Anxiety and Affairs

I could write an entire book on anxiety and affairs/infidelity, but today, I thought it would be helpful to post a another woman's blog regarding coping with judgement. She does an amazing job throughout her blog posts sharing her own intimate journey through recovering from infidelity and is building a supportive community of women who understand.

Affairs are truly soul-shaking and redefine our very person, relationship, and put our emotions, beliefs, and life through a test that is indescribable unless you have lived through it. If you are struggling with anxiety and infidelity, I urge you to read this post and check out other posts from Elle.

Be Blessed
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(Repost from: http://betrayedwivesclub.blogspot.com/2014/07/other-peoples-judgement.html)

Other People's Judgement

...too often we aren’t willing to do the hard work of feeling where the weight of that pain resides in us. Instead, we get stuck, carrying around other people’s judgments of us and then having to figure out how to shield ourselves from this unhealthy residue left inside of us. This is the root of a lot of physical ailments – from weight gain, to anxiety disorders to chronic health conditions. The effort to silence our pain requires so much attention and, like a dog at our heels, continues to attract more relationships to us which confirm our worst fears about ourselves.
~Wendy Strgar, creator of Good Clean Love

I had to pick up my children at school just hours after having my suspicions of an affair confirmed by my husband. I felt shaky. Stunned. Nonetheless, I put on my Mommy mask, made small-talk with the teachers, deflected a casual friend's inquiry into whether I was "okay" (of course, just tired, I told her) and acted to my children as if it was just another normal day.
It's an act I've kept up to some extent every day since.
I have my reasons, of course. We all do. I wanted time to figure out what I was going to do. I didn't want to upset my young children. I didn't want acquaintances to know about my private life.
But mostly? I didn't want others' judgement.
Judgement never feels good. Some of us are, of course, more susceptible than others. Those who, like me, grew up in a shame-filled home seem acutely sensitive to the sting of judgement. But even the thicker-skinned among us aren't impervious.
D-Day, with its nuclear-bomb-like destruction, can make even the most confident of us feel as vulnerable as a newborn.
And it's then, when our very sense of reality is shaken, that judgement threatens us the most.
Judgement around infidelity is harsh. Our culture responds harshly.
Among the most vocal are those who've a) never experienced it personally but think they know all about it from watching Dynasty or b) those who have experienced it personally but never really healed from it. And those are the people who aren't the least bit shy about sharing their opinions.
And their opinions generally consist of extremes. Either you leave the cheating bastard or you pretend it never happened and "leave it in the past". It's judgement based on blame. Either he's a total jerk and you're better off without him, or you somehow brought this on and it's best to just move on from it.
But no matter that it's judgement based on little understanding of the dynamics of an affair (or of marriage, for that matter), it still hurts. It's an assault on our already shaken confidence. And, too often, it's judgement that silences us.
While I long for the day when we can discuss infidelity with the openness that we've come to discuss other challenges, such as cancer or even alcoholism (though there's still some shame around addiction), we're nowhere close right now. Infidelity's power remains its ability to evoke strong opinions that effectively shut down any possibility for discussion. We need nuance. The chance to say, here's my story. What's yours? and actually listen to each other's experience without judgement.
We're off to a good start on this site. I love the compassion with which so many of you support each other's experiences.
But we need to be able to take that compassion into the larger world. And to respond to others' judgement with trust in our own experience. Maybe not right away, not right when you're feeling your most vulnerable. But someday, when you can respond to that "once a cheater, always a cheater" with a confident "not true. At least not for me."
In the meantime, try and recognize others' judgement for what it is: fear, an unhealed wound, false bravado, emotional disconnect. A way to silence their own pain.

Why Won't My Anxiety Go Away??

This post today isn't for the faint of heart. I'm going to answer your question about why your anxiety still hasn't gone away, but prepare yourself to possibly want to throw a hard object at your screen. Or maybe you'll want to tell me to "f off." As someone who suffered off and on with debilitating anxiety most of my life, I can tell you with absolute certainty that part of the reason (maybe all of the reason for some of you) that your anxiety hasn't gone away is because its meant to teach you something that you haven't yet learned.

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I know. I warned you. How dare I claim something so stupid?? Don't I remember how horrible anxiety could be and how people would do almost anything to get rid of it?! I can assure you that I remember all too well how awful anxiety is and how desperate I was to heal it. So, stick with me for a few minutes if you can. What I have to share with you may not be as easy to digest as other "feel-good" posts I write, but it's my number one responsibility to help you heal and, sometimes, that means challenging you.

I can only speak this truth because I lived it over and over again--and I have watched friends, family, and clients live it too. When we find ourselves in deep suffering, most of us are compelled to want to stop the suffering. We see the suffering itself as the problem. With anxiety specifically, it undeniably feels like anxiety is attacking us--that we are the powerless party--and we begin obsessing about how to stop the anxiety. We fall deeper into the story of how "awful" we feel, how desperate we are to stop feeling it, and we begin, with chronic anxiety, to build our entire world around hiding from the anxiety. For me, this meant that my world all but disappeared, as I was confined to my apartment alone, unable to function. Yet, even there, the anxiety ultimately found me. It was like a demon that I needed an exorcism to relinquish. A stalking, abusive, terrifying person that I needed people to protect me from. But, there weren't any priests or pastors who did "anxiety exorcisms." There wasn't anyone who seemed to be able to outsmart the stalking, abusive person constantly threatening my sanity and safety. The despair was overwhelming, all-consuming, and led me into the scariest places of my life. But, then, something occurred to me in that blackness of fear, isolation, and despair.

Anxiety wasn't a demon. It was not a human being. In fact, it had never even caused me any true harm no matter how many scary thoughts or panic attacks had me convinced that I was going to die. Anxiety was actually no more and no less than the monster under my bed late at night--and I was the only one who had the ability and the power to turn on the light and realize that there was, in fact, no monster there. And, with this in mind, it was a deeper lesson and call to action in my life than to merely take control of my anxiety disorders. This was a theme that had perpetually shown up in my life, although it had been unclear to me before. While it wasn't just about learning one lesson--anxiety absolutely became the most extreme form of suffering that I had to face in order to actually face all that I had been running from inside of myself. It was simply the manifestation of a larger problem and my body and mind were literally screaming at me trying to "wake me up" and help instigate real change.

While my story might seem unique, I have seen firsthand that this is true for everyone who suffers with chronic anxiety. There is something calling out for your attention--and it is deeper than just the anxious symptoms you hope to get rid of. It's a symbol, if you're willing to let it be, of a cry from your soul to choose a different path, to let go of something or someone, to find the courage to be honest about yourself, to put a voice to your silenced pain---or a million other things. I can't know your exact situations unless we work together, but I urge you to consider all of the pieces of yourself that you have denied, hidden from, or considered the "demon." I urge you to give it real consideration that, if you have changed your diet, lifestyle, incorporated relaxation and meditation, done everything you can to retrain your brain, and all other proven techniques to overcome anxiety, it truly might be that the anxiety is still prominent because it's a call to action that you have yet to take. And, I can only hope that some day, you can look back on this time in your life and realize, that unlike anxiety even being a monster under your bed, it was a guiding light moving you toward your greatest self and greatest life. For, what we resist, persists. Your entire life will burst open and break forth before you the moment you choose to stop resisting the anxious symptoms, trust in their message to you, and shift your energy from fighting the anxiety to fighting for your deepest truths and needs. This is my promise to you.

Be blessed.
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For more information on natural ways to overcome anxiety, click here: www.realanxietycures.com