Affairs bring many problems, one of them is that of “Intrusive Thoughts”. Both of you will find yourselves facing the challenge of intrusive thoughts. Both of you have to work on them to resolve this challenge. There are times when it will take both of you working together in resolving it.
These thoughts come from anxiety, and they are attempts by your mind to reassure itself that things will go smoothly. When we feel anxious about something in life, we may have the tendency to project those feelings onto our spouse.
With an affair, trust in your spouse has been disrupted. This disruption interferes with feelings projected onto your spouse or obsessive, intrusive thoughts you experience.
The main difference is the nature of the thoughts and when they occur. In marriage, the intrusive thoughts may occur randomly, but they are usually triggered by someone or something in the present situation or the affair itself.
Sometimes it is just a simple thought like what if I did that? and then you don’t do anything about it. In an affair on the other hand, those intrusive thoughts are addictive and overpowering to where nothing else matters outside of the thought you are obsessing over.
The cheater may experience the intrusive thoughts after the affair has ended, while the betrayed spouse faces intrusive thoughts soon after the discovery of the affair.
With each intrusive thought, a new pathway is created in your mind. Your mind creates many new pathways every day. Common sense tells you the more you walk through the same pathway, the stronger that pathway becomes.
The more you continue replaying the intrusive thoughts, the stronger they become. Even the unwanted thoughts grow in strength with repetition.
The challenge comes when you continue ‘activating’ that pathway. The more often you return to that thought, the more worn that pathway becomes and the more power it has concerning your thinking. Each time you revisit that thought, it’s given more power and establishes more stronger connectedness with other areas of your brain.
Each visit to that thought increases its strength. Like a workout at the gym, each repetition gives the thought of increased power.
With each new series of connections being formed, the thought has more pathways into other areas of your mind. The more the connections, the more access it has to other parts of your thinking and emotions.
Since your thoughts impact how you feel, the mental connections will take over greater dominance over the emotional parts of your brain. Over time, your outlook will become more bleak and the mental connections will begin to take control.
What starts off as ‘just a thought’ intertwines with other areas of your mind so that it triggers a series of thoughts and the resulting emotional reactions.
When you have a thought about someone, it triggers a reaction of emotional thoughts. The stronger the pathway the more power it has to control your feelings and emotions.
As you continue entertaining the intrusive thought, it speeds up its reaction time. The more you trigger it, the faster and more intensive the reactions.
What this means is that you will want to stop intrusive thoughts in their tracks. Realize that even the largest and longest trains can be brought to a halt, by starting the slowing down process.
When it comes to intrusive thoughts, start by delaying your response to it. Like slowing down the train, it starts the process.
The thought may want you to ‘take action now’. Since those thoughts are irrational, they will want you to take irrational actions. Start by giving yourself permission to delay acting on the thought. Each delay starts slowing down your reaction time.
Once you slow down the initial ‘call to action’ of the intrusive thoughts, you can begin making other interventions.
That’s the plan. Slow down and start making interventions with intrusive thoughts. I’ll be sharing more tips on how to handle those dreaded thoughts coming up in an upcoming post.
One of these interventions is that of fast-forwarding to the ‘end of the movie’.
This means you mentally play out where acting on the intrusive thought will take you. Many times when you see where acting on the thought will lead you, you can make other choices. Rather than feeling driven by intrusive thoughts, this allows you to begin taking charge of them.
This will get you started on dealing with intrusive thoughts.
If you find yourself stuck or unable to turn off the intrusive thoughts, you may be experiencing trauma symptoms related to the affair. This Affair Trauma status happens when you get stuck in the constant replaying of intrusive thoughts and emotions.
The video, “Overcoming Affair Trauma” guides you in methods and ways of getting unstuck along with changing the patterns in your brain, including those from your past. You can move past those terrible moments and bad decisions in your life rather than being defined by them.
Best Regards,
Jeff
