Yesterday I mentioned my recent hospital adventures. Although I’ve worked in hospital settings, I now do my best in avoiding them. Although I dislike them, they continue to be a real-life classroom for me. There are always new things I learn from the experiences of the medical staff in them.
I’ve learned more practical hard life lessons from hurting situations than from textbooks. The books have their place, but the real-life lessons have life-changing stories.
One of the lessons I learned in my recent hospital adventure happened in ICU. While tending to a family member there, Lisa the nurse turned to us and said “The bed will kill you!”
“Pardon me?” I said. “What do you mean?”
Without further explanation, she quickly walked away to tend to some other matter. We were left mystified at her proclamation. The mere statement seemed absurd on the surface, but looking deeper there was a germ of truth to it worthy of serious consideration.
Lisa’s blunt statement stunned me for a moment. She returned later and explained that when you’re dealing with life and death issues, the longer you stay in bed, the greater the risk of death. She went on pointing out that she’s seen too many people killed by the bed.
The longer you lie in bed, the more time your mind and body have to broil in its negative thoughts. Any good doctor or nurse knows that too much stressing of the mind leads quickly to negative feelings and thoughts such as fear, worry, anger, anxiety, etc. These bad emotions quickly break the immune system down.
Now if you’re an ICU patient, it’s unlikely that you can do your part in keeping yourself mentally healthy by replacing negative emotions with positive ones through affirmations or visualizations.
Then there’s the impact the bed has on your core body strength. The longer you lay there, the more strength it takes from you. At a time when you need strength, it’s slipping away.
I’d never considered the bed a weapon before. The more I pondered what she told me, the more the truth hit me. The bed does kill you.
When it comes to affairs, what happened in a bed is what breaks your heart. It also kills you again when you shut down and stay in bed rather than take action in dealing with your situation. With affairs, the bed poses two risks. The affair itself and the danger of shutting down rather than dealing with the affair.
The bed is a weapon in the sense that it can kill you emotionally and physically. It’s important to take action and not let the bed defeat you.
The most dangerous place for a wounded spouse is in bed. It’s the worst place to be when you’re trying to heal and overcome an affair. The longer you stay in bed, the less likely you are to recover emotionally from your ordeal.
Getting out of bed means getting up and doing something about your situation even if it’s starting to do your daily grooming.
When you’re facing the trauma of an affair, the bed is awfully tempting. You want to crawl under the sheets and not come out again. You think it’s a safe place, when in reality, it threatens your life.
No one wants to face the trauma that comes with an affair. It’s not a pleasant experience. You’d rather avoid it if possible. Although you don’t want to work through it, that’s exactly what needs doing.
When we’re hurt by someone, it’s natural to want to avoid the situation. We fantasize about going far away and becoming invisible. These thoughts are a defense mechanism trying to protect us from suffering too much pain at one time. With an affair, this defense has its serious limitations though.
This is one of the reasons I put together the video, “Overcoming Affair Trauma“. It guides you through that phase of affair recovery you may have been denying or avoiding. Affair Trauma doesn’t have to stop your life. You can move past it and I’ll show you how in this video.
Keeping It Real,
Jeff
