At the time of my life when I lived with a traumatizer, I learned first-hand what a nightmare it can be. Just having them in the house, even when she was on her best behavior it was disruptive.
Many nights I slept uneasy wondering if she was going to try something on my family or I that night. We could hear her cursing and ranting about us from her bedroom. We kept our door shut, and made sure our sons did as well, just in case.
She had ways of making any decision a crisis. With no warning, she erupted in an emotional volcano of rage complete with screaming and threatening.
My sons hid themselves when these episodes erupted.
It was as if she was uneasy if there wasn’t any crises happening. As a therapist, I knew she had issues, but knowing that gave me little comfort.
My father often used the phrase “hurt people hurt people”. I saw that on a daily basis.
I heard the same idea from John Briere who put it “trauma begets trauma.” What it boils down to is that one hurt leads to another.
The counselors can talk about how ‘adversity leads to growth’ all they want. What I knew was that trauma had me living with the fearful equivalent of “I’m gonna die!” for a long time.
I survived that episode. It took several years for my nervous system to finally settle down from being on high-alert 24 hours a day. Calming down from that kind of trauma takes a while.
In coming face to face with the affair, it’s likely that you’ve experienced trauma. At a mild level, the threat was to the integrity of your marriage and life. In severe cases, the threat included the integrity of your body and your life.
When your pain level exceeds your ability to cope with the situation, you crater. Once cratered, it’s hard getting back to any kind of normal life.
Affairs have long tails. The effects of traumatizing events last long after the danger is over. You survived it, yet you are far from recovered or well.
It’s during those times you need encouragement and connection with others in helping you past this. This is where membership in the Restored Lifestyle community can help. Rather than trying to pull yourself up by yourself, there is help from others going through similar situations.
That helping hand along with sincere reassurances has a way of calming your nerves. Start your recovery journey here.
Keeping It Real,
Jeff
