Marilyn Verbiscer – Healing from the Trauma of Infidelity: Help Clients Rebuild Trust and Find Forgiveness After an Affair

Outline

Types of Infidelity and Their Impact of Treatment

• Physical Affair
• Emotional Affair
• Physical-Emotional Affair
• Atypical Infidelity, Complex Affairs and
• Split-Self Infidelity

Gender, Vulnerabilities and Opportunities

• Genetic Predispositions
• Warning Signs
• Once a Cheater, Always a Cheater?
• Opportunity in the Work Place, with
• Previous Partners and on the Internet
• Why and How it Happens

Rebuilding Trust Phase of Infidelity Treatment

• Trauma of the Revelation
• Oral History Interview and No Secrets Contract
• Assessing Trauma and PTSD Symptomology and Teaching Self-Soothing
• The Hallmarks of Salvageability
• Trigger Warnings
• High and Low Cost Trust Building Behaviors

Create Understanding and Meaning Phase of Therapy

• Why You Strayed…and Why You Stayed
• The Slippery Slope and Walls v Windows
• 4 Factors That Set the Context
• Create the List of Changes
• The Miracle Question

Fostering Forgiveness Phase of Treatment

• The Formal Apology Session
• What Forgiveness Is, What It Isn’t and the Potential Payoffs.
• The Choice and Repercussions of Not Forgiving
• Self-Forgiveness, Cheap Forgiveness and Genuine Forgiveness
• The Mistaken Assumptions and
• Maladaptive Personal Beliefs about Forgiveness

Recommitment Phase of Healing

• Building Rituals of Connection
• Reclaiming Places, People and Events
• Tarnished By the Affair
• Celebration to Signify Mutual Recommitment
• Vision of Marriage
• Reversing Walls v Windows
• Building Other Protective Factors

Healing Alone Is Better Than Not At All

• Individual Change is Relationship Change
• Even When the Partner Isn’t In Therapy
• Grieving the Loss When the Partner
• Divorces or Dies
• Trusting Again
• Healthy Social Networks, Support Groups and Seminars/Retreats
• Begin a New Life