In part 1 we looked at how trauma and suffering are different. Chances are, you had survived many hardships before learning of your partner’s betrayal. But this feels different. You can’t snap back, you can’t face the people in your life like before, you feel as if you’ve lost yourself – past, present, and future. If you’re experiencing trauma due your partner’s infidelity, healing will look different than the hardships you’ve suffered in your life up to now.

Trauma reduces a person’s capacity. This will be a key factor in your ability to heal. You see, before you were traumatized, you had a large capacity to handle life. Highs and lows were all within your window of tolerance. But after D-day, something that would have been rather easy for you to handle is now outside of your window of tolerance. Your capacity has shrunk. Imagine your capacity before betrayal was a 6-lane super highway, and now it’s a narrow dirt road. (This is true for anyone experiencing all kinds of trauma, PTSD, or PTS)

So here you are with a window of tolerance so small, you feel like a gladiator if you can manage to take a shower, amiright? So how can you get back to your “old self”? Very slowly, my friend. Like we discussed in the previous post, this event (infidelity in our case) has traumatized you because it’s overwhelming and outside of your control. Before we look at the things we can do to heal, it’s key that you understand your capacity has indeed shrunk. Your brain literally can not function, right now, as it did before.

1. Accept that your window of tolerance is smaller than before D-day
2. Give yourself permission to scale your life back to what your can do and stay stable
3. Increase your ability to take on more things very slowly so you don’t become overwhelmed and dysregulated again, which will shrink your capacity back down

I know doing step 2 is very scary, demeaning, costly, and embarrassing. You need to function, I get it. But the truth is that this – scaling back and increasing slowly – must be done so your brain feels safe and empowered once again. You’re getting your power back. Your brain is getting it’s optimal functioning back. Accept reduced capacity, scale your life back, and increase that dirt road so gradually that you don’t become destabilized.

By increasing capacity, I mean doing more, taking on more, etc. in extremely small, slow steps. And in time, you’ll be functioning even stronger and better than before you were devastated by betrayal (at least that’s what I’m told) 🙂 In part 3, we will look at how to do that.