92: Why Can't I Stop Reliving the Affair? EMDR for Betrayal Trauma

The affair is over. He's home. You're doing the work, and on paper things are moving in the right direction. So why does your chest still go tight when his name lights up your phone? Why does your mind race to the worst place when he's fifteen minutes late?

If your head has moved on from the betrayal but your body hasn't, you're not broken, and you're not going backwards. That's betrayal trauma, and trauma is treatable.

In this episode of Relationships Uncomplicated, Idit Sharoni, LMFT, is joined by Alana Tokayer, LMFT, one of the expert therapists on her team, who is trained in EMDR and works closely with hurt partners after infidelity. Together they explain why the discovery of an affair lives in your nervous system and not just in your thoughts, what EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) actually does and what it doesn't, and what a session really looks like, including why you're never asked to retell the affair over and over. You'll hear how the belief so many hurt partners carry, "I'm not enough," can shift over the course of the work, why one client joked that it felt like sorcery, why intrusive thoughts often quiet down once a memory loses its charge, how to tell whether it's too early to start, and what can happen when this work is done inside a couples session with both partners in the room.

The goal was never to make you forget what happened. It's to help you move from reliving it to remembering it.

Mentioned in this episode: Episode 85, Do You Need Every Detail for Infidelity Recovery?
https://iditsharoni.com/85-do-you-need-every-detail-for-infidelity-recovery/

At Relationship Experts, the couples work and the individual betrayal trauma work happen under one roof, with one team that knows your story. If this episode spoke to you, apply to work with us, and we'll figure out together what you and your relationship actually need: https://iditsharoni.com/45

You don't have to forget the story. You just don't have to keep living inside the worst chapter of it.