Dr. Shannan Crawford, PSY.D.

This is not medical advice that can be vernalized to every person. Rather, this is a conversation that may start your journey of exploring with your doctor and psychologist, the path that is best for you. Perhaps a better question is, are anxiety pills alone the best solution to resolve my anxiety? Research consistently demonstrates that people experience the greatest benefits when combining medication with psychotherapy. By taking medication alone, the anxiety-producing dynamics inside you remain unaddressed, which causes the body to habituate to the current dose of medication. Which means, you'll like need to keep increasing your dose because your body acclimated to this dose while your catastrophizing thoughts, feelings, relationship issues, career stressors, perfectionism etc. may be continuing to release anxiety in the body. A better question would be, what is the most holistic and thorough process to resolve my anxiety? The best approach is to use medication as a temporary stabilizing effect as you engage in meaningful psychotherapy that helps you resolve the reasons why your soul has been anxious. Once those conscious and unconscious dynamics, and life stressors are resolved, you can consult with your doctor about the process of possibly titrating down if/when the anxiety symptoms start to abate.

Anger is multifaceted and, if properly explored with a certified Restoring-Self-Cohesion therapist, you can gain insight into the unconscious dynamics producing the anger issues. It is imperative to move beyond, just trying to whack-a-mole the symptoms with willpower alone. We can control our anger for so long, but if the root issues are not addressed, you'll end up exploding eventually - which will undermine the progress you've been making to restore trust in your relationships. A restoring-self-cohesion therapist will help you learn how to work WITH your soul to resolve latent grief, shame, feelings of being out of control, etc. By addressing and resolving the root issues, you will experience greater peace because the anger has been resolved. Your life and relationships will be upgraded through the RSC work! Our amazing certified Restoring-Self-Cohesion therapists at CrawfordClinics.com are here to help you resolve your anger issues once and for all!

Trauma is the natural response in which the body, soul, and spirit have a classically conditioned response that has become frozen. Much like a glitching computer in which there is a metaphorical virus that the internal world is trying to compartmentalize through avoidance strategies. While avoidance may temporarily work, over time, it will shrink your life and you'll become a slave to the ever-encroaching fear that continues to paralyze you in multiple settings and relationships. Psychotherapy, is the empirically supported process of helping you learn how to counter condition that trauma response so your soul, spirit, and body learn a more adaptive response to the trauma triggers. By addressing the trauma in slow measured ways through therapy, you are able to work through the process at your pace in a safe relationship with your therapist so you are able to feel like yourself again and expand instead of shrink your life. In studying psychology for over 20-years, I know the pain of being a trauma survivor so I've dedicated my life to helping streamline the process of trauma recovery. Combining over a decade of Research and experience as a psychotherapist, I've innovated the Restoring-Self-Cohesion as a streamlined model to help trauma survivors learn how to restore their internal world so they start to feel like themselves again, and start to embark on the adventures and life purpose they were created to fulfill! Our team of therapists at www.CrawfordClinics.com is here you on rebuild and enjoy life again! You're worth the investment and we are honored to help you and your relationships get there!

First, I want to honor you for seeking help in restoring trust. We've all made choices we are not proud of, and it can be challenging to look at the consequences of how our choices impact others. It is a strong person who does not run away, rationalize, or justify. It is a courage person who cleans up their mess - to demonstrate over time that you are responsible and want to be a safe person to be trusted again.
This is not prescriptive advice since every situation is so unique. Here are a few common practices that may be helpful,
1. DO NOT LIE! Rebuilding trust is not just about the infidelity itself, it is also about the gut-check to realize the person she has trusted has been able to lie to her for 9 months. Any lies, even about irrelevant little things, will erode that trust even more. Tell the truth in a kind forthright way that helps her see that going forward you will be someone she can trust to tell the truth.
2. Cut off ALL communication with that person and set strict boundaries going forward with complete transparency. If that sounds too extreme, then you know you're not truly remorseful. Sometimes, we feel bad that we got caught but not bad enough to make the hard choices to move forward in transparency to protect the security of the relationship going forward. Place complete transparency measures on all devices.
3. Be honest with yourself. Starting individual therapy to help you candidly look at your own your rationalizations. When there is an affair, there are likely judgments/beliefs that you formed about your spouse that helped you rationalize your affair. Unraveling those judgements can be hard because we have to look at the stark reality that, you took bits of judgements to build a case against your spouse, to justify and absolve yourself from the selfishness of the choice. Humans have a hard time being completely honest with ourselves so if you can do that, I applaud you! Unraveling justifications can help you learn how to own your choices rather than internally keeping a score card of how much you're putting in versus your souse. this is pretty hard to do without an emotion-focused couples therapist. You have hurt your partner and irrespective of what she may have or have not done, you are responsible for your actions.
4. Couples therapy is vital. Not all couples counseling is the same. Allowing a warm emotion-focused therapist walk with you as a guide will be helpful as you'll likely hit moments of getting stuck and unable to move past certain dynamics of the affair without a neutral third party.
5. Realistic expectations about the grief process. An adult takes responsibility to clean up our own mess and make it right. So many clients become frustrated as they rebuild, feeling sentiments like, "But I've been doing so much, I've been doing everything she/he's asked and yet it's still not enough? it's impossible to please them! I've done my part, I don't have to put up with this anymore." This is a victim mindset. A person that wants to say I'm sorry and do loving things to win their partner back without actually walking with their spouse through the pain and grieving process, is still in a state of self-preoccupation rather than truly operating out of love for their partner and a desire to rebuild in health - which takes time. By all means, do the right things, and be prepared to sit with your partner through their process of grief.
There are many more thoughts, these are the ones forefront of mind. Feel free to visit CrawfordClinics.com for a free consultation to help you in the recovery journey to rebuild a meaningful marriage that is EVEN BETTER than before the affair!

This is a great question and it sounds like you are very insightful and becoming psychological-minded in your self-awareness. To be clear, I am not your treating psychologist and nothing I say would be prescriptive since I have never met you and I'm sure there are countless variables about which I am unaware. As a psychologist, I love to be as holistic as possible... I notice that your weight might be a bit low for your height? you might have your doctor rule out things like hypoglycemia, hyperthyroid, hormone issues iron levels, food allergies etc. Getting an evaluation from a psychologist would be helpful in providing an assessment to help you rule out the potential of an eating disorder (again, I have no idea if this is an issue or not, just being thorough). Secondly, you may consider meeting with a certified Restoring-Self-Cohesion therapist who can help you identify unconscious parts of your soul that may be being triggered in certain situations and how that may be producing what is called a "somatic" symptom like nausea. Somatic means that your emotions are converting into physical symptoms - often because we are not addressing the emotional source - so the body converts the energy into physical symptoms. Another option may be to look into a certified Emotion Code practitioner who can help with releasing any trapped emotions out of your body the may be impacting you and thus producing the nausea. And it is valuable to rule out past traumas to ensure the soul/body are not signaling something that the defense mechanisms may not be ready to acknowledge/work through. I say all of this very cautiously because each person is so unique and it truly could be any one or none of these... I pray guidance over you as your explore the right course for you! If you'd like a free consultation, www.CrawfordClinics.com therapists are here to help assist you.