. All of a Sudden it’s obvious that they can’t handle themselves and that they are a deeply disturbed person in a lot of ways. And they need to come to terms with the shame and the guilt and the embarrassment and all of the reasons why. And they need to step up and show up. They. They’re not ready to all of a sudden deal with the marriage either. So that is why couples counseling can backfire early on. And I think it’s really important that we talk about that because so many people don’t talk about it enough. Lora Cheadle [00:23:55]: Here’s the other piece of that. Traditional counseling. Traditional. Working on the marriage assumes that both people are contributing to the relationship dynamics. And it assumes that both people want the marriage to go forward. It assumes that both people are unhappy in some way or another and they just want to come back together immediately after discovery. Do you even know what you want? Does your partner know what they want? Or are they just showing up to appease you? Sit with that for a minute because that can feel really devastating sometimes to be like, we’ve been in counseling. I get this so often from people. Lora Cheadle [00:24:40]: I don’t understand what happens or what happened. We’ve been in counseling for six months. He’s shown up, he’s done all of this stuff and now he wants to leave. Now he’s done. That’s not a surprise. When everybody is in crisis and we lean into leaning in, we’re not quite sure if we’re wanting to lean in in that way. So instead of leaning into, leaning into the marriage. And again, I’m not saying don’t do it, at some point, I. Lora Cheadle [00:25:14]: I think it’s imperative, but right now, let your partner come to terms with themselves while you come to terms with this real new reality. As long as you are blaming yourself, which we all do early on, as long as you’re over functioning, trying to manage their healing, trying to keep things smooth for the kids, trying to show up at work, as long as we’re trying to understand them, as long as we’re trying to be fair, as long as we’re trying to keep the family together, all of that stuff. When we’re in that phase, think about what it feels like to sit down, to be in a room, and suddenly here we’ll. What was happening in the marriage before your affair? Ah, overwhelm, Overload. I don’t know. I was just trying to survive. That is clinically appropriate. Later on, absolutely. Lora Cheadle [00:26:14]: But too early on, it leads to you feeling like this was your fault. And again, that’s really dangerous when you’re already shattered. Especially if you already have the tendency to fawn. The tendency to be a good girl. We did a great show on being a good girl a couple of weeks ago. Especially if you have a trauma history where you learned to self abandon to preserve connection. And I don’t care whether it’s big T trauma, something horrible happened in your past or whether it’s, and I kid you not, the trauma of living in a patriarchy, you know what I mean? Where we’re told we have to be a certain way, look a certain way, show up a certain way, sound a certain way, be a certain weight, size, blah blah, blah, blah blah. We learn. Lora Cheadle [00:27:05]: We have been conditioned to self abandon to preserve that connection. We are valued for the connections that we make. So here’s some questions that I want to ask you. And before I ask, let’s all take a moment to calm right here. Take a deep breath, let it drop into your belly. Because what you might be thinking is, holy cow, I’ve messed so much of this up already, I’m never going to find my way through this. What do I do now? How come I didn’t know? So circle your shoulders, breathe in through the nose, let it go out through the mouth. Swallow. Lora Cheadle [00:28:00]: Swallowing is a great nervous system regulating tool. It is one of the things that I teach my clients. If you can swallow, chances are you are becoming more regulated. Because when you’re in the rest and digest phase, you can eat and you can digest. It’s why when we find out about the infidelity so often, we can’t eat because we are not in rest and digest and we can’t digest. So when you can just take a sip of water or even just swallow, you’re helping. Cue the body that it is safe, it is safe to rest, it is safe to digest. I’ve got you body and we are good. Lora Cheadle [00:28:53]: Okay, four questions here. Have you ever left therapy or coaching or whatever it is? It just helps you ascertain if the person you’re working with is right for you at this moment. Have you ever left a session monitoring yourself instead of listening to yourself? Do you walk away thinking, well, I need to do this and I need to do that, or do you walk away with that Inner, yeah, I know where my gut is, I know where my heart is, I know where my head is. I feel safe asking myself, I feel safe making decisions, trusting yourself and listening to yourself more. Question number two. Do you have a tendency after a session with somebody, do you feel like you need to disconnect from your anger and try to be reasonable, to disconnect from what it is you’re really feeling to be something different. I need to be more reasonable. I need to be more understanding. Lora Cheadle [00:30:07]: I need to be more forgiving. Do you find yourself question number three, performing healing? Well, I’m better now, I’ve got this now. Or do you find yourself actually feeling better? And I know, I think this is a really hard one because sometimes we do want to perform healed. I want to sit down with my therapist or I want to sit down with my coach and tell them how great things have been. I recently had a session with a client and she said I was intentionally saving my last session with you. She had bought a coaching package. She said I was intentionally saving my last session with you because I wanted to come to the session and be like, Lora. You wouldn’t believe it. Lora Cheadle [00:31:03]: It’s all worked out. We have our happy ending. It’s incredible. It’s amazing. This is what he did, this is what I did. This is what we did. And my heart broke for her because that’s not why she ended up booking her last session. But that’s the thought pattern that we need to get trained away from. Lora Cheadle [00:31:25]: Yes, we all want the happy ending, but I want people showing up to me with their messiest parts, with their ickiest parts, with their scariest parts, instead of with their perfect parts. Because perfection, it’s easy to fake. So notice. Are you performing healing or are you actually healing by getting dirty and mucky and icky and feeling all of those uncomfortable emotions? The last question is, have you ever found yourself being hyper focused on the other person and what’s going on with them while quietly abandoning yourself? And again, we all have the tendency to do this because we can all see other people more clearly than we can see ourselves. And, you know, even today, I feel like I can look at my husband and be like, oh, this is what you need, and this is what you need. I mean, that’s why I’m a good coach. I can look at people and be like, oh, this is what you need. But it takes the focus off of us. Lora Cheadle [00:32:35]: It takes the focus off of me. And like that. That’s why I’ve got a big change coming up. And I’ll tell you about that a little bit later. But that’s part of the reason for my big change is I want and deserve and need the focus to be a little bit more on me. I’m scaling back with some of the work that I’m doing because I want more time for me. I want to live, I want to breathe, I want to work out. I want to enjoy my family, I want to enjoy my friends. Lora Cheadle [00:33:04]: I am so good at accurately seeing what other people are dealing with and guiding them to the solution. It’s my zone of genius. Like, I can fix anybody. I totally can. I know that to the depths of my soul. And I also need some more time to enjoy myself in my life. And that’s what I want for you too. And that, that’s part of that question too. Lora Cheadle [00:33:34]: Like, do you find yourself really navigating other people’s stuff or are you just living more fully and more freely and really enjoying it? So if you have ever felt any of those four things, like I’m monitoring myself, not listening to myself, I’m disconnecting from my anger because I want to be fair and reasonable, I am performing healing instead of actual healing, or I’m hyper focused on everybody else instead of just enjoying myself, then that is. Those are really good clues that it’s time to back away from some of the therapy. It’s time to really step back into yourself, to get into coaching. Introductory session.com, i’m telling you. And to really remember who you are again, to remember yourself now, say more about my big change later. But for right now, I want to talk about the nervous system piece. When we are betrayed, it’s not just an emotional injury. Our nervous systems go into full blown survival mode, which kicks us into obsessive thoughts, panic, hyper vigilance, inability to eat or sleep, compulsively checking his phone, going through timelines. Lora Cheadle [00:35:00]: I tell you, I had paper calendars, I went through all of my paper calendars. Obsessively leads to emotional flooding, brain fog, total disorientation. And you know how we feel? We feel freaking crazy. We feel weak, we feel powerless, we feel nauseous because we’re traumatized. Those are all full blown survival mode trauma responses. We’re not weak, we’re not stupid, we’re not idiots. We are in trauma. And when a nervous system is in trauma, when a nervous system is activated, when we’re in fight, flight or freeze, we cannot process information. Lora Cheadle [00:35:55]: We have the prefrontal cortex, which is the rational, reasonable thinking portion of our brain. And then we have the survival portion of our brain. We cannot be in both places of our brain at the same time. We are not biologically programmed to be in those two places at the same time. Why? Because it doesn’t make sense. We are in survival mode because it is a survival situation and we think we will die. So when we think we will die, we don’t care about relationships. We don’t care about looking cute. Lora Cheadle [00:36:28]: We don’t care about, like, anything. Our body is biologically designed to keep us alive. So if we see the mountain lion coming at us, a speeding bus coming at us, we don’t care who we mow over to get out of the way. We are just getting out of the way because we’re in the survival portion of our brain. When you’re in betrayal, when you’re in betrayal, trauma, you are in that survival portion of your brain. So you will do stupid things. You will do things that you will look back on and say, oh, my God, I really regret that. That was stupid. Lora Cheadle [00:37:03]: It’s not because you were stupid. It’s because you were in the survival portion of your brain. So having that awareness. When I’m in the survival portion of my brain, I am not in my prefrontal cortex. The prefrontal cortex is where you make rational, reasonable decisions. But here’s the thing. What are we pressured to do early on in infidelity? Oh, my God. I have to decide if I should stay or go. Lora Cheadle [00:37:34]: It drives me nuts when I see all that stuff online. Should you stay? Should you go? I have an idea. Let’s not make that decision right now. Let’s not make that from the survival portion of my brain. Let’s learn how to re regulate me first so I can eventually just know this is right for me or this is not. The other thing that drives me nuts is, do I forgive? Do I reconcile? Do I leave? Do we sell the house? What do I do? Do I tell the kids? What am I going to do for a job? Am I going to get maintenance? Oh, my God. Do you think I can ever trust him again? Ick, ick, ick. Everything is terrifying. Lora Cheadle [00:38:12]: Everything is confusing. That’s why stabilization matters. I am not asking you to be in this Zen, kumbaya, total peaceful state. That’s not realistic. But what I am asking you to do is to find moments of regulation which is realistic. I can help you regulate in a moment. I can help you create boundaries to say no, to disengage from situations that you know are amping you up. Stabilization matters first. Lora Cheadle [00:39:01]: I’m not saying don’t make these decisions. Later on, you can do that. This is not about just learning how to regulate and ignoring things. It’s not, regulate, but never get through the healing. Regulate, but never ask the tough questions. Regulate, but never get into a place of accountability. This is about, I gotta take Care of me first. I’ve gotta regulate me first. Lora Cheadle [00:39:33]: I want you to think about right here, right now, a really happy memory or a future vision. And I want you to let that deliciousness start to become more and more clear. Whether you’re on a beach or a mountain, you’re laughing, you might be with girlfriends, you might be with a partner, you might be with your kids. I want you to just feel what that feels like. When I do that, I have bits and pieces of so many happy memories come in. I think about, you know, times with my kids. I think about being at Disney, which was always such a fun family place for us. I think about laying on the beach with my partner. Lora Cheadle [00:40:34]: I think about, you know, romantic dinners. I think about this one trip early on we were in Mexico and the restaurant had the tables on the beaches and our toes are in the sand and the waves are there and we’re drinking margaritas and eating chips and guacamole. I think about waking up with nothing to do, just being able to roll over and go back to bed. I think about times with girlfriends where we’re. We live kind of by a hot springs where we go to the hot springs and we just laugh and we get massages. Like, feel how that feels in your body. And it’s my guess that just doing that help to regulate you right now. It’s just in a moment and you feel better. Lora Cheadle [00:41:33]: And when you feel better, you’ll be able to do the things that you need to do to take care of yourself. You can hydrate, go get, get a glass of water, have a healthy snack. Maybe now you’re like, yeah, I do feel like going outside and taking quick walk, grounding sleep do. Yeah, I can take a nap. I’m in this peaceful, peaceful place. It helps you reduce obsessive spirals because suddenly you’re thinking about different things. It helps you reconnect with your intuition. Like, I’ve been thinking about this. Lora Cheadle [00:42:12]: Yeah, maybe I need to do that. It’s just slowing down the major decisions. And it’s about emotional containment. I’m going to say a little bit more about emotional containment. Some of you know, I am working on writing my memoir around the betrayal. And it was a story I have wanted to tell. But I also realized very clearly that I didn’t want to tell it too early in the process because I wanted to tell it with wisdom. I wanted to tell it from a place of complete healing and peace. Lora Cheadle [00:42:56]: I didn’t want it to be tawdry and trashy. I didn’t want it to be icky. Not that I’m sugarcoating things. It’s going to be very raw, it’s very real. But this isn’t about throwing anybody under the bus. It is about truly my journey. So as I write, it brings things up. It’s not that I sob and go into an obsessive spiral. Lora Cheadle [00:43:31]: I’m healed. I’m totally healed. Sometimes I can write and I’m very much at peace. Sometimes I write and I am so grateful. Like, I look at how far I’ve come, I look at how far my husband has come, I look at who we are, and I’m just, oh, I’m filled with such gratitude. And other times it’ll bring up some anger and it’ll be like, you jerkwad. Are you freaking ass. Kidding, kidding me? You know what I mean? And it’ll bring some of that up. Lora Cheadle [00:44:09]: And I have to contain that emotionally, not suppress, but I have to contain it. I have to realize this is a reaction that comes from living and reliving a really tough journey. It’s not who I am now. It’s not who my husband is now. If I am feeling angry, I can tell him that I’ve had a lot of anger that has come up over this chapter where you. But it’s not me leaning into the anger. It’s not me reactivating it and making it be present day and present moment, because it’s not. And that’s what knowing how to regulate your nervous system does. Lora Cheadle [00:44:59]: It helps you understand. Like, yeah, I can feel these angers, these angers, these angry emotions. If I need to cry or yell or go bust my way up a mountain, I can do that. But I’m not going to take it out on this other person because it’s not about them. This is about me. And that’s what I really believe is anytime, anytime you face betrayal. Before couples work, you need to learn how to stabilize, orient to this new reality. You need education about what infidelity is and what it isn’t. Lora Cheadle [00:45:38]: Because I don’t know about you, but oh my gosh, what I thought it was and what it is, totally different. You need support. Flat out, you need support. You need a clarity and you need space to reconnect with yourself. When you without the pressure of saving the relationship, without the pressure of having to leave, without the pressure of deciding anything, you just need to learn how to regulate enough to hear yourself again. And that’s why I truly focus so heavily on nervous system regulation, somatic work, identity reconstruction, clarity, self trust, like understanding, betrayal, Trauma, legal and emotional support. Sometimes people are like, why do you go into all of this? There’s. Oh, my God, you’re overwhelming me. Lora Cheadle [00:46:35]: Overwhelm, overwhelm, overwhelm. And it’s like, yes and no. It’s overwhelm because I’m showing you the forest, and here are all the trees in the forest. And when you see all of the trees, you can do your own triage. And you know, whoops, this one’s falling first. Now I gotta move over here. Whoop. Let’s prop these two against each other. Lora Cheadle [00:47:04]: And I think that’s one of the most important and most calming and most healing things we can do is get the lay of the land. Here’s the map. Here is the map, Here is the forest, and here are all of the trees. You don’t have to solve it all now. And that’s something that people sometimes misunderstand. They’re like, I have to solve it all now. No, no, no, no, no. But when you solve one problem, one problem only, and then something else comes up and you go, oh, God, I didn’t know that was there. Lora Cheadle [00:47:38]: It creates disillusionment. And you’ve already been disillusioned. You know what I mean? Like, sometimes I work with people, and they’re like, well, I. I came from this program, and this is what we focused on. Wonderful. That’s great. And then they’re like, and now it’s not working because I realize I have to do this, that, this, that, this, that. And then I’ll be like, inside. Lora Cheadle [00:47:59]: Yeah. And you’ve already got four more things that you haven’t mentioned. It’s good to know what’s coming up. Not to overwhelm you, but so it becomes normal. How many of you have had a baby? I. I’ve had two. One of the things that they say in the Lamaze classes, I did something called the Bradley Method. And a Lamaze class, I did, too. Lora Cheadle [00:48:27]: But what they say is you need to know what the phases of labor are. So it’s not as overwhelming when you get there, you know, like, you know, early labor, then, you know, oh, I’m moving into transition. You know, the contractions are becoming closer and closer together. Now I move into transition. And then they’ll say, transition can be the most intense. You can feel like it’s overwhelming you. You can feel like you’re dying. You can feel like. Lora Cheadle [00:48:54]: But then, you know, it’s transition. It’s a period. And then you go into the pushing phase. And they’re saying that gets easier sometimes. Than transition. That’s. Transition is complete dysregulation. And then, you know, okay, it can burn and this is what’s going to happen. Lora Cheadle [00:49:10]: And then, you know, there’s an afterbirth after that. And then, you know, these are my options that I can do an epidural, I can do. Like, when you have the lay of the land, you can have your birth plan. And the birth plan usually doesn’t work the way that you think, but at least you know your options. And suddenly you’re not in this place of like, holy cow, what’s happening? Why are the contractions becoming closer and closer together? And then, oh, my gosh, what’s happening in transition? Why am I shaking? And then this feeling of pushing. Why am I doing that? What are my options? You’re not in the dark, having to decide on the fly, which creates more anxiety. And just like in labor, it’s this fear, pain, tension cycle. When you don’t know what’s going on, when you don’t have the lay of the land, when you don’t have the map and then things happen, it creates fear, which then creates more pain and more tension. Lora Cheadle [00:50:05]: And it builds and it builds, and it builds. So that’s why I do this podcast, that’s why I do this education. That’s why when I work with people, sometimes they’re like, I don’t even know who you are, Lora. You do all this stuff, I’m telling you the lay of the land so that you will not freak out when something comes up. So it can just be in the back of your mind that, oh, yeah, there’s a legal consequence to that. Oh, yeah, betrayal or trauma is stored in the body. Yes. There’s a somatic thing. Lora Cheadle [00:50:36]: Okay, my mind is. I’m just telling you the lay of the land. I’m giving you your birth plan so you’re not freaked out, so you know the different phases and so you have tools to better manage those phases along the way. And so you know what some of your options are along the way, so you have less fear, you have less pain, you have less tension, and you feel better. Introductory session, dot com. That’s all I’m going to say. Because that’s all you need. Trust me on that. Lora Cheadle [00:51:15]: And the last thing that I want to say is because again, I felt like I’ve bashed a lot of couples work. Couples work can be helpful when you are both stabilized, when you both know who you are and you know how to access that calm. After the truth telling, after the stabilization, after the Safety after the accountability after the emotional regulation. And ideally with a betrayal informed Therapist. Ideally with a trauma informed therapist with someone who understands nervous system overwhelm. With someone who does not rush forgiveness or tell you what to do. For someone who understands betrayal is not a communication problem and it is absolutely not a relationship problem. Because healing after infidelity is not about pretending everything is okay. Lora Cheadle [00:52:19]: It’s about rebuilding you and your truth. I do partner with better Help. Better Help is an online therapy group. They have infidelity specific therapists. They have trauma informed therapists. If you’ve got somebody that you love and work with, use them later if you need somebody now, or if you’re thinking that you might want to work with a therapist pretty soon because you were pretty stable in yourself. They offer all of my people 10% off an entire month of online therapy if you go to betterhelp.com and then do the forward slash thing and put in Flaunt. The name of my podcast, Flaunt. Lora Cheadle [00:53:07]: It’ll automatically take you to the discount page and otherwise they’ve got the spot for the code. And the little code is Flaunt. So when you are ready, you will have a place to go. But in the meantime, just know when you’re hurt, you need to take care of that wound. When you’re bleeding out, you need to stop the flow of blood before you deal with anything else. So if you feel like your reality has shattered, if you keep thinking I don’t even recognize myself, please know. Of course you don’t. You just had a major trauma. Lora Cheadle [00:53:50]: You are not crazy. You are not weak. You are not wrong. You don’t need to rush your healing. But what you do need to do is take care of yourself. Not the relationship yourself. Book your introductory session@innerctory session.com I will take care of you. We have got this together. Lora Cheadle [00:54:14]: I said I’ve got some new stuff coming up and I do. And I’m really excited about that. I’m not going to say a whole lot now, but what I am going to say is this. I am. Like I said, I need to put the focus back on me a little bit more too. I’m really good at what I do and it can sometimes be a lot because I have so many people wanting to work with me. So what I’m going to do is start shifting what I do. So if you’re interested in any of my current offerings as they stand right now, you might hop on my website and take advantage of them now. Lora Cheadle [00:54:56]: I think my new rollout is going to Be in about September or October, so you’ve got until the fall. But I just wanted to put that bug in your ear. Now, if this is something that you’ve been thinking about. Oh, at some point, I’m going to work with Lora. Oh, at some point, I just love her. Rise and rain. I’m going to hop in and. And do that. Lora Cheadle [00:55:16]: I just want you to know that things will be changing in fall, September, October time frame. I’m also price freezing all the people who hop in before my change. So, again, if you’ve been thinking about some things, now is your time to do it. Before I let you go. One more moment of regulation, One more moment of visualizing how you want to be on the other side of this. And if you don’t know how you want to be on the other side of this, that is okay, too. That is okay, too. That’s also something else that we’re gonna work on together is how do I wanna show up? Because who we are is who we are, and we also get to choose who we are. Lora Cheadle [00:56:16]: So who is that healed version of yourself? You know, I look back as to who I was before infidelity, and I really. I really was. I wouldn’t have said I was a people pleaser, but I chased a lot of perfection. And I did want to be right, and I wanted to be admired and I wanted to be like. I wanted to be that perfect wife. And the infidelity happened, and I didn’t know who I was. And I felt so betrayed by life, too, that I worked so hard. And you’re giving me this, like, are you kidding? I know so many people who are total schleps. Lora Cheadle [00:56:58]: I know so many people who didn’t care. And I worked my tail off and I did everything right. And you gave me this, like, are you kidding? God, are you kidding, universe? Why am I ever gonna try again? And all I knew was I didn’t want to be bitter and I didn’t want to feel like that, but I really didn’t know who or how I wanted to be. I just knew that it wasn’t that. And that’s what I. I want you to spend some time thinking about. Like, who do you want to be? Or what do you know that you don’t want to be? We’ll talk more about that in some future episodes, and we will talk more about that definitely in our introductory session together. Because until we really know the direction that we’re going, it is a little bit harder to get there. Lora Cheadle [00:57:57]: And let’s create that vision. Let’s create that vision together. Introductory session.com I can’t wait to see you soon. Get in before everything changes this fall, have an incredible week. And as usual, always remember to flaunt exactly who you are, because who you are is always more than enough. Intro/outor [00:58:23]: Tune in next time to flaunt, find your sparkle and create a life you love. After Infidelity or Betrayal with Lora Cheadle every Wednesday at 7am and 7pm Eastern Standard Time on syndicated DreamVision 7 radio network. Uncover the truth of what’s possible for you on the other side of betrayal, and develop the skills and strategies necessary to embrace the future and flourish today. Download your free Betrayal Recovery toolkit@betrayalrecoveryguide.com.