Affairs take many things from you, including your confidence. As you recover from the affair, part of the journey includes regaining some of what you’ve lost.
The problem with confidence is that you can’t go down to the grocery or hardware stores and buy one off the shelf. There is no place on the shelves for confidence. It’s not a matter that the product is on back order or that they’re temporarily out. Once it’s gone, it requires a search in finding it.
You know you want it, but do you really understand what’s going on? Many people talk about ‘confidence’, yet neither understand what it is nor how it’s regained.
Let me start by pointing out that although both areas where confidence has been lost (confidence in yourself and confidence regarding your spouse) involve trust. (I go into greater detail about trust and confidence in the e-book, “How Can I Trust You Again?”).
The type regarding your spouse can be regained as trust is re-established. This type is dependent on your ability and willingness to trust your spouse again.
The other type involves your trust in your own choices. You may find yourself questioning your own decisions, emotions and thinking. This often shows up in the form of second-guessing your own decision making. That second-guessing generates doubt.
When you’ve accepted the doubt, it turns every decision into an agonizing back and forth experience. When doubt takes over, it leaves you vulnerable to emotional swings. Whichever way your emotions blow, you follow.
Being blown by emotions makes everything dependent on how you feel rather than whether or not it’s good for you or your relationships. Anytime someone questions you, it may be viewed as either a disapproval or an attack. The doubt puts you in a state of perpetual victimhood.
The way out of this type of problem requires a re-integration. Your spouse didn’t take this type of confidence from you, instead, you quit trusting your own choices, thoughts and emotions.
The good news is that all that you need for regaining this type of confidence is with you. It’s not dependent on what your spouse does. It is dependent on you making choices and trusting them once again.
Overcoming this requires rebuilding your ability to trust your decision-making in a choice by choice fashion. It often starts with trusting small choices and building from there.
The affair often hits you on a deep level. Part of the damage is that trigger you questioning yourself. The doubts that develop shake you up on the inside. The hurtful comments your spouse or other make often generate more doubt.
Since you don’t trust your own choices, the assumption is made that they ‘must be telling you’ truths about yourself. You begin believing what they say rather your own decision making.
Regaining what you lost comes a little at a time, with each choice you make. The more you trust your own choices, the stronger the confident feelings grow.
(Note: If the severity of your symptoms is at the level of an Affair Trauma, you may need some other specific methods in regaining confident feelings. The Affair Trauma webinar presents those methods)
Best Regards,
Jeff
