subject: Control Your Thoughts - Do Not Let The Affair Consume You [print this page] Control Your Thoughts - Do Not Let The Affair Consume You
John was not happy, he had put fourteen years into his marriage, doing what he could to make it a happy one. Then after fourteen years he found out that his wife was having an affair with an old high school flame. He thought that they had fourteen good years and he was blissfully unaware of any problems. Now he is struggling to comprehend what has happened, his world has come crashing down around him and his mind feels like it is no longer his own. He finds it difficult to be positive about anything as everything has become tainted by the affair. His mind has gone into non stop overdrive, analysing everything about his marriage, wondering what he did wrong, wondering what they did together. A part of him wishes that he could turn the clock back to before he discovered the affair, when he was still happy. John is struggling to see a way out of the mess, wherever he looks he sees negativity, he feels like he is losing his mind. What is happening to John is not unique. No matter who you are, if you have been dealt a blow like this you will feel like your mind is no longer your own and that it is plagued with dark and ugly thoughts. Although it is easier said than done, you have to learn to control your thoughts and do not let the affair consume you.
If you have just found out that your spouse has had an affair, it is like your world has come to an end. You have been betrayed, you try to look to the future that you once saw but can no longer see anything. If like John you thought that you had a good marriage this betrayal is made worse by the belief that you can no longer trust your judgement, can you ever trust again?
You want and need to understand why the affair happened, and what happened. As the victim in this you will be trying to comprehend something that is often totally incomprehensible. As you try to think things through you start to question the validity of the foundations of truth, trust, commitment. You wonder if the values that you held dear held any worth or meaning.
Are these thoughts causing you grief. I do not think that our marriage can withstand the strain. I hate them, they are scum. The sight of my loving spouse repels me. What have they got that I do not? Are they better looking? Do they have better prospects than I do? Is it because I put some weight on? Have I spent too much time with the kids and not enough time with my spouse?
The list is endless.
The negative thoughts that you have to endure mix in you as the victim, your spouse who betrayed you, and what will happen to your marriage. The affair consumes your mind so it becomes all that you can think about, and everything that you do becomes defined in relation to the affair.
Negative Thought Loops
Just like anyone in your situation you need to know what happened, you crave all the details. Any time that you think about the affair mind becomes cluttered with images that you do not want to see, but you are unable to help yourself from visiting them again and again and again.
Until you are able to take action and learn how to control your thoughts they will haunt you while you sleep and awake. You will not be able to escape your negative thought loop overnight, it will take time. Being only human you will have days when you make no forward progress, you might even slip back a bit, the important thing is not to let it get to you and to keep pushing forward. If you keep working at it you will reach the point where you have healed your mind and are once again in control of your thoughts.
Reclaim Your Inner Sanctuary
Why would anyone want to live a life of unalloyed misery when they did not have to. Your mind is your inner sanctuary, however, you are the only one who can take it back. Your are the victim in this. I am certain that your spouse did not consult you about their affair, and you certainly did not ask for this to happen to you. It is unfair that your spouse betrayed you and that as a result you are unable to find any kind of peace. Much as you would like to, you cannot change the past, it has happened and you need to accept that.
What you can do is to influence your future by managing your thinking. Negative thoughts are vile things with tremendous staying power. But if you are ready to take them on then you can beat them back with positive replacements. However, before you can look at rebuilding your marriage, you have to protect yourself. It is going to be a long time before you can bring yourself to trust your spouse. If you want to stand any chance of saving your marriage you are going to have to start on it before you fully trust them. In order to protect, yourself you need to see some massive changes in how your spouse acts before you can deal with your thoughts.
Once you are ready to regain control of your thoughts you can use these three steps to get you started.
1. Track your thoughts.
You need to be able to track your thoughts, and learn to recognize the signs of your negative thoughts as they occur. For example, if you wanted to lose weight, then you would track what you ate. As you track what you eat you will begin to identify how to modify your diet in order to achieve your goals. On the other hand, if you want to stop smoking then by tracking how many cigarettes you can find that you start to smoke less.
So, when you track your thoughts, you need to develop an awareness of the times or places when you are: Less likely to have negative thoughts. More likely to have negative thoughts.
Or where you have no or hardly any negative thoughts.
Step 2. You need to identify your negative thought-loop patterns
Try to identify patterns for when you experience the thought-loops, such as specific times when your mind seems unable break free of negativity. Do these loops occur at specific times of the day? Maybe when you are trying to go to sleep? Or when you are on the daily commute to and from work. Or are there any other times of the day when you are affected?
Does engaging in a specific activity trigger a loop? Is there a movie or movie genre that affects you? Maybe you could be affected when you go to a favorite restaurant? Think about other locations or activities that could trigger a loop.
Are these loops specific to something that you see or hear? For example hearing about an affair in the news, newspaper, radio, T.V or a movie? Can you think of any other triggers?
Step 3. Break negative thought-loop patterns
Once you have discovered the patterns that define when negative thoughts are occurring for you, create actionable steps that break the pattern, planning ahead for when these occurrences may crop up.
Time of day: If you've discovered that your thoughts turn negative at bedtime, change your bedtime ritual. Take a warm soak in the tub, or read poetry in your chair rather than the newspaper in bed. If these thoughts occur during your commute, listen to a book-on-tape.
Do anything that grabs your attention away from those thoughts and breaks the problem pattern.
During an Activity:
You may have found that your usual movie fare is contributing to those negative thoughts. So, switch your taste in movies, at least for the time-being while you are retraining yourself out of this pattern. If you normally sit down to a romantic comedy, choose an adventure film, or suspense. If your favorite restaurant is where you find yourself caught up in negative thoughts, find another restaurant-even if it has to be in a different neighbourhood.
Something You Unexpectedly See/Hear.
Maybe you've discovered that you are randomly broadsided by things you see and hear-you never know what will cause the thought-loop to launch. In this case, be ready: actively fight the thought as you realize it's occurring. Have something in place that you can use to deflect your mind to a new subject.
For example, if you see a car that reminds you of the one driven by the paramour of your spouse, turn your head and look at a building out of your other car window (of course, not if this would interfere with your safe driving). If you hear something on the radio, lift your hand and turn the dial to another station.
Take an active stance of some sort to break the pattern, do not give it an opportunity to gain a foothold on your thinking, which means stopping the problem-thinking at the earliest possible time in the sequence.
In order to be successful at these techniques, you have to practice other thoughts when there is no problem thinking. You have to have a ready list of pleasant or positively entertaining thoughts prepared prior to the time one of these loops begins.
For example, when something brings up a mental image that would lead into a negative thought loop, have a standby image ready with which to replace it. Picture a bucket of turquoise-blue paint, and when an unbidden image pops up in your head, grab an imaginary paintbrush and lay the paint on thick, covering the scene.
In my program How to Survive an Affair, I share many more steps for controlling your thoughts, including ways to clear your mind so you can begin to own your own thoughts once again. I also give you advanced techniques and practical strategies to stop the haunting: fend off negative thoughts and end the struggle that comes from the flurry of emotions you've attached to them.
If your thoughts are not your own right now, there's no point in needlessly suffering and feeling as if you're losing control of everything in your world, including your own mind.
