Dancing Triggered

We are all hurting people..healing slowly. PA's shouldn't rush their SO's; SO's shouldn't rush themselves.

One day at a time.

 

My husband does this. He said he feels ridiculous but it has really helped him. He's done it for almost 300 days in a row now. His self-esteem and self-worth is SO much better now. Hey, maybe I should do this. He keeps telling me to, but I don't.

 

Hey there @BetrayedMermaid, sorry to hear what you're going through.

You will have confidence in your being...
You'll feel beautiful again...
You will enjoy activities like going to the beach, going dancing... basically doing anything that involves people...

You will. It will take time.

I was in an accident years ago and broke my neck and spine. I had to literally re-learn how to walk, how to hold my body, how to move my head, the lot. The first time I tried to walk, I was in so much pain physically and emotionally, that I didn't even make half-a-step, despite a team of four physiotherapists supporting me.

What you are now going through is the emotional equivalent of that. Your confidence in your mind and body has been cruelly and unfairly shattered. It's almost like you have to re-learn how to view yourself, how to love yourself, how to deal with emotional trauma and betrayal. So please remember that you are extremely early in your OWN recovery (I mean, recovery from what you've been through). Be patient and gentle with yourself. It didn't work THIS time - no wonder, with what you've been through. NEXT time - it'll be a little bit better.

Ghostie's affirmations are a good solution - but just now, you're not at a stage for solutions. You might be better to get all your emotions out, maybe on paper, maybe to a friend IRL, maybe here on a journal... get all that stress and self-doubt out, then see how you feel.

But you're awesome. And we're all glad we know you.

Last time I did that, the mirror fell apart.

 

Quick aside …

I so hope that this is not true. It is easy to bandy around statistics on how many men use porn, but I am clinging to the belief that lots of men do not. Not because they are recovering from a porn problem but because they never started or they lost interest as they grew up.

 

Were you confident before you met your husband or did you gain your confidence after you met him?

One thing addiction has shown me is that I impose a lot of my own beliefs onto the world as if they’re reality. I find when I refuse to do this and I allow reality to present itself then a lot of my anxiety and fears go away. Take for example your observation regarding the women and their cleavage. You compare yourself to them as if they’re the gold standard of what men find beautiful and attractive, and while that mighty be the case for some men it’s not the case for every man. When you let reality present itself you push away irrational thoughts and you accept rational ones which includes the very real and highly probable theory that out of 7 billion people on this plant you are considered by some of them as being desirable, beautiful, and even fantasy worthy.

It’s completely natural for you to feel this way because your trust has been shattered. You had a healthy trust and that allowed confidence in a sense because you also trusted that your husband held you above the rest of the women; he vowed it was true! When he killed that trust he took with it your confidence. Now you’re left with “if he made a vow and broke it then how can I believe him when he told me I was beautiful? Am I really beautiful or was that just more lies?” Instead of men now being innocent until proven guilty, they have become guilty until proven innocent. I will warn you that guilty until proven innocent is a thought process that leads straight to addiction because it’s a position of distrust and fear to be vulnerable.

Addicts don’t believe they're worthy of being loved. They believe themselves to be unloveable and their world view is fuele by a “guilty until proven innocent” mentality towards the world and everyone in it. And it goes on and on like this until you come to the conclusion that it’s not going to get better until you yourself view and believe yourself to be beautiful.

Tell yourself that you’ll feel beautiful again because you are beautiful.


While your husbands actions have left you traumatized they have also shown you that you relied on the opinion of someone other than yourself to determine your worth and value. Now you you have the opportunity to rebuild your confidence on a solid foundation which can’t be knocked down like a house of cards.