After the Affair: Is it depression or something else?

 

In the aftermath of an affair, you’ll experience an emotional down. Whether you are the cheater, the one who was cheated on or the lover, everyone experiences this.

There’s no escaping the down either. Sure, you can use drugs, alcohol or more sex, but that only delays the inevitable down. When you delay it, the impact is worse than had you faced it head on.

The inevitable down will come. When it hits, your energy level and motivation drops. You may even have trouble getting out of bed or wanting to go through the day.

Instead of looking forward to each day, you will find yourself dreading them. They become something to be endured rather than savored and enjoyed.  Any sense of joy you had is severely diminished if it is there at all.

Initially, this is about grief. There’s been a loss, and you must face it. Whether or not you caused it, you  still have to deal with it. The old marriage, the old affair, the old you is gone.

The way you looked at the world before is gone. Now that those things are gone, you will have to say good-bye.  The grief is a natural reaction. You need time to slow down and heal from what has just taken place.

You may not have even considered all that you lost with the affair. This grief is part of the natural process of readjusting to new realities. You may not want the new reality or like it. No matter whether you want it or not, it’s the new world you live in.

How you handle that grief makes all the difference. If you start beating yourself up over what happened, that down will turn into a depression. When you stay down long enough, you risk the possibility of a depression.

When your brain is in that down position for an extended period, it adjusts to that circumstance.

If you have a family history of depression, history of previous depression or use depressants, the risk of depression developing is even higher. These conditions make you vulnerable to depressing your mind and emotions as a way of coping.

It is not a healthy way, yet some of you are predisposed to this way of dealing with crises. When you use shutting down as a way of dealing with things, you start training your mind to ‘shut down’ when any major discomfort comes along. After a while, it will begin doing it without you telling it to do so.

So if you have any predisposition to depression, you will want to deal with the grief and move past it as soon as possible.

There are also some of you that experience guilt during this time of grief. Whether the guilt was induced by others or yourself, you will have to face it.

Guilt has a tendency to continually send you the message “You’re bad” over and over again. You may have made some bad choices, but that does not make you bad. There are other variations of this such as “You’re a loser” or “You failed at marriage” and so forth.

In your mind, the bad choices came as a result of you being bad. Instead of directing the negative messages to your choices, you instead direct them to your person.

You  may find it inconceivable to separate your person from your performance. This kind of guilt will make the grief period …hellacious, especially if you confuse guilt with grief or combine the guilt with the depression.

The grief period should last two-six months. If it lasts longer than that, you or your spouse may be doing things to prolong it. There are many motive for prolonging the grief.

None of them are good, and all of them end up making the situation worse. Since depression and guilt often suck energy from you, overcoming them poses a challenge.

You do not have the energy to move past them. When guilt is involved, you may be giving yourself messages that you do not deserve to move past the grief.

You need help in getting past the grief when it lasts for an extended period.  Real help means making changes in your thinking and changes in your behavior. If you think that taking medications to make you feel better will fix it, you are mistaken. This takes much more than medication.

Forgiveness helps you through the grieving process. Although forgiveness helps, it does not interrupt the grief. You will still have to go through the grief even after you forgive or have been forgiven.

If you find yourself stuck in the grief mode, you may be struggling with Affair Trauma. There are proven ways of getting unstuck. The “Overcoming Affair Trauma” video, guides you in moving past being stuck.

Best Regards,

Jeff

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