Stress Reduction Men
How The Emotional Pain And Stress From Your Wife’s Affair And The Threat Of Divorce Are Affecting Your Brain.
As Dawson Church explains in his book, Mind to Matter, “When our consciousness is disrupted by stress, our brains are not coherent…When our brains are not coherent, we aren’t able to think clearly. We’re afflicted by “brain fog,”…When we’re upset…we’re easily confused, and our cognitive abilities plummet…We are unable to be objective and consider a problem realistically. Stress can result in a drain of more than 70 percent of the frontal lobes, the cognitive centers of the brain. As blood carries oxygen, this means that the brain is not getting its normal supply of oxygen either. We can’t think straight when the blood and oxygen flow to our brains is reduced as a result of being stressed…Suddenly, all those wise skills you have in your prefrontal cortex, your thinking brain, are no longer available to you. It’s like a computer, which has masses of data stored on its hard drive. If you unplug the computer, all the stored information is there, but you can no longer access it; there is no power to make it useable…Come into coherence, however, and your resources come online…you’re able to perform long range planning. You think clearly about problems, you focus on your goals, your imagination is unlocked, and your creativity soars. That’s the power of a coherent mind.”
Unfortunately, Most Of Us Were Never Taught How To Process Our Feelings And Regulate Our Emotions.
Unfortunately, most of us were never taught how to process our feelings and regulate our emotions (at least, not in ways that are healthy and effective). As Dr. Gabor Maté explains in his book, In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, “No one is born with the capacity for self-regulation…the infant is completely dependent on the parents to regulate his physical and psychological states. Because self-regulation is a developmental achievement, we reach it only if the conditions for development are right. Some people never attain it; even in advanced adulthood they must rely on some external support to quell their discomfort and soothe their anxiety.”
When we don’t how to self-regulate, we live at the mercy of external circumstances; and oftentimes, without even knowing how vulnerable we are until a major life crisis hits.
Your Wife Can’t Trust You Until You Get Your Emotions Under Control.
Your wife can’t trust you until you get your emotions under control. As long as your wife senses that you are afraid, she can’t trust your desire to stay in the marriage. This is why it only makes things worse when you try to plead, convince or make attempts to try to please your wife; it’s because these behaviors send three clear messages to your wife:
- They signal to your wife that you are ‘beneath’ her; and this automatically makes your wife think that her affair partner is better than you (or, at the very least, that she can find someone better than you).
- They signal to your wife that you are too dependent (childlike) to be thought of as a romantic partner.
- They signal to your wife that you can’t be trusted; because the more desperate a person is the more likely they are to lie and tell you what you want to hear.
The Best Stress Reduction Techniques
EFT Tapping ~ Meditation ~ Deep Breathing ~ Walking ~ Any Activity That Moves You Into A Flow State
These Are All Activities That Will Help Bring Your Brain Come Into Coherence.
EFT Tapping
(The most rapid benefits I’ve personally experienced are from EFT Tapping). EFT tapping is an alternative acupressure therapy treatment that you do on yourself (instead of needles, you use your fingers to tap on specific points of the body). Unfortunately, it took a long time for me to look into Tapping because I thought it was weird. However, I made this assumption without knowing anything about Tapping. Once you learn a little bit about Tapping it actually makes perfect sense (and there’s plenty of scientific research to back up the benefits).
You can learn about EFT Tapping at the following link:
Tapping 101: https://www.thetappingsolution.com/tapping-101/
Note: Make sure you click on the “Introduction to the Tapping Points” link so you can learn the tapping points (it only takes a couple minutes to learn them) .
After you learn the points, go to the link below to do a free tapping meditation (it’s approximately 6 minutes).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7X4FIDPXOVM
For more information you can watch a Today Show segment On Tapping: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbTTZlfvjkQ
Meditation
There’s a tremendous (and growing) amount of research showing that meditation has positive effects on the brain in terms of repair, growth and developing new neurocircuitry. Here’a link to a free guided meditation:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SbL6HKAzns
If you would like to learn more about meditation, I recommend Dan Harris’s book, Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics. Dan Harris is a news anchor for Good Morning America. Dan suffered a panic attack during a news segment while he was reporting live on the air for Good Morning America. This incident prompted Dan’s research and practice of meditation. Dan’s books on mediation are informative, easy to understand and very entertaining.
Deep Breathing
Deep breathing is one of our body’s strongest self-healing mechanisms. Deep breathing, calms the mind and improves brain functioning. In fact, calming yourself down with a few deep breaths before interacting with your wife is one of the simplest things you can do to begin improving your emotional stability and cognitive functioning.
Instruction: Take three deep conscious breaths before any interaction with your wife; for example, before going into your house after work, before entering a room that your wife is in or before talking to your wife on the phone or sending or replying to text messages.
In addition, if you get upset or angry during an interaction with your wife just take a deep breath (and if you need to, leave the room) because it can stop you from getting “taken over” by your emotions and as a result, causing further damage to the relationship..
Walking
If you’re not exercising on a regular basis now is the perfect time to start. Regular exercise helps maintain not only good physical, but also good mental health. The way you think and feel changes when you exercise because chemicals (endorphins) get released in the brain; and these chemicals have a positive impact on your mood. In addition, exercise also produces hormones that can improve sleep; and difficulty with sleeping is a common problem for men after discovering their wives affair.
Walking in particular can be extremely beneficial in reducing stress. In fact, a daily fifteen minute walk (outside in nature) can immediately put you on the path to healing. Spending time in nature harmonizes your system. In addition, researchers have found that the foot’s impact during walking sends pressure waves through the arteries that significantly modify and can increase the supply of blood to the brain.