One of the wake-up calls I received letting me know I was stressed out happened in my dreams. In my ‘stress’ dreams, I find myself late for class and start rushing in order to arrive on time. The panic of being late feels very real, where I feel my muscles tense, heart race and breathing quicken.
The stress of the experience triggers reactions and I quickly sit up in bed thinking I have to get ready. After a few moments, I catch myself and get oriented to what day it is. I suddenly realize that “It’s Saturday. I don’t have any classes” or in another variation “Wait, I last attended college 25 years ago. I don’t have any classes to rush to.”
Those dreams leave me a little disoriented on awakening. It takes me a few moments for me to orient myself to what day and year it is. Apparently my dream world doesn’t have an accurate calendar for me to use. If it did, I wouldn’t stress out thinking I was late to class.
I’ve learned that when those dreams happen, I am stressed and need to slow down. I also note that I am no longer living in the 80’s.
Chances are that during your recovery from affair, you’ll find yourself feeling like you are reliving an episodes from your past. You’ve gone through it so many times, it feels like a summer re-run that won’t end.
You know how it ends and you dread going through it again.
The difference is that I woke up from my dream and realized what day and year it is. During Affair Recovery, you may find yourself replaying an incident from your past, yet not realize that ‘it’s in the past’. You live that incident so repeatedly, it feels like its’ happening now.
Replaying and reliving the past is a part of coping. It’s natural for you to do that as your mind wrestles with what happened.
But, how long have you been replaying and reliving the past? Is it possible that you’ve done it so much and for so long that you’ve got yourself stuck?
When overused, the replaying and reliving become an obstacle to recovery. It traps you and keeps you from moving ahead. It also keeps you from letting go of things by means of forgiving.
Realizing what day and year it is helps wake you up to where you really are on the timeline of your life. With major hurts, like affairs, in order to move forward, you’ll need to ‘let go’ of those past incidents. You can wake up to what the real day is and get on with life.
The video, “Forgiveness: Stop the Pain, Tear down the walls and remove the roadblocks” guides you through that letting go process. If you wonder why you remain stuck, this could very well be the reason. It can even help with the hurts that happened before the affair as well.
Best Regards,
Jeff
