194: Dealing With Doubt

Hi everyone, I’m Dr. Marie Murphy.  I’m a non-judgmental infidelity coach.  If you are engaging in anything you think counts as infidelity, I can help you deal with your feelings, clarify what you want, and make decisions about what you’re going to do.  No shame, no blame, no judgments.  A lot of the so-called advice out there for people who are cheating is little more than thinly veiled judgment, but that is not what I provide.  I give you guidance and support that respects the fullness of your humanity, and the complexity of your situation – no matter what you’re doing.  If you’re ready to resolve your infidelity situation in a way that’s truly right for you, I can help you do it.  We can work together one-on-one via Zoom, or you can purchase my self-guided course, You’re Not the Only One.  To get started working with me in either of these ways, go to the services page of my website, mariemurphyphd.com/services.  I can’t wait to meet you.

All right people.  Before we get into today’s topic, I am going to ask for some help from you.  I’ll tell you why I’m asking for your help in a minute, but before I do that, here are my requests.  If you listen to this podcast and benefit from it, I would greatly appreciate it if you would rate and review the show on iTunes if you have not already done so.  If you enjoy the show, I would appreciate a five-star rating.  It will probably take you less than two minutes to do this, and you can do this anonymously.  For better or worse, ratings matter, algorithms matter, at least to an extent, and your ratings and reviews will help other people who would benefit from hearing what I have to say about infidelity find my podcast.   

If you have a little more time to spare, I’d love it if you’d write a testimonial about what you appreciate about this podcast and send it to [email protected].  If you send a testimonial, we’ll use it publicly, but of course, we will share it ANONYMOUSLY.  We’ll use the reverse of your initials to note the authorship of your comments. 

And if we’ve worked together in the past and you haven’t sent me a testimonial before, I’d love it if you would put a few sentences together describing what you found useful about our work together.  How was approach to infidelity helpful?  What did our work together help you clarify or change or accomplish?  You can send your comments to [email protected], and again, we’ll share your comments using the reverse of your real initials.

Finally, if you work in media or PR and you would like to help me make my work known to a broader audience, please get in touch.  Email [email protected] and let us know how you’d like to collaborate. 

Thank you all in advance for your time and assistance.  I really appreciate it, and I’m going to tell you more about why in just one moment.  But before I do that, I have to let you know that if you email me unsolicited advice, or unsolicited commentary about anything – whether it’s what you think I should do differently in my business, or how you think I should do my hair differently, I am going to politely ignore your message, so you might want to save yourself the time it takes you to write whatever you have to say.  If it sounds ridiculous that I’m saying this, that’s probably an indication that you aren’t in the habit of sending people unsolicited feedback, and that’s probably a good thing.  But some folks are in the habit of sending out unsolicited feedback – not just to me of course – and to you I want to respectfully suggest that there might be better uses of your time and energy.

Here's why I’m asking for your help in such a concerted way right now.  As I imagine you are VERY well aware, infidelity is still pretty darn stigmatized, even though the general public is becoming increasingly aware of just how common it is.  And of course that impacts you in particular ways if you’re engaging in any kind of infidelity, and it also impacts me too.  For instance.  Certain people do not want to work for me, given the work I do.  Sometimes I attempt to pay people good money for their services, and they say, “No, I don’t want to work with you because I’m not okay with the services you provide.”  And, sometimes people have agreed to work with me, with full knowledge of what I do, and have subsequently made it clear, through offhand remarks and poor delivery of services, that they are not all that thrilled about the work I do.  Now, I want to be clear that on the one hand, the kind of thing I’m talking about is just part of doing business.  The kind of stuff I’m describing is not totally unique to working with stigmatized subject matter, of course.  But to some extent it is specific to the subject matter I work with.  And, in addition to sometimes getting some very strong responses when I attempt to hire people to do what they do, I’ve had LOTS of interesting experiences with collaborators and folks in media.  So for instance, back when I was doing more interviews on this podcast, I invited a lot of people who work with infidelity in some capacity, but have pretty different perspectives than I do.  For instance, I invited folks with a pretty strong religious take on infidelity to come on the show, and not for the sake of me criticizing them or anything like that.  I invited these kinds of folks in from the angle of, listen, infidelity may be something that we collectively don’t like, but this is part of the human experience.  How can we expand the conversation around this challenging topic in a way that helps everyone?  And not only did people say no to me, which is fine, people were like, “Not only do I not want to be on your podcast, but I think what you’re doing is terrible, and by the way, go to hell.”  And you know… on the one hand, I get that this come with the territory.  Dealing with that kind of stuff is part and parcel of doing what I do, and on the one hand, I’m okay with that.  I can’t say I love it, but I’m okay with it.

But the upshot is, there have been a lot of times when I’ve tried to broaden the conversation around infidelity by engaging with other folks, and there have been plenty of times when people have reached out to me to include my voice in their projects, only to decide that my perspectives weren’t what they were looking for.  Meaning, more specifically, that they ultimately wanted me to say something to the effect of “cheating is bad and wrong, and people are irreparably hurt when their partner cheats on them, and we have to figure out how to stop infidelity.”  And these are people who reached out to ME, and were – at least ostensibly – familiar with my perspectives before they decided to invite me to collaborate with them.  And then they ultimately didn’t use my contributions.

Again, people are allowed to do this.  And for the most part, my perspective on people doing this has been pretty understanding.  I’m usually like, whatever, I know my take on infidelity really freaks people out, and that’s fine – if they don’t want to invite me to their party, that’s okay.  I’m hosting my own party over here.  I have a thriving coaching practice, I get to work with great people who appreciate what I do, that’s good enough for me.  I can do my work and mind my own business, and that’s fine.

Except it kind of isn’t fine.  As you may well know from your own experience, people are suffering in the absence of perspectives on infidelity that take the humanity of the people who are cheating into account.  The dominance of perspectives on infidelity that villainize and demonize people who cheat has a real impact on people’s wellbeing, and people’s lives, and it isn’t a good one.  We need respect for the experiences of people who are cheating to be a more mainstream part of public conversations about infidelity.  We need more nuance and respect for human complexity to be part of the dominant messages about infidelity. 

I could go on and on about all of this, but I trust that I’ve made my point.  For the sake of everyone who is cheating and needs to know that they are not a terrible person, I’d like your help making my work more visible.  So please give this podcast a five-star rating, send me a testimonial, or reach out if you work in media or PR and would like to collaborate.  My sincere thanks to all of your for your support.  Let’s change the conversation around infidelity together.

Okay!  On to other topics.

If you’ve been listening lately, you know I’ve been answering questions from podcast listeners, and if you have a question you’d like me to address on the show, you can send it to [email protected], or you can fill out the contact form on my website and submit your question that way.  Here’s a question from a podcast listener:

I’m married to a good woman and together we’ve built a good life and have two beautiful young kids. I love my family and I greatly value providing my kids with the stable family life we have now.

However, I have been dissatisfied with my marriage for a long time and into this entered a third party. I started an affair with another woman and we fell madly in love. The affair has since ended but my affair partner is open to exploring a relationship if I leave my marriage and deal with the fallout of that, get back on my feet, then contact her. By that stage however she may or may not still be open to or available for a relationship. I have the sense that I could probably live a good life with my wife if I invested in that appropriately and in doing so I would avoid the loss of all the good things I have and wouldn’t need to hurt my wife, my kids and disrupt their lives. Doing that means letting go of my affair partner though. 

So my question is - how much stock should we place in a particular relationship or person and how do we determine if that relationship would be worth the risk and sacrifice, worth hurting and disrupting the lives of people who are also important to us? 

Okay.  That’s actually multiple questions, not one question, and there’s a lot going on within those questions.  This is the kind of stuff that I usually spend weeks or months coaching people through.  So if you have a set of questions like this, and you’re not able to address them to your satisfaction without help, I encourage you to invest in coaching.  This is the kind of stuff that coaching can help you effectively grapple with. 

However.  There is also a really simple answer to this person’s questions.  And here it is: you DECIDE.  How much stock should you place in a particular person or relationship?  You decide.  How do you determine if that relationship would be worth the “risk and sacrifice”?  You decide.  How do you determine if a relationship is worth hurting and disrupting the lives of people who are important to you?  You decide.

If you want to make a choice, you could make that choice right now.  If you want to make a decision, there is great value in making ANY decision.  Sometimes the point isn’t the option we choose, sometimes the point is to simply pick an option and move forward with it.  We have the power to make the best of any decision we make.  It’s totally legitimate to prefer one option over another, but if we are having a really hard time making a choice, there’s always the opportunity to just make a decision and then make the best of the decision you’ve made.

Now of course, we might not want to just choose – we may want to employ criteria for making our decisions and determinations.  I’m all in favor of that.  But we have to decide what our criteria are!  And that’s often a big part of what I help people do.  I help people think through what’s important to them, and I help them decide what’s MOST important to them when they’re making a decision between multiple things they consider important.  And sometimes this is a relatively simple endeavor, and sometimes it’s a really big project.  Sometimes determining our criteria for making a decision involves a lot of deep and systematic exploration of what you want out of your one wild and precious life.  And this sort of exploration may be something you can do on your own, quite well, but sometimes it’s helpful to work with someone like me who can help you do this sort of exploration better than you could on your own.   

So in regards to this person’s question, you could decide what criteria would need to be met for you to determine that pursuing a relationship is worth risk and sacrifice.  If you’re inclined to say “But how do I decide what my criteria are?” I want you to consider that on the one hand, it’s legitimate to want help deciding what your criteria are.  And if you want help, seek it out.  But on the other hand, you KNOW how you decide.  Deciding really is simple.  We just do it, and we do it ALL THE TIME.  How did you decide what you were going to eat for dinner last night?  How did you decide what you were going to wear today?  How did you decide whether or not to listen to this podcast?  You considered your options, and you chose.  And, you probably allowed the act of making a decision to be simple.  You might not have done that consciously, but you probably did it.

Now, I know people LOVE to protest and say “But those kinds of decisions are DIFFERENT from the decision of whether or not to leave my marriage!” and I agree, but only to an extent.  You may want to devise criteria for making decisions about your relationships that are a bit more involved than whatever criteria you use to decide what to eat for any given meal.  Fair enough.  But the essential process of choosing is very much the same.  You consider your options, and your criteria for making decisions, and then you pick something.

Sometimes when we say “how do I choose?” or “how do I make this decision?” what we’re essentially saying is, “I want somebody to tell me what the right answer is.”

And I think it’s totally human to want this.  But, this is not a thing.  Instead of consciously or unconsciously wanting someone to tell you what the right answer is, I encourage you to consider that the right decision is the decision that you decide is right, and that you make right.  You have the power to do that.  Use that power. 

One of the things I often work on with my one-on-one clients is striking a decent balance between deliberately and thoroughly considering what the client wants, and making decisions efficiently, without over-complicating the decision-making process.  This is really important.  We usually want to think carefully about our options when we’re making decisions that we consider significant.  But we also do not want to overcomplicate or over-mystify the decision-making process.  Some of us have the tendency to make decision-making a LOT more complicated than it needs to be.  And while this may be totally human, it ain’t helpful.  If you are over-complicating decisions, I encourage you to do something about that.  And of course, I can help you do something about that. 

In regards to this person’s question, I also want to point out that when we’re making decisions, we want to be on the lookout for assumptions and thought errors that may be informing our decision-making process.  The person who asked this question is making a very common assumption, which is that if they leave their wife and kids, they will hurt their wife and kids, and disrupt their lives.

Now, it's certainly possible that if you choose to leave your marriage, your family will feel all kinds of emotions, including hurt, and will experience disruption.  But that is a possibility, not an absolute certainty, and even if you want to take that possibility seriously, you get to choose what you think about that possibility, and what you do about that possibility. 

So often, people say, “Oh my god, my actions might hurt people I care about, and I can’t do that!”  Meaning, I can’t do that thing that might hurt someone.  This simply isn’t true.  Your actions might hurt people you care about, but that doesn’t mean you can’t choose to engage in those actions!  You can.  If you prefer not to do something because you think your actions will occasion hurt for someone else, that’s fine – but making a conscious decision for that reason is very different from saying, “Oh, I can’t do this, because it’ll hurt someone.”  And I’m not just playing around with semantics here.  Recognizing the choices we have – and the choices we may be making unconsciously – is really important.

You could, in fact, do something that might hurt people you care about.  People do things that have the potential to occasion pain for people they care about ALL THE TIME.  Every single day.  For better or worse, being the occasion of other people’s pain is an inescapable part of the human experience.  I’m not saying this to suggest that we shouldn’t attempt to be considerate of others, and shouldn’t take responsibility for our actions.  I think it’s GREAT to be considerate of others and take responsibility for our actions. 

But I also believe that we create a lot of unnecessary suffering for ourselves and for others when we try to wriggle out of the fact that human life involves hurting other people and being hurt by other people.  When we accept that hurting other people is just part of the human deal, we can strive to do less harm.  When we attempt to avoid ever occasioning pain, we may well end up creating a lot of pain for ourselves, and when we’re in pain, we may inadvertently create a lot of pain for other people, too. 

So although operating from the assumption that hurting other people is categorically bad and therefore you shouldn’t do anything that has the potential to occasion hurt for other people may sound really noble or good, this kind of thinking may not actually lead to results that are great for anyone.  If you’ve been thinking this way, you may want to take a close look at your thinking, and consider looking at the matter of humans occasioning pain for other humans in a more nuanced way.

There’s a lot more I could say about that, but I’ll simply say that it's important to remember that it is possible to do things that other people probably aren’t going to like with as much kindness and compassion as possible.  Even if there’s no getting around the fact that your partner doesn’t want your relationship with them to end, you can still end your relationship with them respectfully.  Even if there’s no getting around the fact that your kids’ lives will be different if you do not remain married to their other parent, there’s still a LOT you can do to be the parent you want to be for them, and create the experience of family that you want to create for them.  So be on the lookout for assumptions you may be making, and be willing to question your assumptions.

Okay, moving to a different but perhaps related topic.  Let’s talk about doubt.  Several listeners sent in questions about doubt, and I myself am actually dealing with a fair amount of doubt these days, so let’s delve into doubt.  The questions that I got from listeners were all very much along the lines of, “I’ll get to the point where I think I’ve made a decision about my infidelity situation and I think I am ready to act on my decision.  But then I’ll start to doubt my decision, and that leads to me questioning myself, and then it’s almost as if I haven’t actually made a decision at all.  What should I do about this?”

This a great question.  When we think we’ve made a decision, and then doubt arises, and we start to question our decision, or wonder if we’ve actually even made a decision, what should we do?

First of all, it’s important to be as sure as we can reasonably be that we have in fact made, or are making, a decision for reasons that we like.  If you don’t know what your reasons for making a decision are, that’s an indication that you may not have actually made a decision yet.  And if you don’t have reasons that you LIKE for making a decision, you may want to look at your situation anew and either choose again, or get more specific about why you are choosing whatever you’re choosing. 

So if you’ve skipped the step of making a decision for reasons that you like, you need to go back and do it well.  There is a whole unit on making decisions in my self-guided course, You’re Not the Only One, which contains videos of me teaching you stuff that goes beyond what I teach on the podcast, and contains worksheets that help you make use of my teachings as you go through your own decision-making process.  If you’re having trouble making decisions, or you want to check your work, and affirm to yourself that the decision you are making is one that you like, I highly recommend enrolling in You’re Not the Only One.  The unit on decisions alone is worth the cost of the course.  IF you make use of it.  If you don’t make use of it, well, that’s different.

Assuming you HAVE made a decision for reasons that you like, here’s what I want you to know.  Making a decision for reasons you love will not necessarily remove all doubt or hesitation from your consciousness in relation to that decision.  I’ll say that again in a different way because this is SUCH an important point.  Even if you make a clear decision and you feel amazing about it, you still may have moments of doubting your decision. 

That might seem strange or unfair or inconvenient or problematic, but it’s totally normal, and it doesn’t have to be a big deal.  Here’s why.

When we make a decision that we consider big, we may well have a lot of different thoughts and feelings about that decision.  Even if we are as sure as we can be that we really want to do something, we may also not like some of the aspects of what our decision is likely to entail.  Back in episode 67, which is called “Leaving a Good-Enough Marriage for Your Affair Partner,” I talked about my experience of leaving a life that I was pretty darn happy with to go serve in the Peace Corps in Zambia.  I was SURE that I wanted to serve in the Peace Corps.  I was as sure of that as I could have possibly been.  And yet, in weeks leading up to my departure, I was really fucking sad sometimes.  I liked my life a lot at the time, and in leaving for Zambia, I was willingly walking away from a lot of stuff that I really valued and appreciated and enjoyed.  And even though I had made the choice to do that for reasons I felt really good about, it was still SAD.  My certainty about what I wanted didn’t relieve me of having mixed thoughts and mixed emotions about my impending departure.  Also, I was scared at times!  I had NO idea what my experience of life in Zambia was going to be like, and that was scary as hell at times!  I was also excited about the new adventure, but that excitement didn’t cancel out the fear!  All of my mixed thoughts and feelings coexisted.  My certainty about what I wanted didn’t completely wipe out all of my other thoughts and feelings – and some of those other thoughts and feelings were pretty uncomfortable.

Now, full disclosure, I didn’t feel a whole lot of doubt about my decision to go Zambia.  Doubt wasn’t really a factor in that situation.  But I use this example because although I was completely certain about wanting to go to Zambia, I was also sad about leaving a life that I really appreciated, and scared about the many unknowns that I was walking into.

And what I want to suggest is that this is a totally reasonable, and totally common experience!  We make a big decision for reasons that we like, and in some respects, we feel great about that decision – but we also don’t feel completely great about that decision.  We could just normalize this kind of experience!

But we don’t normalize this, or at least, we don’t normalize it enough, and thus, what often happens when we have mixed feelings about a major decision is we interpret those feelings as an indication that we might not be making the right decision. 

But we have to remember that our feelings are indications of what we have ALREADY been thinking, not of what we OUGHT to be thinking.  This is so important, because our brain can easily offer us thoughts like, “Oh, I might not be making the right decision.”  It’s easy for that thought, or others like it, to pop into our mind, uninvited.  I won’t get into WHY it’s so easy for that thought to present itself, but it is.  This is the kind of thought that can just appear and try to get our attention.  And if we believe this thought, if we think that we really might not be making the right decision, we will probably feel doubt.  We might feel other emotions, too, but we could quite easily feel doubt.

And then, if we think our feelings are indicators of what we should be thinking or doing, we start to think that our doubt is an indication that we REALLY ARE making the wrong decision!  And that tends to lead to all kinds of trouble.  We may start to question our decision-making.  We may second-guess ourselves.  We may tell ourselves that we can’t possibly take action in the service of our decision, because we don’t know if it was the right decision!  And perhaps worst of all, we may question our very capacity to make a decision that seems like a good one at all.  And this creates SO MUCH suffering!

So what’s the way out of this?  For starters, we want to remember that doubt is an emotion that’s been created by our thinking.  So, if we’re feeling doubt, can identify the thoughts that generated the doubt, and decide on purpose what we want to do with those thoughts.  This is totally different from using the appearance of doubt as an indication that you SHOULD start second-guessing yourself, or interpreting your experience of doubt as a reason to believe that it is appropriate and necessary for you question whatever decision you’ve made.

When we identify the thoughts that generated our feelings of doubt, we can deliberately assess their utility.  So let’s say you thought you had decided to leave your marriage and pursue a relationship with your affair partner.  But then you woke up one morning feeling some doubt.  And searching your consciousness for the thoughts that generated the doubt, you recognized that the thought feeding the doubt was “If I leave my marriage, I might miss my spouse.”

If that’s your thought, that’s fair enough!  If you leave your marriage, you might miss your spouse!  That is possible.  Now the question is, what do you want to do with that possibility?  Would it be a problem if you missed your spouse?  Why or why not?

If you think you might miss your spouse A LOT if you leave your marriage, you might want to reconsider your decision to leave your marriage.  If you think you’re going to miss them intensely, that could be an indication that you want to make some changes in the relationship rather than ending it.  Maybe!  On the other hand, maybe missing your spouse doesn’t have to be a problem for you.  Maybe you’re willing to tolerate missing your spouse.  Maybe you’d rather miss your spouse than be married to your spouse.  Because remember – the emotions associated with missing someone are sensations in your body.  We can tolerate sensations in our body without having to take action.  Missing someone – even if that feels sad – might be okay.  You might prefer to tolerate the sadness of missing someone sometimes to the experience of remaining married to them.

But in order to deal with doubt effectively, it really helps to be willing to make a decision in a case like this one.  ARE you willing to miss your spouse if you do not remain married to them?  Or would you prefer to not miss them, and stay married to them?  You’ve gotta call it.

And if you decide that you do indeed want to leave your marriage, and you are okay with missing your spouse to whatever extent you might, you can deal with doubt differently if it arises.

If you start feeling doubt, and you recognize that you’re feeling it because you’re thinking you might miss your spouse if you aren’t married to them anymore, you now have the ability to consciously and deliberately tell yourself, “I have already dealt with this concern.  The possibility that I might miss my spouse is no longer a reason to doubt my decision to leave my marriage.”  You may have to tell yourself that more than once, but that’s okay.  This is how we actively manage our minds.

And that brings me to my next point.  If the thoughts you’re thinking that are generating doubt for you are thoughts you have thought eight million times, you may want to summarily dismiss them when they arise.  You may not be able to stop the thoughts from coming.  But when they show up, you don’t have to get seduced by them.  If you know that you’ve wondered about the possibility of missing your spouse a million times, and you have now decided that you’re willing to tolerate missing your spouse, and your brain still offers you the “Oh my god, what if you leave your marriage and you really miss your spouse?” question yet again, you can simply say to yourself, “Yup, we’ve been through this already, and I’ve decided that I’m okay with the possibility that I’ll miss my spouse if I leave my marriage.”  If you mind wants to continue to suggest that missing your spouse might be a problem, you get to gently but firmly tell your mind that you’ve dealt with this problem, and you aren’t going to engage with the thoughts it is offering you.

Now, this takes us to the next really important component of dealing with doubt.  Even if we actively manage our mind, and we deliberately deal with the thoughts that generate doubt when they arise, we may still experience the feeling of doubt.  If we have a thought that generates doubt, and we feel doubt, that’s what’s happening in that moment.  And once the feeling of doubt has arisen, we have to contend with feeling it.  And we may not like that.  We may not WANT to feel doubt, because the physical sensations associated with doubt may not feel pleasant to us.  But if we can allow ourselves to feel the sheer, immediate physical experience of feeling doubt, without trying to resist that experience, the feeling of doubt will pass.  Doubt may not feel awesome to feel, but if we let it be present within us, it will dissipate!  But this isn’t what we usually do when we feel doubt.  We usually freak out!  And that only compounds our experience of feeling uncomfortable.

It’s not the sheer, physical experience of feeling doubt that usually gives us trouble.  It’s what we make the feeling of doubt mean.  And we can practice trusting that if we’re making a decision that we consider to be a big decision, our minds may well have mixed thoughts about our decision.  Some days we may be thinking thoughts that lead us to feel really confident about our choice.  Other days we may have thoughts that generate doubt.  And if we’ve made a decision for reasons that we like, we can trust that the doubt is noise, rather than signal, and we can allow it to come and go without making too big of a deal about it.  It may take you some practice to relate to doubt in this way.  But it’s totally practice-able.  And you may LOVE what you get out of being willing to practice this.

I’m in the midst of what I hope will end up being a major life transition, but is not a sure thing yet.  And this possible life transition involves a lot of moving parts.  It involves stuff that I consider to be a pretty big deal.  And although I am as sure as I can be that I really want this transition to happen, there are still days when I wake up and I’m like, holy shit, what the fuck am I thinking?  Maybe I shouldn’t even try to do this.  Maybe I should just pull the plug on this whole plan, or attempted plan, right now.  And when I think these kinds of thoughts, waves of fear and doubt and sometimes panic wash over me. 

And so what do I do?  I don’t try to shove the doubt away.  I don’t try to talk myself out of the fear.  I don’t attempt to minimize the panic.  Instead, I practice being present with the sheer, immediate physical experience of the uncomfortable emotions.  I ride the waves of the sensations.  It doesn’t feel awesome, exactly, but it sure feels better than attempting to fight or avoid these feelings.

And then, when I’m feeling relatively calm, I ask myself what I was thinking that got me feeling the doubt and the fear and the panic and the whatever.  And then I decide – What do I want to do with these thoughts I’m thinking?  Do I want to take these concerns seriously, or not?  More often than not, I decide that I don’t.  More often than not, I ultimately realize that my brain is just freaking out a little bit.  I’m having mixed thoughts about what seems like a big choice, or a big change – even though I really want the change.  And I go okay, cool, I get it, my mind has different thoughts about this big decision, and some of those thoughts create feelings that feel awesome, and some of those thoughts create feelings that do not feel awesome.  And I can let the feelings that don’t feel awesome be part of my experience, without making their presence mean that I’m making the wrong decision, or that I shouldn’t be pursuing what I’m pursuing.  And you can practice doing this, too.

I’m being non-specific about what this possible life transition is because it is far from being a done deal at this point, and I just don’t want to get into the specifics before things are a lot more firmed up.  But eventually, I will share the details of what I’m up to, I promise.  Thanks for bearing with me being vague in the meantime.

So to recap: if you are feeling doubt, you need not automatically interpret that as an indication that you are making the wrong decision!  You can systematically examine the thoughts that are generating the feeling of doubt, and you can decide what you do with those thoughts.  Maybe you want to take them seriously.  Maybe the thoughts creating doubt are signals you want to pay attention to.  But it’s also important to remember that our brains can produce a lot of thoughts that are essentially just noise.  And if your brain is creating a lot of noise for you, you get to practice tuning out the noise.  You may not be able to turn down the noise completely, but you can practice not being distracted by it.  And, you can start to embrace the possibility that even if you’re making a decision for reasons you LOVE, you may still feel some pretty mixed emotions about your decision – and one of those emotions might be doubt.  And ultimately, doubt is, like any other emotion, a set of sensations in your body.  And you can choose to tolerate those sensations without making them into a bigger deal than they need to be.

All right!  If you would like my help dealing with your infidelity situation in a way that you feel great about, let’s get to work!  We can work together one-on-one via Zoom, or you can purchase my course, You’re Not the Only One, and make use of my teachings and assignments at your own pace.  To get started working with me one-on-one, or to enroll in my self-guided course, go to my website, mariemurphyphd.com. 

Thank you all so much for listening.  Bye for now.