What’s the difference between coaching and counseling after infidelity? Is couples counseling the way to go, or is coaching a better option? Why is it so difficult to recover from an affair? What does affair recovery even mean, and what should I look for when I’m looking for help? Learn the difference between coaching counseling, and a variety of modalities and recovery techniques here!

Top take-a-ways

1. Learn the difference between coaching and counseling so you can determine which one is right for you.
2. Explore a variety of techniques and modalities that can be used in affair recovery and best practices for selecting a practitioner to help you on your recovery journey.
3. Experience what it’s like to be in a coaching session as Lora shares some of her favorite coaching questions for you to ponder.

 

Download your Sparkle After Betrayal Recovery Guide at www.BetrayalRecoveryGuide.com, a guide designed to help you take the first steps in feeling better, so you can reclaim your power, own your worth, and start putting yourself, and your life, back together again.

 

About Lora:

Author, speaker and Burnout & Betrayal Recovery Coach, Lora Cheadle help women rebuild their identity and self-worth so they can find the courage to claim what’s possible on the other side of betrayal.

 

Thank you to BetterHelp for sponsoring this podcast! Take charge of your mental health and get 10% off your first month of therapy at https://BetterHelp.com/FLAUNT

 

Transcript

 

Narrator:

 

You’re listening to FLAUNT!. Find your sparkle and create a life you love after infidelity or Betrayal. Have you been betrayed by life, your body or someone that you love? You’re not alone. No matter what you’ve been through. Naked self worth helps you regain confidence, joy, and enthusiasm so you can create a life you love and flourish. Tune in weekly and learn how.

 

Lora Cheadle:

 

Hello and welcome to FLAUNT!. Find your sparkle and create a life you love after infidelity or Betrayal. I’m Lora Cheadle and I am an attorney and Betrayal Recovery coach who believes that betrayal uncovers the truth. It uncovers the truth of what our cheating partner was doing, absolutely. But more importantly, it uncovers the truth about us. It uncovers the truth about who we are, what we have tolerated, that we shouldn’t tolerate, what we buried our head in the sand and chose not to see, and maybe even what we knew but didn’t address within ourselves.

I would love to connect with you and to see how I can best support you on your Betrayal Recovery journey so you can finally get to the bottom of and really understand what happened, so you can heal faster, skipping the mistakes, the pain, and the obsessive thoughts that plagued me during my own Betrayal Recovery journey.

Today we are going to talk about the difference between coaching and counseling, between therapy and coaching and all of those good things, and between a lot of the difference between a lot of the different tools out there. So you can have a better understanding of what the tools are, why you might use them, and determine for yourself what you need most right now. But before we do that, I encourage you to go to Betrayalrecoveryguide.com and download your copy of my Sparkle After Betrayal Recovery Guide. It’s a simple and straightforward guide that will give you three steps to start on the journey of reclaiming your identity and self worth so you can start feeling better right away.

So go to Betrayalrecoveryguide.com and download your free copy of the guide. When you do, you will get instant access to downloading the guide, and then you will get five days worth of emails that will really help you. But don’t worry, it’s not like you’re going to get daily emails the rest of your life. You’re only going to get five emails right away that are geared to help you right now, immediately start to feel better fast so you’ve got something to hang on to, so you’ve got that point of focus, so you’re not making mistakes and making things worse than they already are. From there, if you’d like to reach out to me and connect, I would honestly love nothing more than to sit down with you one on one and to help because I know how it is.

I was cheated on by my husband of 23 years with Fifth. He cheated for 15 years with five different women. And I know exactly how it feels when you find out and when you’re in this weird place of complete and total collapse and at the same time thinking, there’s so much to do and I have so much to figure out and I don’t know what to do. It’s that tension between overwhelm and complete shutdown. And I can help you navigate that no matter what stage of the journey you are in. So again, betrayalrecoveryguide.com. That’ll give you instant access to the download, put you on my list, and you can reach out to me right away and we can get you an appointment.

But for now, let’s talk about what is affair recovery. Why is affair recovery so hard? What is the difference between an affair or a betrayal recovery coach and a counselor? We’re going to talk about the difference between coaching and counseling. Figure out is therapy or coaching better? And we’re also going to talk about some of the different tools. And when we’re done talking about the difference between coaching and counseling and some of the different modalities, I’m going to end this show with kind of a sample layout as to what happens in a coaching session. And I’m going to ask you several of my favorite coaching questions so you can start getting the feel for why it helps and how it allows you to feel better and to start making sense of your situation and to start accepting things unconditionally as they are, not as you wished they would be.

Okay, so starting from the very beginning, what is a fair recovery? Well, a fair recovery is the process of finding your footing again after an affair. As you probably sadly already know, when you find out about your partner’s infidelity, it’s horrible. It pulls the rug out from under you and it shatters your entire reality. It shatters your view of yourself, your view of the marriage. If you’ve got kids, it changes your view of the family, and it completely guts you because it touches every single area of your life, emotional, financial, sexual, every area of your life.

So affair recovery is just the process of grounding in your new reality, learning how to accept that new reality so you can go forward healthily and happily into the future. Now, I want to break this down a little bit. I said a fair recovery is the process of learning to accept your new reality. There are different philosophies around a fair recovery. Some lean heavily into forgiveness. And although I think forgiveness is definitely important, I think that is something that comes down the line. I truly believe that before we can forgive ourselves or anybody else, we have to come to that place of acceptance.

And for me and for many of the people that I work with, acceptance is hard. Have you ever thought, I wish I could just wake up and this would all go away? I just wish this hadn’t have happened. I wish I didn’t know, I wish I could just go back to that place before I was broken, when I was still innocent and trusting. Those are all statements of a lack of acceptance.

And it is so normal that we don’t want to accept this new reality, because who wants to accept this new reality? When you accept this new reality, it means all sorts of different things. It means that your marriage will never be the same again if you choose to stay together. Now, I believe fully that if you both choose to stay together and you both choose to do the work, your marriage can be better than it ever was. But I also believe that if you choose to separate your life, your new life can be better than it ever was. So a fair recovery is that process of finding acceptance in this new reality and then figuring out what to do next. So you can actually start, as the title of the show says, creating a life that you love.

Now, why is affair recovery so hard? I touched on this earlier. A fair recovery is so hard because infidelity shatters every area of your life. It’s not just that, oh, I’ve got a problem with my car, but everything else is okay. Or, oh, I’ve got a problem with my house, but everything else is okay. Or I’ve got a problem with my youngest child, but everything else is okay. Affair recovery is so hard because it shatters your worldview, because the person who you were closest to, who you trusted the most, stabbed you in the freaking back. It’s significant. It’s hard. And it goes to your worth as an individual, your worth as a wife or a partner or a girlfriend. It goes to so many things, like, was I pretty enough? Was I smart enough? Was I a good enough conversationalist? Did I do enough? Why didn’t I keep him happy? Am I good enough in bed? Did I insult him in some way? It turns everything around in our heads, and it makes us feel like we did something wrong and we are to blame and that somehow we are not enough.

And most people struggle with self worth. And because most people struggle with self worth, when something happens, we tend to internalize that pain. We tend to say, oh, my gosh, my life shattered around me. It’s very personal and I did something wrong. So finding out about our partner’s affair disrupts our everyday life in every single way. It cuts to the core of who we are and what we are worth.

So why is it hard? Because we have to rebuild our identity. Not only do we have to rebuild our life, we have to rebuild our identity. If you lose your job and you have a major financial crisis and you suddenly have no money, your identity is still there. You’re still a wife or a mom or a partner or a daughter or a sister or all of these different identities. But when you learn about an affair, all of a sudden you’re like, I’m not a good wife. I must not even be a good friend. I’m not worth anything. So you have to completely rebuild your identity because you thought the world worked a certain way. You thought people in committed relationships held each other up and were faithful and told the truth.

Oh, my gosh. Finding out that somebody betrayed you and has been lying and manipulating you is a huge upset because suddenly it’s personal. It happened to me. Sure, we can all say, yes, there’s a lot of corporate greed out there, and people lie, but we don’t expect it to happen to us. We expect it to happen to other people. We think we are a good enough judge of character that everybody in our life that we allow in we can trust. So why is it so hard? It’s so hard because we have to rebuild our identity and our self worth from the ground up.

And when I said earlier, the betrayal uncovers the truth, it uncovers the truth of how stable we are within ourselves. And let me just call this like it is. Nobody has that kind of rock solid self worth until and there’s a big until you go through something like this. Nobody has that kind of rock solid self worth until they go through something like this and they get the help that they need and they do the work. That is when you develop a rock solid sense of self worth. So with that said, yes, a fair recovery is hard. It’s really hard because a fair recovery is finding that acceptance with your new reality and rebuilding your identity and your self worth.

Okay, so that’s what it is. So what’s the difference between an infidelity recovery coach and a therapist or counselor? Well, in the simplest terms, if you think about a timeline of your life, here’s everything in the past. Here you are right now, and then there’s everything in the future, which way are you facing? If you face the past and you say, wow, there’s a lot of things that I have got to dig up and process and uncover and figure out, that’s what a therapist, that’s what a counselor will help you do. They will help you look at the past with new perspective and new eyes and new tools and understand what was going on. So you might say, wow, I’m looking at the past. I am a sexual abuse survivor. I had a traumatic childhood. I this, I that, or the other thing. In our marriage, we got into physical abuse. There was an alcohol problem. There was an addiction. Whatever it is, you’re looking at the past and you’re understanding and making sense and uncovering that.

And that’s what a therapist will help you do. They will help you understand the impact of your childhood on your current relationship. They will help you understand the past and figure some of that stuff out. A counselor will also have tools like EMDR, which is the eye movement Desensitization or eye movement rapid Desensitization technique. I forget exactly what it stands for, but a trained trauma therapist will help you deal with PTSD like symptoms, trauma from your past. Like I said, if there’s sexual abuse, child abuse, abuse in your marriage, domestic violence, they will help you deal with that trauma of the past, settle your brain down and understand what was really going on.

A coach, on the other hand, is forward looking. So visualize yourself on that timeline. If you look to the past, that’s what a therapist will help you dig out and figure out. Pivot around and look to the future. That’s where a coach is going to take you. They are going to take you into the future. Now, there is this beautiful bridging sometimes of the past and the past and the future that happens in the present. So if you’re working with a therapist on your eating disorder, on your childhood sexual abuse, on your domestic violence, then you will come to the coach and you will take that information and you will be forward looking and you will say, and now what are we going to do with this? And the coach is going to help you create that future going forward that you want. The coach is going to help you say, AHA, looks like there’s a block here. You’re running into a roadblock here. Is there something that needs addressing? Is there a habit that we need to change and rewire? Do you need help with your confidence, with your clarity? With your self worth? With your motivation? Do you need help with strategy? Do you need help with planning? Do you need help learning how to better communicate? Do you need help better learning how to advocate? A coach helps you with all of the skills and planning and strategy that you will need going forward in order to be successful and to create the kind of life that you love. Now, depending also on the kind of a coach, they will do different things.

Me, I am a betrayal recovery coach. I am an infidelity a fair recovery betrayal recovery coach. And most importantly, I have experienced it and I have been through it and I have insight and understanding because I have been through it. So when you work with me, we will talk about things. We will talk about things in that coaching perspective where I can share, hey, in my experience, this is what I’ve seen, this is how I felt, this is what I learned. And then I can ask you questions to see if that applies to your situation. I can ask you questions about where your roadblocks are and how you’re stuck and what you want going forward. I can talk to you about some of the things that I believe you might want to address in therapy if you choose to do so. And we can talk about that. But I am not going to dig deep into your childhood with you and have you start uncovering and processing old memories. That’s something that a therapist, a counselor will do. But yes, I will tell you, in my experience, this is what I see.

In my experience, this is how I felt. This is what was helpful for me. Could that be helpful for you too? As a coach, I will help you become accountable in taking those steps and breaking it down so you can move forward. Because as you know, a lot of this is really overwhelming. And like I said earlier, it’s that tension between shutdown where you just want to completely collapse and not do anything. Shut down, break down, and launching into all of this action. I will help you create the strategy and the plan so you can start taking sustainable steps forward. So you don’t all of a sudden decide in a moment of anger that divorce. It is. And you march off to an attorney and you file things and you stir up things that don’t quite need to be stirred up, maybe ever, but especially not now. So you don’t call your partner’s employer or call your partner’s parents and stir up a bunch of stuff without thinking it through. I help you in a coaching capacity create a healthy plan going forward.

And sometimes that healthy plan going forward does include, you know what, I really think you should talk to a counselor or a therapist about this. It seems to me like you might be struggling with depression. Obviously I can’t prescribe medication for that, nor can I diagnose it. So what I’m seeing in you might be better addressed by a therapist. Think about a general contractor on a construction project. They know enough about all the different things. They know enough to be like, oh, this is an electrical wire. Oh, this is a plumbing pipe. Oh, this is a structural issue. Oh, this is just cosmetic. The general contractor knows enough about everything that they can identify. We need a plumber for this. We need an electrician for this. This is not stable. We’ve got to stop, go back, rebuild this foundation, and reset this structure. And that’s what I like to think of coaching as about. You’re coaching. You’re coaching the process. You are holding the container for the whole person in this whole traumatic situation and you are keeping them grounded in the present, focused on the future, and then also helping them identify where and when they might need to go back to the past to stir things up.

Here’s another way that coaching and counseling differ. And I want to preface this by saying I am a huge fan of both. I fully believe that most people, no matter what the circumstance, need both. But one of the differences is how you feel when you walk away from a therapist and how you feel when you walk away from a coach, because it is definitely a different experience. I don’t know if you’ve ever done couples counseling, but oftentimes you walk away feeling a little bit tense because it uncovers a lot of stuff. Or if you’ve seen an individual counselor or therapist, you might walk away being like, whoa, because it uncovers a lot. And then you’re thinking and you’re like, am I really like this? How have I not seen that? What is this? How wow. And you kind of leave with that deep sense of, I’ve got a lot to think about. Most people, many people do not leave a therapy session, like walking on sunshine, bouncing around, so excited for that next step. And I’m not saying that in a bad way. We need both. We need to uncover, we need to make sense of, and we need to heal the past. But oftentimes that’s how people tend to leave counseling or therapy sessions. Sure, they might have some new tools, but there’s a little sense of stress.

Whereas with coaching, most of the time you leave feeling elevated. You leave feeling positive. You leave feeling clear, with a clear sense of the next steps to take. You are empowered at the end of a coaching session because you have had somebody take this overwhelming pile of stuff and they’ve helped you break it down and help you make sense of it so you know the next steps. So if you’re leaning towards divorce, you might work with your coach and figure out, okay, the most logical next step around this, now that the decision has been made, is to interview three to five attorneys, is to get some references, is to have a free or even a low cost consultation with several attorneys. It might be go to this website and learn some things. You will have a breakdown of steps to do. If you’re working things out with your partner, you will have a breakdown of steps to do.

One of the things that I do with my coaching clients all the time is I help them create safe and sacred spaces to have conversations with their partner. For example, I will tell people, create a place in your home that is free of affair talk. For example, never talk about the affair in your bedroom if you’re still sleeping together. Or never talk about it in the kitchen if that’s the place where you are used to coming together and creating meals together. Create sacred space where you don’t talk about the affair. Create some rules around when you talk about the affair and how you talk about it. Ask for permission to talk about it. Make sure you have each other’s undivided attention, and then go to that sacred spot that you have talked about already. That is your sacred discussion spot. Those are the tools that I will give you. The steps that I will give you so you can move forward on this healing journey. And that’s what that coaching is about.

Coaches also ask some hard questions and they’re different than therapeutic type questions. Coaching questions are really designed to help you look at yourself and your situation a different way, because we all have blind spots. We all have blind spots. And unless you have somebody who is very neutral and objective helping you think of the answer to a question, you are always going to have those blind spots. You’re probably saying, what do you mean? Lora Wait. What? Here’s what I mean by needing a coach to have you ask questions. If a friend just calls you up on the phone one day and says, I don’t like how he treats you, how you will probably feel is a little bit defensive. What do you mean you don’t see it when he’s really, really good? Well, you didn’t see what happened right before that, blah, blah, blah, blah, and you’ll feel a little bit defensive.

However, when you’ve got a coach that you’re working with and that you trust ask you a question such as do you feel comfortable when he speaks to you that way? Or what would you think if you saw a friend tolerate that behavior from their partner? It just enables your brain to think about the situation a little bit differently. In that same vein, in my coaching package, what I do is I encourage my people to send me a Voxer. A Voxer is just a little voice message and I encourage them to speak the message 24/7 whenever it comes out. And often I will have them listen back to their own message and ask them if that was coming from somebody else, how would you feel about what you just said? To me, a coach helps you find a different perspective in the situation and a different perspective in yourself as well as helps you break down those most immediate next steps and helps you keep that goal in mind. Like, this is what you want to accomplish. This is how you want to feel. This is who you want to be.

Which kind of begs the next question is therapy or coaching better? Well, it really depends on who you are and what you need. And like I said earlier, I really think it’s ideal to be able to have both because we all have things from our past that color the way we behave and process information and when we can start understanding things like our attachment style and the impact of trauma. It helps us understand ourselves and it helps us change our behavior. But there is also nothing better than really having a coaching partner who is integrated into your everyday life, holding your hand, walking by your side and helping you move forward into the future that you want so you don’t trip and fall and stay down for too long. So you don’t go off track and go down a rabbit hole so you don’t start making a bunch of mistakes along the way that then you have to go back and correct. The other thing is, it really depends on what you need right now in the moment.

Because along the time frame, sometimes you really need to be introspective and you need to go back to the past. Sometimes you’re like, I’m just dealing with so much. I just need a clear level future. I just need to feel better right now. So knowing what you need in each moment can also help. All right, what I want to do now is go through some of the different modalities that I use, that other people use, so you can get a better handle on what they are, why they are useful, and what they can do for you.

First and foremost, one of the things that I am really passionate about is using the body to process emotion. I am a certified Somatic attachment therapist, and what that means is I understand that the body keeps the score. I understand how emotion fills up our bodies and how we need to use our bodies to help move that energy. Because emotion is just energy upset feelings, they’re all energy. And I know you’ve probably had that experience where you’ve got a headache, where you literally feel like your head is going to explode, or where you’re so upset that you’re shaking. That’s the energy in the body that is building up, and it needs to come out. And when we stuff it down, we hurt our organs. We hurt our bodies physically.

So we need to use movement to get it out. I do a variety of things. I do things just like shaking your hands, like a shimmy, shaking your shoulder, shaking your hips, things like that. Sometimes just shaking it. Know the Taylor Swift shake, shake, shake it off. That really does work if you’re physically shaking. Think about when our bodies shake naturally. We shake after a traumatic event. If you’ve ever almost rear ended a car or had something scary happen after the adrenaline leaves you, you shake. Your body physiologically will naturally shake as a way to process that adrenaline, as a way to get that fear and anxiety out of your body. Why wait for your body to do it naturally? If you feel like it’s building up, stand up and shake. I’m doing it now. Shake your arms, shake your hands, shake your hips, shimmy your knees.

That will help move all that stuff through your body. I personally am also really big on using dance and yoga and strength training because what the body can do is what the mind and the emotions can do. So a lot of my people that I work with, when they’re feeling weak and powerless, I will have them play around with some strength moves, whether it’s taking some weights and just moving it, or doing things like holding their body in an elbow plank or a wall squat. When we find strength in our bodies, it validates for us in our mind that, yes, I am strong. Look at me. I just did a wall squat for two minutes. Look at me, I just did lunges with hand weights. I am strong. Because if your body is doing it, your mind and your heart and your emotions can’t deny it. Dancing it out truly is one of the most meaningful things for me because I dance, I turn on music and I encourage people to turn on music. And sometimes even in coaching sessions, we’ll turn on music and we’ll dance together and we’ll mirror each other’s movements.

But dance is a way to connect to music, to connect to the body, and to just let those emotions flow. I’ve got a few incredible sacred dance videos on YouTube and I will put the links in the show notes so you can try those out. I’ve got a lot of strength videos and yoga videos and other types of movement videos on YouTube and I will leave all of those links because whether you’re working with me one on one or not, I want you in your body. Because the other thing about being in your body is when you are in your body, you’re in the present moment. Because you can’t truly be present in your body and back in the story of the past or ahead in this panicked future timeline that you’re creating for yourself, slightly neurotically because you’re panicked when you’re in your body, you’re in your breath, you’re in your heart, you’re in your limbs, and you stay grounded in the present moment.

Yoga is one of those tools that I also use to help people ground. Whether it’s mountain pose where you’re literally and physically grounding like a mountain, or just simple cross legged pose where you’re just sitting and feeling yourself, being supported by the ground. Yoga is an incredible way to receive support, to feel grounded and connected and held. Child’s pose with your forehead down, tucked in that little ball is peaceful, it’s calming, and it will help calm your nervous system. So whether it’s dance just free form dance in your living room, or following along in sacred dance on one of my videos, or moving your body with me in a coaching session where we’re identifying where do you feel that anxiety, what needs to come out, no matter how we’re doing it, it’s a tool to help you. Another tool that I use that is definitely very unique to me is intuition. You might or might not know that I worked as a professional, medium and intuitive reader from 2007 on.

Even though I don’t do a lot of intuitive readings just for the sake of readings, I always use my intuition when I’m working with you, when I’m seeing clients. You might also know that every Tuesday or thereabouts, I do a live channeling. I. Do it on YouTube, and I also post it on Facebook and Instagram, and it’s called Coffee with the Librarians. The librarians are my guides. They are the group of entities that I go to whenever I want to connect and get some information. This is not fortune telling, but it’s reading the energy of a situation. And when I read the energy of your situation or any client’s situation, I can tell you things. I can tell you things about yourself, your partner, your relationship, and what’s really going on, what is in your highest good and best interest. I truly believe that all of the information that we need to know is in our bodies, is in our intuition, is in our hearts. It’s just that we sometimes let our heads run away with us and we don’t have that connection between the heart and the head. So when I work with people, I also use my intuitive skills. I read energy, I read the situation. I go to my guides, the librarians, I go to your guides and I connect and I give you the information that is there. And you know what? It’s helpful. It’s very helpful. It’s not fortune telling. I’m not casting a spell on anybody. But it’s reading the energy and helping you understand that.

Another couple tools that I use with my people are a combination of internal and external processing. We all process information differently. And it’s important when we’ve got something as big and as significant as a betrayal to use multiple avenues to process this information.

Internal processing is done by journaling. So when you work with me, I’ve got 30 days worth of journal prompts that I give you and that allows you to just go in and I say, don’t really spend more than a minute or so on it, but just answer this journal prompt and think about it, because that is your internal working. If you ask your mind a question, your mind opens up a loop and then your entire subconscious and conscious mind will start scanning for the answers to that question.

So these journal prompts help open up loops in your mind. So then your mind starts scanning for information, and then before you know it, you’ve got the answer to all of these problems and situations. That’s internal processing.

I also utilize external processing to help people process all of this information. And external processing is just like what it sounds. It’s processing out loud. And what I do in my coaching packages, in all of my coaching packages is I include 24/7 Voxer Access and Voxer is an app. And it’s a walkie talkie app that you talk into because when you’re talking, not only are you talking and the words are coming out of you and the energy is coming out of you, but you’re also hearing the words in your ears. You’re hearing yourself say these things. And I don’t know if you’ve ever had that experience where you’re laying in bed at night and you’re thinking all of these things and it makes perfect sense. And then you get up the next morning and you say it to somebody and you’re like, that doesn’t make any sense. But in your own head it made perfect sense. That’s what this external processing is about. It’s a non judgmental safe space where you can say those words, where I can hold those words, where you can say horrible, mean things, where you can say things that you maybe wouldn’t say to anybody else. Where you can speak the truth about something that you know or said or hope for or have done, but that you really wouldn’t speak out loud. And then I hear it and I reflect it back to you. Or sometimes I will tell you to go back and listen to your same message so you can hear it as if a third person were saying it to you, so you can get reflection, so you can get feedback. And that is external processing. And that is another one of the tools that I use.

Hypnosis is a tool that I use, that many coaches use and that also some therapists use. Hypnosis is a technique that helps you rewire your brain very quickly, very quickly and very efficiently, so you can develop habits quicker and easier, so you really start can making the changes that you desire. I use a lot of Hypnosis in overcoming obsessive thoughts. I use Hypnosis to help people deal with their toxic partner, to help people integrate the past and the present, to help them understand how they want to feel in the future. Many people use hypnosis. It’s a tool. And it is a tool that will help you create new habits quickly and easily. And it’s a tool that will help you feel better immediately. And I do mean immediately. So understanding that a therapeutic intervention might leave you feeling drained and exhausted in the short run and understanding that Hypnosis will make you feel better immediately is good To know.

If you’re already feeling heavy and down and you’ve done a lot of work and you’ve read a lot of books and you’ve listened to it 200 podcasts, a therapeutic intervention might not be the best thing for you right in this moment. Maybe a session of Hypnosis to help you integrate that, to relax and to just to free yourself from some of those burdens. That might be the best thing. Knowing what the tools are and how they help is invaluable. And again, when I likened the job of a coach to that of a general contractor, that’s something you want to be aware of when you’re selecting a practitioner to work with.

But you want to find somebody who understands the benefit of all these different things and the reasons of all these different things. You want somebody who is not afraid to refer you out because there are so many people out there that can help. And there’s also a lot of people out there who can hurt. But one of the things that I am always telling my people, I highly, highly advise that they find somebody who is trauma aware infidelity betrayal is a huge trauma. And you absolutely need somebody who understands the impact of trauma on the brain.

Trauma impacts the brain differently. And if you have somebody who is a well meaning, well educated, therapist, counselor, coach, anybody who does not have some understanding of trauma, it can actually be very detrimental. So that is a question that I want you to ask anybody. That what you work with. What do you know about trauma? Are you trauma aware? Are you trauma informed? What do you know about trauma? Because your job in selecting professionals to work with is to find the right people who will keep you safe.

Because there are so many well meaning people out there who have not experienced infidelity, who have not experienced betrayal, who do not understand trauma. And what they do can hurt you. If you have somebody that is preaching and advocating for forgiveness first, that completely shuts you down. That completely invalidates your experience of grief and being victimized. No, you do not have to be a victim your whole life. But you know what? You absolutely need to go through that grief process. You need to understand that you were victimized and you need to feel that. And if you spiritually bypass and short circuit and don’t feel all of that first and move straight to forgiveness, you’re setting yourself up for failure. You’re setting yourself up for depression. You’re setting yourself up for anxiety. You’re setting yourself up for a whole host of other things because a well meaning person pushed you too fast. So throughout this process, yes, I want you to get help, but, yes, I also want you to stand firm in where you are at.

Whether it’s a coach asking a coaching question. What are you afraid of that you’re not willing to admit? Is one of my favorite coaching questions. What are you afraid of that you’re not quite ready or willing to admit? A lot of stuff comes up. I’m not quite ready to admit that I don’t think this is going to work. I don’t think I want this relationship. It’s okay to say I’m not willing or ready to admit to it yet. Just acknowledge that it’s there and don’t allow anybody to push you before you’re ready, especially around staying or leaving a betrayal is a huge trauma.

It’s a huge shock to the system. And it could take you a couple of years to figure out if you want to stay, if you want to go, how you want this next vision of your life to be, what you want to include in the next chapter, who you want to include in the next chapter. A really good coach will help you create that white space and will help you advocate on behalf of yourself and your needs. A fair recovery, as I stated at the beginning, is the process of coming to terms with what happened. It’s the process of accepting your new reality and figuring out what you need to do going forward and figuring out what that forward really looks like.

And if you think back to graduating from high school, going to college, choosing a major, it was really hard to do for most of us. We were like, I don’t know, I think I want to do this and then maybe I don’t want to do that. And colleges are good at holding space for kids and saying, here’s general ed, try all of these different classes, try some math, try some science, try some social studies, and figure out what you like and what you’re good at. And then after two years of general ed, then it’s really time to niche down and to specialize.

And that’s the process of coaching. It’s holding that space so you can have everything your fear, your anger, your grief, your pain, your trauma, your whole situation and your whole self seen and held in a safe space where somebody can tell you, here’s some tools that might help. Let me just hold space and let me hold that vision, or let me help you create that vision. Because until we know where we’re going, we can’t get there.

We are going to wrap up this show with a series of some of my favorite coaching questions, so you can really get a feel for what coaching is like and why it is valuable. And if you’d like, you can even write down these questions and then journal the answers either tonight, right before you go to bed, or first thing in the morning. And I usually ask the people that I coach to do their journaling either last thing at night or first thing in the morning, because the state of the brain at that time of the day is the best time to come up with answers and to create changes.

And here’s why. We’ve got the conscious portion of our brain, which is a portion of the brain that directs us. It lets us know where we have to be and when and how we have to do things and what we need to learn and who we need to call and all of that stuff. Then we’ve got the subconscious portion of the brain, which is actually the largest portion of our brain, and it’s the portion that runs our life on autopilot. So when you’re getting ready in the morning, you’re going to brush your teeth, you’re going to wash your face, you’re going to do all of these things without a lot of conscious thought. You know how to pick up your toothbrush, you know how to put on toothpaste, and you always brush your teeth in the same pattern. That’s because of subconscious programming, because you’re not thinking how do I put toothpaste on the toothbrush? Now, if you broke an arm and suddenly had to brush with the other hand, that would require conscious thought. That’s a whole different part of the brain. So change takes place in the subconscious portion of the brain, not in the conscious portion of the brain. If change took place in the conscious portion of the brain, it would be easy. We would decide I’m not going to eat sugar anymore. And then bam, we would not eat sugar anymore. We would decide I’m never going to nag, I’m never going to overeat, I’m never going to miss a workout, I’m never going to whatever it is. And we would never have a problem changing it. New Year’s resolutions would be a thing of the past because we would just decide and everything would change. TADA. And it would be amazing. But because it’s the subconscious mind that runs the show. It’s the subconscious mind that has all those patterns and habits stored.

When we need to change, we need to change the subconscious mind first thing in the morning and last thing at night. The brain state is open, meaning that you have easier access to the subconscious portion of your brain first thing in the morning and last thing at night, right before you’re about to drift off. So if you want to journal, if you want to change your level of self confidence, self worth, if you want to get more clarity, if you want to process things, do it first thing in the morning before you pick up your phone. Do it last thing at night, because that’s when you can really get that information in.

So here are some of the questions that I am going to leave you with that I would like you to ponder. First question if you were to look at what’s going on in your life as the symptom of something bigger, what might be its source? If you were to look at what’s going on in your life as the symptom of something bigger, what might be its source? Take the time you need to write that down and then journal it a little bit later.

Next question what impact is the way you are thinking about the affair having on you? What impact is the way you were thinking about this affair having on you? Which kind of begs a deeper question how are you thinking about this affair? Are you thinking about it as the worst thing that has ever happened? Are you thinking about it as the best thing that has potentially ever happened? Are you thinking about it as the most destructive thing that has ever happened? How are you thinking about this affair?

And what is the impact of the way you are thinking about this affair having on you? And then my last question what are you afraid of? What are you afraid of? And what exists on the other side of that fear? What are you afraid of? And what exists on the other side of that fear?

And those are some examples of questions that might be asked in a coaching session where you would come and we would sit down and you would tell me, this is what’s going on. And this is what he said, and this is what she did, and this is how I feel, and this is what I can’t get over.

And these are some of the questions that will help you process and move forward. And then what’s next? What is your most immediate next step and how do you want to feel? Is your most immediate next step? Deciding if you’re going to stay or go is your most immediate next step.

Allowing yourself space and time to grieve is your most immediate next step finding a place to live what is your most immediate next step and how do you want to feel? Making that most immediate next step? Do you want to find a place to live with confidence and peace?

Do you want to decide whether to stay or whether to go with clarity and calm? What is that most immediate next step and how do you want to feel when you make it? And then what are the questions to uncover the blocks that are preventing you from making that decision and feeling that way?

Reach out if you have any questions, if you have any comments, if you need help finding a qualified therapist, coach, counselor, clergy member, anything. If you’ve got questions about different modalities or techniques, if something really works or really doesn’t work, I am happy to help you sort through that.

But first, remember to go to Betrayalrecoveryguide.com. Download your copy of the Sparkle After Betrayal Recovery Guide and get yourself on my list. So you can keep consistently taking steps to move forward, so you can keep breaking down the understanding of what’s going on, what might be really going on, what you need to move on, what you need to let go of, what you need to grab ahold of.

Whatever it is, I am here. I can help. And as usual, always remember to FLAUNT! exactly who you are, because who you are is always more than enough.

 

Narrator:

 

Tune in next time to FLAUNT!. Find your sparkle and create a life you love after infidelity or betrayal with radio host and live choreographer Lora Cheadle every Wednesday at 07:00 a.m and 07:00 p.m. Eastern time on syndicated Dream Vision Seven radio network. Develop naked self worth and reclaim your confidence, enthusiasm and joy so you can create a life you love and embrace who you are today. Download your free sparkle through Betrayal Recovery Guide@nakedselfworth.com.