At first, when you realize your partner is cheating on you, you might feel angry and frustrated as well as sad. Often times, when one person has an affair with a marriage, holistic marriage counseling can help process intense feelings of guilt and regret. If your partner had an affair, they might feel guilty and regretful after the fact. Or, if your partner has cheated on you, you might wonder if you can continue to have a healthy marriage after an affair. Maybe you have found out your partner is cheating on you because you have an STD now. You have every right to feel enraged, violated, and to question if the relationship can even continue to work.
How can therapy after an affair help your marriage have less anger?
Marriage counseling near Hartford, Connecticut can help you feel your feelings. Whether you have been the one seeking love outside of your marriage or you have been the one being cheated on, you are entitled to your feelings. The first step of therapy is to identify the numerous and various feelings you might be feeling. Let’s start with anger. Anger management tools are one of the most helpful ways counseling can support you after you realize your partner is having an affair. Seeing that your partner has been confiding in someone else or sharing secrets about you with someone else can also lead you to feel angry. However, do not act or react in anger or you may end up hurting your whole family more than everyone has already been hurt.
Think of anger like an iceberg.
At the top of the iceberg is the emotion of anger, rage, and frustration. So, now think about the different emotions beneath anger and what might be underneath frustration. PTSD marriage therapy is available at Wisdom Within Counseling near Hartford, Connecticut. Our team of counselors support couples who have found themselves in disconnection. PTSD marriage therapy has a focus on post-traumatic stress disorder responses within a romantic relationship.
I found my spouse cheating
To begin, click the button below for a phone consult for clarity and trust in PTSD marriage therapy.
What is under anger anyway?
For some, identifying feelings of emotional neglect, sadness, loss, or betrayal are underneath anger. When couples act upon anger, domestic violence may occur or abuse. Instead, focus on acting from a place of true genuine emotion such as becoming tearful or crying due to the sadness or loss. Journaling about what you feel can be a healthy outlet as well.
Work with a holistic marriage therapist that specializes in post affair recovery at Wisdom Within Counseling.
When couples speak from a place of anger or entitlement, nothing good ever happens. If there is negative communication in the form of yelling, neither of you are being successful in your communication. Understanding what you feel will allow you to understand how you act when you feel that way. From marriage counseling in Hartford, Connecticut, you can learn to respond in healthier ways while communicating intense emotions like sadness or anger. Our team at Wisdom Within Counseling specializes in creative, expressive arts in PTSD marriage therapy.
How can marriage counseling help both people prepare their communication and reduce conflict?
From identifying what you feel with your counselor, you can more clearly communicate what you need with your partner and your spouse. If you are yelling and upset, your partner will not be able to understand what you need. As well, when you are highly emotional, angry, or frustrated, it might be harder for you to understand what you are feeling. In holistic marriage counseling session, you can feel safe unloading and gaining clarity to better communicate your needs. Lastly, PTSD marriage therapy can support gentle conversations.
To begin, click the button below for a phone consult for clarity and trust in PTSD marriage therapy.
Childhood trauma playing into an emotional or physical affair and infidelity
When there is an affair in a marriage after a substantial period of time committed, family therapist like to look at generational trauma. For example, your marriage therapist at Wisdom Within Counseling near Hartford, Connecticut, will ask you about your childhood. Did you see your parent cheating on each other? Or, does your spouse have parents who cheated on each other?
PTSD marriage therapy near Hartford, Connecticut supports clarity on childhood experiences
Now, as therapists, we help you create and find understanding from childhood experiences. For instance, let’s say your spouse has been cheating on you for the past three months. You found text messages. And, this is so painful emotionally to uncover. They lied and showed outright dishonesty.
Childhood trauma in PTSD marriage therapy
First, childhood trauma may be a part of understanding how the affair began. As an adolescent, your spouse watched pornography as a stress outlet. One of your spouse’s parents also cheated. Working with a holistic, trauma-oriented marriage counselor can help your spouse understand who they want to be moving forward.Maybe, your spouse had a mother who withheld love or manipulated them. Having an emotionally neglectful mother can lead to problems with attachment in romantic later on. Overall, a marriage therapist can help your spouse learn if their current behavior of infidelity and cheating is related to their childhood relationship with their emotionally neglectful mother.
Trauma therapy and trauma behaviors in a healthy marriage
A holistic marriage therapist has an outside perspective to be able to gain insight on childhood trauma, addictive behaviors, and marital satisfaction. If there is cheating in a marriage, marriage counseling can only work when the person having an affair stop cheating. Therefore, your marriage counselor will ask all parties conclude the affair. Essentially, couples therapy is to support self reflective work and gain self-awareness. After cheating has stopped, looking into childhood trauma can be done and is more accessible. PTSD marriage therapy at Wisdom Within Counseling supports healthy communication, honesty, and positive self-care skills.
Why does someone cheat in a marriage?
The act of cheating is a numbing behavior and an affair is truly a distraction technique. Just like an alcoholic turns to alcohol whenever they feel sadness or upset, a person who is cheating, uses cheating to numb out. People who cheat or have affairs may also struggle with problems with gambling, numbing out, video game addiction, drinking alcoholism, drug use, and lying. Sometimes, a person has an affair because they are fantasizing about someone outside of their marriage. Other times, someone has an affair because they do not have the positive coping strategies to communicate what they are feeling. Also, a person may want to take the easy way out. Having an affair is a very young behavior and is a sign to a marriage counselor that a person needs positive coping skills.
If an affair has taken place in your marriage, it does not mean that your marriage needs to end.
However, uncovering an affair does mean that a marriage counselor would be incredibly beneficial to work with. A holistic, trauma specialist can help you to help uncover how and why the cheating took place originally. Perhaps, something was missing that was never understood. Or, the entire relationship was built upon the foundation of cheating originally and keeping secrets. Some relationships begin because one person is already cheating on their current partner and leaves that person for the next person. As well, cheating and affairs have a major impact on the entire family system and have a negative impact on children. At Wisdom Within Counseling, the team of marriage therapists near Hartford, Connecticut love helping couples recovery confidence, trust, and communication after an affair.
How does an emotional or physical affair impact children in the entire family system in a negative way?
An affair has a negative impact on children in many ways. Children are always observing their parents and wanting to be just like them. As well, children are looking up to their parents as role models. Plus, parents have a job to model themes of commitment, traditions, and family values. If a child has a parent who is lying or stealing money, they will end up having serious fears around money. Also, a child may have their own money issues in adulthood. Hoarding behaviors are trauma responses too. After a person has an affair, their family may experience post-traumatic disorder symptoms. Both children and parents may experience a racing heart, clenched fists, sweating, or shaking under trauma and loss. To note, any of these symptoms of trauma are good reasons to seek professional marital counseling.
If a child sees a parent who is having an affair or cheating, that child does not understand what trust actually is.
A child who grows up with parents who are constantly cheating or having affair develops resentment towards a cheating parent. The child may have a broken relationship with that parent due to not being able to trust them. Also, a child who grows up watching a parent have an affair, may have an affair in adulthood themselves. Cheating and affairs cause children to not understand what commitment truly is. Having an affair hurts a spouse and children. A teen may avoid dating out of fear that they will be cheated on because they saw their parents so easily cheating. If you realized your spouse is cheating, marriage therapy and family counseling are options at Wisdom Within.
Holistic PTSD marriage therapy
No matter your history, how can Hartford, Connecticut marriage counseling help you be honest and stop hurtful experiences from continuing?
So, when you or your spouse has an affair, it is really common to want to end your marriage because it just feels way too painful to continue. However, working with a holistic marriage counselor, in Hartford, Connecticut can allow you to feel safe learning about your needs. PTSD marriage therapy helps you understand your parasympathetic nervous system and vagal nerve. Couples and individual therapy can help you build positive communication. Marriage therapy at Wisdom Within Counseling can help you understand the timeline for your fights.
To begin, click the button below for a phone consult for clarity and trust in PTSD marriage therapy.
Affairs are often a build up snow ball effect.
From a calm, reflective place, looking at your fight cycle can help prevent future affairs. Teaming up is key and communicating often will support a trusting marriage. Let’s say there are environmental stressors like coming home from work later than expected or being hungry. Self-care tools support relaxation from the inside out. Often times, couples do not truly understand what it means to be running on a low battery.
How can couples learn to give from a full battery?
As well, you think about your phone having a low battery and you would charge it. And, if you don’t charge it, it will stop working. Couples can learn to think of themselves in the same ways. Anger and irritation can come from being hungry or not having enough sleep. Before you yell, notice if you have had a meal recently or had water. Share that with your spouse instead of yelling. The team at Wisdom Within Counseling help couples learn to pause and practice self-care.
In PTSD marriage therapy, you’ll learn that other environmental stressors like a loss of a grandparent or a loss of a loved one plays a role in marital arguments.
Now, think about your conflict during a time when you are calm and not stressed out. Was your belly full? Did you have stress that you were carrying from your workday? Were you worried or stressed out about your aging parents? What is your child’s stressing you out and you were stuck in parenting mode? Getting cut off while driving or having a bad day at work can play a role in high conflict marital fights. Additionally, feeling disrespected can trigger anger in many ways. Understanding these environmental stressors complete a big role in helping couples reduce the frequency and the severity of their arguments. In recovering from an affair or cheating, trust starts with understanding the fight pattern. The team at Wisdom Within Counseling help couples learn to recreate meaningful connection and practice honest communication.
Overall, Hartford, Connecticut, Marriage Counseling helps you understand these different stressors and talk about them in common ways with your partner.
You can learn how to help your partner understand what you were needing when you’re stressed out from work or had a bad day. When couples have gotten to the appoint of a physical or emotional affair, they often no longer know how to talk to each others in a calm way. Partners usually withholding information and turning towards an affair partner rather than towards their at home partner. Couples counseling for post affair recovery can help you both learn how to communicate better and rebuild a sense of connection and safety.
The team of marriage and family therapists at Wisdom Within Counseling specialize in PTSD marriage therapy.
To begin, click the button below for a phone consult for clarity and trust in PTSD marriage therapy.
Is there a sure way to know you will never be cheated on again?
In fact, no. Relationships are very well a give-and-take of energy and need to include honesty and commitment. PTSD marriage therapy can help you feel safe in your body and set boundaries. Even people who say they are in a committed relationship may act in non-committed ways. So, there is no way to make a guarantee. However, listening to your intuition and trusting your gut instinct will be a big part in understanding if your partner is having another affair. Looking at their body signs and their body signals can help you understand if they are being honest. Being honest yourself is important too. To add, tuning into your own body and the signals your body is giving you will be helpful.
What goes into recovering from an affair in marriage counseling?
In affair recovery and infidelity counseling, you can learn to tune inwards. You look to your spouse, look at colors, and do so much with your senses. In therapy, you can take part in mindfulness meditations to rebuild inner calm. Many times, self-care, self-awareness, and self-love come from mindfulness meditation. Building this level of intuition can take time and practice from holistic couples therapy. As well, you can learn to breathe, listen to your body, and understand yourself as a whole person. More so, mindfulness meditation can help you feel safe on the inside even where there is uncertainty in your marriage. From mindfulness meditation, your couples therapist can help you develop a calm nervous system to tune in. Therapy with a PTSD or trauma specialist can help you learn ways to relax your mind, so that you can be intuitive.
By listening to your gut instincts, you will be able to understand if your partner is cheating on you or if you need to have a conversation on trust and honesty.
If your partner has had an affair in the past and you have already forgiven them once, be firm with your boundaries. Working with a marriage therapist who specializes in post-affair recovery and infidelity can help you uphold your boundaries and communicate them in session. To learn how to set boundaries, you can talk in a more traditional way.
How can creative therapies help in setting boundaries?
Or, if you want creative outlets setting boundaries, you can take part in using acrylic paints or glitter. For expressing intense emotions like anger and loss in healthy ways, you can use model magic clay, or go for a walk outdoors. Walking in nature in counseling can help with inner peace and confidence after being cheated on. Painting, using markers, gel pens, or clay can help with inner calm. Wisdom Within Counseling offers a creative expressive arts approach to helping couples heal.
What does it mean when the styles who was cheated on develops post traumatic stress disorder?
After one person has an affair, it is very common for the other person to develop post traumatic stress disorder from this relationship trauma. An affair is a traumatic experience and trauma counseling can be very helpful for the person who is cheating as well as a person who is being cheated on. Unfortunately, many general therapists do not understand an affair as opposed to my stress disorder experience for the person who was cheated on.
What are symptoms of relationship PTSD?
Symptoms of nightmares, flashbacks, obsessive thoughts, low self-esteem, insomnia, trouble with eating, over eating, lack of appetite, anger, panic attacks, and addictive behaviors are common in the partner who was cheated on. These negative behaviors are in fact a trauma and posttraumatic stress disorder response to realizing their partner has been cheating on them.
How does the team at Wisdom Within Counseling near Hartford, Connecticut look at affairs?
An affair needs to be looked at as having created post traumatic stress disorder in a partner. Sometimes, even children may feel post traumatic stress disorder symptoms if they are involved in high conflict fights. A partner who was cheat on may more easily engaged in fighting, yelling, arguing, or criticizing. Couples therapy near Hartford, Connecticut support calm, clear communication rather than yelling. With this said, these are not healthy forms of communication. If criticism and yelling continue, a marriage is almost sure to end. These forms of communication are more common when triggered or having a trauma response.
What are post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms?
Other post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms can include trouble concentrating, the inability to go to work, or the person who is cheating on developing and justifying an affair themselves after realizing their partner has been cheating on them. Working with a therapist that wasn’t within counseling can help you understand post-traumatic stress disorder and how to recover from it within your marriage. One of the first steps in recovering from post-traumatic stress disorder is the person who has been cheating to acknowledge the betrayal and pain they have caused.
Working with one of the marriage therapists at Wisdom Within Counseling and help you reboot your marriage and build a marriage that you have never experienced before.
You can build a marriage that is safe, positive, loving, and trustworthy. At Wisdom Within Counseling, we offer art, yoga, music, outdoor walking sessions, and video counseling for a couples. We have Gottman Marriage Therapy Level two trained therapists that understand the trauma response around betrayal and addiction in a marriage.
The team at Wisdom Within Counseling in Connecticut would love to help you and your partner build togetherness, true intimacy, and emotionally strengthen your voice for a loving connection.
We offer in person and video counseling to Connecticut towns including Stonington, Fairfield, Cos Cob, Darien, Colebrook, Woodbridge, Old Greenwich, Rye, Watertown, Greenwich, Southport, Noank, Cornwall, Easton, Darien, Byram, New Canann, Essex, Weston, Barkhamsted, Fenwick, Hamburg, East Haddam, Bozrah, Norwalk, East Lyme, Simsbury, Westport, Redding, Greenwich, Middletown, Bloomfield, Stamford, Washington, Madison, Monroe, Glastonbury, Ivoryton, Washington, Danbury, New Haven, Bethlehem, Morris, Middlebury, Sharon, Kent, West Hartford, Colchester, Columbia, Westbrook, Milford, New Milford, Griswold, Guilford, Tolland, Stonington, Goshen, Salisbury, Killingworth, Bloomfield, Rye, Plymouth, Enfield, Lyme, Madison, Clinton, Litchfield Hills, Warren, Avon, Wilton, Bridgewater, Chester, Deep River, Hartford, Colchester, Old Lyme, Deep River, Mystic, Ridgefield, Shelton, and West Hartford. We also offer counseling to residents of Massachusetts and Florida.
