Words are Medicine

When people talk about infidelity­—whether in marriage or in committed relationships—they talk about trauma.

I recently met a man whose wife cheated on him repeatedly. As he told me the long and circuitous story of suspicion, denial and revelation, he moved through a snake pit of emotional confusion—anger, hurt, longing, disbelief, shock. And as I watched him weep, rant, deflate in despair only to bound back in self-reproach (“how could I have been so stupid?!”), I saw that he was still in shock, in the trance of his own disappointment. He was only bodily in the office with me. Most of him was lost in the torment of his recent past and his fear about the future.

Those shock states can continue for moments, for months, for years or a lifetime. And while they have good reason for being there to start with, after the moment is past, they can become huge impediments in a person’s life.

The question I am faced with when I meet people with any kind of trauma is two-fold:

One, how to bring them out of the trance they are in and two, how to work through the suffering and move to healing.

For more on this topic, please go to Huffingtonpost.com and search Trauma, Judith Acosta.

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