Divorce because I betrayed her trust - THREAD 4

[DaB35]

Well what I've been talking about in therapy is why I felt the need to use duplicity and the need to conceal it for so long. Essentially the brain gets 'wired' and 'used' to going down a particular path to acheive a goal. For me it was temporarily removing myself from a frustrating or stressful situation as I felt I couldn't open up.

My therapist gave a good analogy of this a few sessions in. She said: imagine a map of the UK is your brain. London is 'everyday life': work, cooking, sleep, TV, etc. Normality. Any activity you do is achieved by taking a road out of London to another town. Addictive behaivours have signposts saying "you COULD go down here." So you do, out of curiosity initially. Then you find it fills a hole. It's easier to do that than face up to a problem or talk it out, so you keep going down that path as it's easy, and it then turns into a motorway. The brain is immediately conditioned to travel down that path each time you feel anxious, stressed, angry, etc.

What you work on is coming up with a list of alternative routes and cities/towns. Then you make a conscious decision to explore more of the UK (i.e. GAL) and also cover more distance. Meanwhile, the addictive behaivour path becomes overgrown and potholed - you effectively neglect it for the better routes. Then you can't even see the road any more and that's fine because you have so many other better positive options instead.

That really helped me understand that it was addictive behaivour and not a necessary path in my life. I made it part of me by assuming it was theo nly way I could deal with things.

My 180s essentially involved forcing myself to be vulnerable. I'd text my sister saying "I'm worried about this" or message a friend on Facebook about something and we'd talk it out. Even if just for five minutes, I felt better.

At the moment I don't have anything further to conceal really. I talk more to people generally and it helps.

Gym is good. Yes I'm working on the leg press - still at 50kg but I've upped the reps now. A definite change in the arms, and a tiny six-pack is starting to appear (probably more a bargain basement 4-pack for the moment haha!). I had to move some furniture at my parents yesterday and didn't find it as hard, so that's a good sign!