Today’s email is directed more at the betrayer than the betrayed. Although many betrayers aren’t initially hurting bad enough to seek help, there are some of you who are.
When you’re hurting bad enough to finally start doing something about the affair, there’s a time you ask yourself “How could I be so stupid?”
At times the question is an expression of exasperation and other times, you’re really looking for an answer.
Assuming you’re being totally honest with yourself in posing that question, it deserves answering. In asking the question, you’re starting the process of coming to your senses and moving out of the affair fog.
This is part of waking up to what happened that occurs on coming out of the affair fog.
Just in posing the question, your mind is realizing that you weren’t thinking. It was on, but not thinking about the outcome. Acting stupid means you weren’t thinking through things and considering the consequences of your actions.
At the time of the affair, your mind was on automatic pilot or in ‘passive mode’. It was just reacting to your surroundings without actively considering what’s going on.
You were looking for immediate gratification and not considering its impact. This amounts to your brain being asleep at the wheel rather than staying alert to dangers.
This condition exists when you’re tired, under the influence of substances, hungry, feeling deficient, being alone or emotionally aroused. In each of these conditions, your brain is not fully engaged and thinking through things.
When several of these conditions exists at the same time, it overwhelms you. When overwhelmed, your body assumes that the automatic pilot or ‘passive’ function will be able to handle the situation.
Your brain goes into automatic or ‘robot’ functioning. That robot mode keeps you passive rather than taking initiative.
A brain in ‘passive’ functioning is a brain at risk. The Affair Fog keeps your brain in that passive mode. When you’re in the fog, your mind is wrapped around the affair and what it promises.
The fog keeps you from thinking and engaging at any level beyond action-reaction types of interactions. It paralyzes you to a large degree.
It’s not that you’re stupid, you brain wasn’t fully engaged and considering consequences. It took a short-cut that ended up creating problems. It felt good and didn’t want to consider the consequences.
It’s also easier blaming yourself for being ‘stupid’ than admitting what you did was wrong.
Getting your brain back to ‘normal’ is part of the affair recovery process. In the video “Help for the Cheater: Starting the Road to Recovery”, I address how you can start the recovery process.
Order your copy of the video today and start turning things around. You don’t have to keep your brain in the non-thinking way of doing things any longer.
Keeping It Real,
Jeff
