ep 61: You Understand Why You Cheated. So Why Do You Still Feel So Much Shame?
When I was married to my ex-husband, I never knew how little I felt.
I mean real emotions - the kind that make you burst into tears or throw something in anger, or laugh uncontrollably.
When did you last do that?
Because learning how to feel all the things can be such an important part of moving beyond shame, and really processing the why, the how, and the what next of your affair.
So today I share the real story behind how I went from hiding my affair to speaking about it publicly - on social media, in newspapers, on radio, and in rooms full of women.
Spoiler alert: I learnt how to feel.
In this episode I talk about why understanding your patterns and having all the insight in the world doesn’t necessarily mean the shame disappears.
Healing requires you to learn to sit with the guilt, shame, fear, grief, anger, and sadness without numbing, avoiding, over-analysing, or running.
.
We talk about:
Why insight alone can’t heal shame, and why learning to feel matters too
The role of numbing, avoidance, and emotional disconnection after an affair
Learning to feel guilt, fear, sadness, and shame without immediately trying to make them go away
Accepting the parts of yourself you might not particularly like
How learning to feel helped me find the courage to tell the truth publicly
Consider this episode your invitation to stop just talking about your feelings and actually start experiencing them. To stop rejecting the parts of yourself you don’t like, and start getting curious about them. To stop punishing yourself for what happened and begin accepting that all of these parts belong to you too.
This is about looking back in order to move forward, and if you need permission to do this, then this episode is for you.
.
Ready to go deeper with your healing?
If you can understand so much about why you cheated but still find yourself wondering how the hell do I actually move forward from here?, this is the work we do inside The Healed Heart™.
The Healed Heart™ is my six-month intimate group programme for women healing after their own affair.
Six months gives us the time to work with what actually comes up in your life while we’re together.
The guilt and shame that can still hit you out of nowhere. The old patterns you understand but still find yourself falling into. Your relationships, your boundaries, your needs, the parts of yourself you may have lost along the way, and what it looks like to begin trusting yourself again.
Because I don’t want you to spend the rest of your life looking backwards at the woman who cheated.
The goal isn’t to get you back to the woman you were before the affair.
It’s to help you become a woman who doesn’t abandon herself in the same ways anymore.
That’s how self-trust gets rebuilt.
The next round of The Healed Heart™ begins Tuesday 13th October.
❤️🩹 Find out more about The Healed Heart™:https://www.alexcroxford.com/the-healed-heart
If you read through the page and think this might be what I need, you can book a Discovery Call with me from there and we’ll talk about where you are, what you need support with and whether The Healed Heart™ feels like the right next step for you.
Instagram: @iamalexcroxford
Website: www.alexcroxford.com
