In a conversation with my wife, we talked about the impact of trauma on the body. Even traumas that happened years before leave long-lasting effects. Some of these effects may become more apparent in the years to come.
One of the effects of trauma is referred to as ‘dysregulation’. What this amounts to is that your regular cycles and self-regulation systems turn irregular. This is not a good thing.
A more common term for dysregulation is being screwed up. This is a vivid way of expressing how twisted and turned around things become.
You may have noticed how your mind, emotions and moods are all screwed up by the affair. This is not something that you’re just imagining. The inter-related function of your mind, emotions and moods are intricately intertwined.
Affairs can mess up your health, your thinking and your moods.
It changes how you view marriage, love, family and yourself. It may even change how you view God and your own spiritual condition. All these are touched by the affair and are subject to dysregulation.
Even though you didn’t have the affair, the dysregulation continues disrupting your life years afterwards. You may have gotten through the initial shock of the affair, yet continue facing the haunting after effects.
For your wife, her initial shock and pain may have eased. The wedding rings go back on and she tries to resume normal life. Yet the after effects of the trauma continue to disturb her. She still feels that all is not quite right in her world.
Medications are only a temporary fix to problems like these. The medications initially help you sleep, think and function, but they lose their effectiveness as the dysregulation continues. Medications don’t teach you new skills or ways of doing things better.
The medications give you the ability to carry on, but they don’t change anything.
As long as the problem of affair trauma hasn’t been resolved, the symptoms continue keeping you ‘on edge’. You may have gotten your spouse back, but you haven’t gotten your peace of mind back.
The dysregulation that happens puts your mind and body into new cycles and patterns. The new patterns change your mood, your thinking and your functioning.
You may have even accepted the dysfunction as your ‘new normal’. When you live with symptoms for long enough, you accept the unhealthy as part of your new life. When you accept the unhealthy as ‘normal’, it keeps you stuck in a trauma mindset.
Getting past this first requires you quit accepting the symptoms as ‘normal’. They aren’t ‘normal’. You don’t have to put up with them as part of your self-punishment.
Instead, you can start making change. When you accept that change is possible, it opens your thinking up to new options. One of the new options is breaking from the dysfunctional patterns.
In the video on “Overcoming Affair Trauma” I help you understand what’s going on and ways of changing it. Rather than staying stuck, you can instead, put those unhealthy patterns behind you.
You don’t have to keep dragging the old symptoms around with you. You no longer have to be defined by your symptoms. Take the step toward changing things by clicking and downloading the video today.
Keeping It Real,
Jeff
