Latest / Intimacy After Infidelity | Cut Contact, Rebuild Trust, Shed Shame, Avoid Divorce, Forgiveness for Adultery / 125 | Why You’re Scared to Fully Heal (And What That Fear Is Actually Protecting)

Transcript

125 | Why You’re Scared to Fully Heal (And What That Fear Is Actually Protecting) · Intimacy After Infidelity | Cut Contact, Rebuild Trust, Shed Shame, Avoid Divorce, Forgiveness for Adultery

• 0:00
  Hello, friend.
• 0:02
  Welcome back today.
• 0:03
  So question for you.
• 0:06
  What if the thing standing between you and healing isn't shame, isn't willpower, and isn't even this guy? What if the thing standing between you and joy and peace and healing and freedom, what if that's actually fear? Not the fear of failing, not the fear of being found out, but a fear that might be a little more confusing.
• 0:35
  It's the one that whispers, "If I actually give this up, if I actually begin my healing journey, I don't know who I'll be.
• 0:46
  I, I don't know what I'll lose.
• 0:49
  I don't know where this journey actually takes me."
• 0:53
  And friend, that fear is not weakness.
• 0:57
  It's just information.
• 0:59
  And today, let's sit with it a little bit together Hello, sister.
• Before we jump in, I want to let you know I see you.
• I see that you are trying to pray harder.
• I see that you're trying to block, and then you're tempted to unblock again.
• I see that you've white-knuckled your way through a week of no contact, but it's so frustrating, and then you find yourself right back where you started.
• I see that maybe you've been to therapy, maybe you've done a program, even a marriage program, and maybe you've been listening to this podcast for months, and you think, "Ugh, I know all the right things.
• Why am I still stuck?" Here's what I want you to know, dear friend.
• You are not broken.
• You are not weak.
• And the reason that your willpower approach hasn't worked is not a character flaw.
• It's nothing about you, but it's a, a design flaw in the plan.
• Healing from infidelity is whole-being work.
• This work touches your identity, your nervous system, your theology, your attachment patterns, your friendships.
• You can't think your way out of this.
• And that is exactly what Rooted in Joy was created for.
• It's a six-month healing journey where we get to do this work together in community.
• Work surrounding your body, your mind, your heart, and your spirit in a room full of women who get it.
• So friend, if you are tired of trying alone and feeling like it's two steps forward, two steps back, friend, I'd love to just talk.
• Find me on Instagram, send me a DM, find me a mes- or send me a message on Facebook, send me an email.
• All those links are in the show notes.
• I would love to just talk with you and see where you are All right.
• So I wanna start by saying something that might feel a little uncomfortable.
• Don't I always? I wanna say that most of the conversations around affair recovery focus on the desire to heal and the motivation and your why.
• Why did this happen? And yes, friend, all of that matters for sure.
• But I've sat with enough women and I've sat with myself long enough to know that there is something underneath the desire to heal that nobody else is talking about, and that is fear, a specific, legitimate, protective fear.
• The kind of fear that has nothing to do with wanting to stay in sin and everything to do with being a human who's terrified of the unknown.
• And until you name this fear, until you look at that fear clearly and ask, "What are you actually protecting me from?" that will keep working against your healing without you even realizing it.
• So today, I want to name three fears that I see most often.
• Some of them were mine, but I would encourage you to find yourself in one of these and see what is it trying to tell you.
• All right.
• Fear number one was the fear of losing him, the affair partner This one is, it's hard for me to say out loud because it, this was most personally mine.
• I was afraid to commit to my healing journey and going no contact because I understood that healing meant losing him.
• And I don't just mean losing the affair, but losing the person.
• Because believe it or not, never once did I call him my affair partner.
• Actually, what I called him all the time was my friend.
• He was my best friend in that season.
• He knew me deeply.
• He knew the version of me that felt alive, felt seen, and understood.
• I knew that I could reach out to him any time that I wanted or needed, and he'd be there.
• And I knew that healing meant giving that up.
• And I wanna stay there just for a second because I think if you're being honest, you might recognize this too.
• It's not that you want the affair and the sin.
• It's that you actually want what the affair gave you, the connection, the being known, the feeling that someone chose you specifically, consistently, passionately.
• And so the part of you that is scared to heal, that part is not being irrational or stubborn.
• She's actually protecting you from something real.
• That part is saying, "I don't know how to get those needs met in any other way, and I'm terrified that healing means going without getting those needs met."
• So one of the, the methods of healing that I study is called IFS, internal family systems.
• And in that world, we would call this a protective part.
• And I know the instinct when you feel this is to fight it, to shame it, to force it to stand down and just be quiet and I'm gonna do my own thing.
• But friend, what actually works is getting curious about it and asking that part of you, "What are you afraid will happen if I let this go?" Because underneath this protection is almost always a legitimate need that deserves to be met, just not in the way of the affair.
• See, what I mean is the need for connection, that's not the problem.
• The need to be known and loved and valued, those are not problems.
• Those are God-designed longings.
• That's how God created you.
• The question is whether you're willing to grieve the wrong source of how those needs were getting met Grieve the wrong source so that you can eventually find the right ones.
• And I will tell you from the other side, the grief is very real.
• It hurt, and it's also survivable.
• And what's on the other side of all of this is a version of connection that doesn't cost you your integrity or your dignity.
• Okay, fear number two, the fear of an unknown path.
• This one is subtle but still powerful.
• When I was in the early days of healing, I was obeying God one day at a time, and I mean that very literally.
• There was no roadmap.
• There was no guarantee of what my marriage would look like or what my life would look like six months or a year from now.
• Who was I gonna be on the other side of this? I had no idea, and for me, that was scary.
• Quite terrifying, actually.
• Because think about this.
• See if you can relate.
• The affair, as destructive as it was, it had become familiar and predictable.
• Even the double life had its own rhythm, its own comfort, its own certainty.
• And healing, choosing to walk away from this, meant stepping into a future that I couldn't see and I couldn't control and I couldn't plan for it.
• So the part of you that resists healing might not be resisting the healing itself.
• She might be resistant to the uncertainty that healing requires, a, a form of surrender.
• So she's saying, "At least I know what this is.
• I don't know what that is."
• And if I could speak to your part, here's what I would say.
• You're right.
• You don't know.
• There is no way to know exactly where this road goes.
• I couldn't see my future when I started walking forward.
• I was just choosing the next right thing one moment and one day at a time, but I was intentionally trusting God's path.
• Even when it was invisible, I was trusting His path, and I was trusting it was safer than the one that I could currently see And friend, that reminds me, Proverbs three, five, and six.
• Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.
• In all of your ways, acknowledge Him, and He will make your path straight.
• Okay, so He doesn't promise that you can see way down the path and where it goes, but He promises that He's gonna make it straight as you walk.
• That's a different kind of security than certainty, and it's the only kind that lasts.
• All right.
• Fear number three, fear of losing your identity.
• This one is a little sneaky, and it's one that I see often in women who are further along in healing than they realize.
• If you have been living inside of this affair or this story, this secret, the longing, the push and pull.
• If you've been here for months or maybe even years, it has become part of how you understand yourself.
• Believe it or not, the affair gave you an identity, a story, even though it was a painful one.
• The woman who's fighting this, the woman who loves him, the woman with the complicated life, the woman who's not okay but managing it anyway.
• Let alone, friend, we know the labels that the world tries to throw on us as well.
• So however you wanna phrase it, the healing threatens to take those labels and stories away because let's be honest, who are you when that's gone? Who are you without the secret, without the longing, without the defined struggle that has organized your life for so long? I remember sitting at my kitchen table with my Bible open.
• I didn't know where to turn to yet.
• But I told God, "I feel like a completely different person, like a blank canvas.
• Who am I now?" Because in that season, everything had been stripped away from me.
• My affair, I gave up.
• I had left my job.
• I had finished my master's degree work.
• And so I was sitting there genuinely not knowing who I was.
• And that moment was terrifying, and it was also the beginning of everything because I, I told God, "I don't know who I am right now, but I know that somewhere in this scripture, in this Bible, you have painted a picture of my identity, who I'm called to be.
• And so God, would you show me? Show me who that is."
• Friend, the part of you that is scared to lose your identity in this, she's actually scared of something good.
• I believe that she's scared of becoming.
• Who is she going to be in this next season? I think she's a little afraid of the in-between space where you're no longer who you were and you're not yet who you're going to be.
• That liminal space, I know it's really uncomfortable, but it's not empty.
• I promise you, God is sitting with you in it, and the woman on the other side of it is someone that you're going to want to be.
• So this identity crisis, it is not an obstacle in the path of your healing.
• It is part of your healing.
• It means that something real is shifting.
• Okay, here's what I want to leave you with.
• Fear is not the enemy.
• Fear is actually a messenger and here's what the message is usually: something in me needs attention, something in me is not sure it's safe to let go, something in me is protecting a wound that really hurts.
• And friend, that messenger deserves compassion, not condemnation or criticism or judgment or shame, compassion and curiosity.
• I believe you are not resistant to healing because you're weak or uncommitted or not spiritual enough.
• I believe you're resistant because you're a human being, because the thing you are being asked to let go of gave you something real, even if it was the wrong source of it.
• Because the path forward is uncertain and your nervous system, it prefers the familiar pain over the unfamiliar freedom Friend, the fear knows what you're about to lose, but it can't see who you're about to become.
• That's God's territory.
• And I promise you He has not brought you this far to leave you in the in-between space.
• So can I invite you to take one step forward today? Ask yourself honestly, and I, I mean, like really sit with this, what would I lose if I were fully healed? Write it down.
• Grab your journal.
• Grab a note card.
• Don't judge it.
• Don't try to fix anything.
• Just name it.
• What would I lose if I were fully healed? Your answer is not a sign of weakness.
• Your answer is the exact place where your healing gets to go next.
• And friend, if you want to explore that answer with someone who has sat in the same fear and come out the other side, I promise there is another side, I would be so honored to be that person to just explore that with you.
• So again, send me a DM on Instagram, find me on Facebook, send me an email, and just know whenever you are ready to get curious and compassionate, and when you're a little more ready for community, friend, I'm here for you.
• Whenever that is, reach out and let's, let's have a conversation.
• You don't have to keep being afraid of the next step.
• Let's walk towards it together.
• Father, would you meet the parts of my sister that are scared? Speak to the fear with your tenderness and kindness and truth.
• Give her the courage to grieve what she needs to grieve and do it well.
• And God, would you give her the faith to trust that what's on the other side of this is worth every single step.
• Bless her even in the becoming.
• Father, thank you for loving us, and we love you too.
• Amen.