With an affair, it’s essential that you reach out for help. Dealing with an affair takes a lot out of you, at a time when you are least equipped for making necessary decisions.
Developing a healthy support system <<– listen to the audio here
Hi, this is Jeff Murrah with Affair Recovery Radio and I’m glad you’re listening in today. Our session for today is going to focus on developing a healthy support system.
With an affair you are going to need a support system. Because when you’re dealing with recovery from an affair your main support, being your spouse, is not there.
Your spouse cannot be depended upon. During this time you’re going to need help. Besides needing physical strength, you’re going to need spiritual and emotional strength.
This isn’t something that you can get through with just your muscle power or just your willpower. It’s going to take more than that. Since it’s going to take more than that you’re going to need a support system.
Dealing with an affair is going to take a lot out of you. And you’re going to have to make choices that, at times, you may not be equipped for.
At the time that you are least equipped for making major choices is when you’re going to find yourself having to deal with those major choices. That’s part of the reason that you’re going to need a support system.
If you want to think of it as a support safety net, that may be a better image in your mind, in terms of your support system.
In terms of developing a healthy support system, and I use the term healthy because you may be able to put together a support system, but it may not necessarily be healthy. We’re going to be talking about that.
With any support system the foundations are critical. You need a firm foundation in terms of developing any kind of support system.
I encourage you, for the first part, start with a solid spiritual foundation.
By spiritual, during this time you’re going to need to spend some time meditating, praying, and renewing yourself. You’re going to need to be connecting with something bigger than you are.
You’re going to need to connect with God. Because you’re going to need some power and some strength that is beyond you.
Because there’s some days that you’re going to wonder how am I going to make it through this day. This is why you need that.
You’re also going to need the faith. Because with this spiritual component you exercise more and more of the faith. And you’re going to need that sense of faith. Not just a lot of positive vibes, you need something solid to believe in.
Besides that, once you have that as part of your foundation, you’re going to need to surround yourself with good friends. I emphasize the good because there’s some friends that they’re going to join with you, like your buds.
And yes, they may be loyal to you, but they may not necessarily be steering you in the best direction. And they may not help you in terms of the best ways to cope with your situation.
The kind of friends that you need to be looking for and including in your support system are friends that want your best, not their best. Although it sounds bad, there are some friends that are very selfish, that are only interested in themselves.
There are some friends that may take advantage of your situation and attempt to exploit you. Those are not the people you need to be around right now.
Besides having friends that want your best, they have to be willing to confront you and also support you. You do not need to be surrounded by a bunch of yes people that say yes to everything you do.
You need people that are willing to be honest, and whatever you decide to do will go ahead and help you pick up the pieces if it doesn’t work out.
Because some of your choices will be good ones, and some won’t be so good. You’re going to need a support system to help you with whatever choice that you make.
Ideally, if you have a friend that disagrees with what you’re going to do, they’ll tell you yet they’ll still be there to pick you up when things don’t work out quite the way that you had hoped.
The third thing you’re going to need is to avoid fearfulness. If you’ve got friends that are panicky or fearful, stay away from them. Fear will weaken you. During this time you need strength. You don’t need the weakness that comes through fear.
This may mean that you have to stay away from fearful friends, and fearful family. There are some families that are very fearful. They may say well, I’m just concerned, or I’m just a worrywart.
Well, that may be, but those aren’t the kind of people that you need around you during this time. That fearfulness is going to weaken you and make the situation worse. So you need to limit the time that you spend with them.
You’re going to need to also remove any fear inducing items from your home. There may be some objects that make you feel weak, or are kind of scary, or instill a lot of fear in you.
If in your movie collection there’s movies about affairs that make you feel inadequate, get those out of your collection.
There’s things that leave you feeling more inadequate, more fearful, you want to remove those objects. Because during this time you want to be surrounded by encouragement and a support.
It doesn’t do you a whole lot of good to have support of friends and you come home to an environment that instills a lot of fear and fearfulness in you. That’s shooting yourself in the foot. It’s a self-defeating behavior. You want to get out of that pattern.
If you go ahead and you put these into place, it will start you on the way to having a healthy support system. Some of you will have a very elaborate system and you’re fortunate enough to have a lot of friends.
Some of you may have just a few friends and they may even be just people that you’ve met over the Internet that are friends, that meet these definitions.
Either way you’re going to need a support a system. And some support system is better than no support system. These are things that will start you on your way.
Much like many of the other recommendations that I have made, the more you put these into practice the more benefit that they will bring to you. I encourage you to go ahead and start putting these things into place today, because the sooner you get these things in place the sooner your support system gets healthy, and the more benefit it will bring to you.
I’m glad that you were with me today, and I wish you the best in putting together your support system as you’re faced with some of the tough challenges that are in front of you.
If you are looking for a support system, consider joining the support community at Restored Lifestyle.
Best Regards,
Jeff
