Category: Uncategorized

Covid-19, also known as Coronavirus, has been responsible for tragedy and chaos throughout the world for the last couple of months.  It’s not necessary for me to say anything about the science of this.  First of all, I have no authority to speak on anything related to virology.  And secondly, by the time you read this, you’ll find that what is being learned is changing on a daily basis.

Due to the highly contagious nature of Covid-19, countries all over the world have implemented strict isolation orders.  A few weeks before Covid began showing up here in the United States, videos circulated of spirited Italians singing from balconies to both comfort one another and help pass the time.  This isolation has caused the routines of almost everyone to come to a screeching halt.

Our day-to-day routines have changed, but so has the focus on habits like hand-washing and sanitizing.  Fear of catching Covid-19 from a surface or by breathing in germs has caused us to load up on hand sanitizer and antibacterial wipes.  Might as well throw in there the panic of shopping for the ever-elusive toilet paper or worrying about food shortages.

These changes have caused us to spend extra time preparing – running from store to store for products the last store didn’t have – and also getting ourselves prepared to transition ourselves to working from home.

Time is one of our most precious commodities.  Being isolated, both our time-management and our sense of time stresses our emotions.  We might have expected to have loads of free time while isolated, but we are finding that the isolation comes with new stressors and work expectations.  Now is an excellent time to tend to our self-care.

It’s no wonder that you might be feeling anxious or depressed. The isolation combined with uncertainty about the potential havoc of Covid-19 can wreak havoc on our emotions. While many of us have joked about our introverted tendencies at times, I find myself missing those tiny interactions I have in the world everyday. The banter with the barista, the pleasantries exchanged with a stranger in the gym, the transaction with someone I bumped with my basket in Target. These things are not happening right now and for some people, life without these exchanges can feel pretty lonely. Even if you are sheltered in your home with those you truly love.

The situation we are facing is not a vacation. Sure, we’ve probably spent days on end in yoga pants or pajamas (OK, well, I’m pretty sure it’s just not in my house), but most people have found this a time of juggling. Parents have found themselves taking on the role of teacher if they have school-age children at home. That’s on top of an expectation to stay connected to an already stress-riddled job. Single parents are doing it alone and even in homes with two parents, stress could feel unbearable at times. It is also a challenge for parents to explain the Covid-19 situation to their children in an age-appropriate matter and be there for them emotionally when they might feel together themselves.

There are also always dishes to wash and meals to prepare and clean up. Almost everyone I have spoken with has said their life has gotten rather difficult lately.   Those who work in healthcare are dealing with an even more difficult burden. Some people who are on the front lines are either sleeping at their workplaces or quarantining themselves from their family members to prevent transmission of Covid-19 to them.

There are some ways to make this time a little easier to get through this time of the unknown.

• Take a shower. Sometimes getting bogged down in the daily scramble causes people to get lax about basic hygiene. Grabbing a few moments away from your laptop, your children, your partner, and your children’s and partner’s laptops can make a difference in your outlook.

• Get dressed. This probably goes hand-in-hand with showering. But especially if you’re in a position to work remotely on video with other people, presenting yourself in close approximation to your in-person life might feel better.

• Take a social media break. We use social media for all sorts of reasons, but probably one of the most common ones is boredom. Not that we don’t have something better to do, but it can be a distraction from things that take a little more mental energy. Chances are, you’ve seen the same memes going around repeatedly you probably won’t miss much if you get away for an hour.  Constant focus on fear of contracting COVID-19 isn’t helping your emotional health.

• Unplug everything. Take some time and just unplug everything. Our constant accessibility causes enough mental clutter in normal circumstances and clogs our head now more than ever. Spend some time with people you live with without a screen in the conversation. Meditation and prayer are great ways to spend time inwardly focused.

• Go outside. As long as you have a reasonable distance between yourself and others, exposure to sunlight and fresh air is always a pick-me-up.

• Make a new recipe. Remember the recipe you saved for when you had the chance to make it? Now is the time to try something new. It’s also hard to scroll on your phone when your hands are chopping and mixing!

• Tackle something. Everyone has a project they put off in their home. When you’re already working and trying to help your child with school work, you might not have time for the closet overhaul or the room re-design you planned. Something simple like cleaning out a drawer or re-arranging papers gives you a sense of accomplishment.

• Take a break for creativity.  Every human being possesses some form of creativity.  Use this time to set it free!

• Call someone. There is no end to how to occupy yourself during this time, especially if you use social media. There’s a never ending live-stream this or Zoom-meeting that. You can easily fill your day consuming content on social media or watching stuff on a streaming service. Chances are, you can make someone feel less lonely by calling a friend. Now is a great time to catch up with someone you haven’t talked to in a long time.

Hopefully these suggestions are helpful in navigating your time at home. This is a confusing time for all of us.  It’s OK to not feel like yourself right now. You are doing your best.

If you are overwhelmed or struggling to manage relationships, I am currently seeing clients for teletherapy on a secure online platform. Please reach out to me at cmgsnyder@gmail.com

When you learn of a partner’s infidelity, your head is spinning. Words don’t do justice to the tornado of emotions you feel. You might also find yourself vacillating between two or more emotional states within a matter of minutes. You might be feeling shock, anger, and sadness. At times, you might even feel relief that your suspicions have finally been confirmed.

These feeling are often amplified if you share children together.  You look at your children and you wonder how this happened.  How it happened that one of their parents has caused the other to feel the lowest they’ve ever felt.  Your marriage vows included promises to be faithful and you are in utter disbelief that your partner went back on that promise.  Not only has it led you to question how your relationship to continue, but it has also caused you to ask how you can now parent your children with someone you no longer trust.

There are no right or wrong answers in situations like this. Only what is best for you and your family. Sometimes it is important to weigh the options of what you share with others and it also may depend on whether you find particular people trustworthy enough to hold this sensitive information. If someone in your life has a reputation for being the town gossip, you may exercise restraint in what to share with that person.

One of the most difficult decisions to be made when you learn of your partner’s infidelity is whether to share this information with your children. And if you do, you consider how much information to share.

It pains you to not be fully transparent with your children because you’ve always said you would never lie to them. However, withholding sensitive details and blatantly creating an entirely different narrative feels like two ends of the spectrum. Chances are, your approach will reside somewhere in the middle for you.

Parents find themselves insisting on transparency with their children because their own parents lied to them. And they do not want their children to feel the same way as they did as children. Young people are savvy enough to understand from context clues in their environment that something feels different. As adults, they may find themselves struggling to discern their own feelings because their questions or experiences may have been invalidated by their parents. Perhaps their parents told them whatever they observed did not really happen. It leads to confusion for children.

As parents, sometimes you strive to raise your children differently than your own parents raised you. It is common to hear adults talk about their parents and say, “I will never do that to my children.” That runs the gamut from how they handle discipline to how to be there emotionally for their children. Humans are very much affected by what we experienced at young ages. And that includes how to (or whether to) divulge that their mother or father is involved in a relationship outside the home.

It is always interesting to hear from adults about how they learned of their parents’ infidelity when they were children. They might talk about how they met “dad’s friend” when they were very young. Or they have recollections of their mom emotionally exploding at their dad, which included some mention of a woman’s name. It was further confusing for them if they also knew and liked these people. It was hard for them to understand as children why mom or dad would be so incensed over a seemingly nice lady or nice man.

How you proceed with telling your own children also involves asking yourself whether you need to or not. You may decide that you have been able to keep a boundary with your children to not discuss any of this in front of them. And thus, you don’t see a need to tell them. Their age may also play a role in how or what you tell them. Or if you tell them. You may also decide to share this information with them when they get older and begin to be involved in relationships as adults.

Some things to consider are being mindful of how information is transmitted to your children if one of their parents is involved in a relationship. It does leave an impact on a child when they become a repository for a parent’s anger. You are entitled to being angry. But your child does not need to be exposed to unhealthy generalizations like “never trust anyone.” Statements like this, especially when they are expressed in frightening or confusing ways to children, can leave lasting impressions about how they understand healthy relationships in the future.

Navigating parenting is difficult enough. But if there is infidelity occurring, it makes everything feel so much more difficult. It is understandable that you feel angry and betrayed and confused. It can be helpful to utilize the services of a therapist during periods like this.

You can learn more about me at https://snyderlcsw.com/therapist/.  If you would like to consider the possibility of working with me, please email me at cmgsnyder@gmail.com or call me at 201-248-5552.

Whenever people discover that I specialize in working with infidelity, I think it makes sense that I’d see couples and help them repair their relationships.

For a number of years, I did work with couples, many of whom were dealing with the aftermath of an infidelity revelation. Over time, I began to realize that not everyone – on either end of the infidelity situation – may want to engage in couples counseling. I have found that there is great benefit of working with individuals because it allows us to truly drill down into their personal histories and gain insight on their own behavior.

Before I go on, I will emphasize that I do believe in couples therapy and it can be a very helpful tool. There are many layers to the issues that clients deal with and, therefore, many ways to address these things. Couples therapy can be an opportunity for a spouse or partner to share a space where they can tune in to each other and listen and hopefully, be heard. If you have arrived at my website wishing to access couples therapy, please send me a message (christine@snyderlcsw.com) and I could make a referral to someone who can better serve you.

So as I mentioned, there are some scenarios where clients might find individual therapy beneficial, depending on whether they have been unfaithful or whether they have been betrayed.

The person who has been unfaithful
In terms of the person who has been unfaithful in the relationship, there can be some factors at play that make couples therapy somewhat counterproductive. There is so much gray area in infidelity situations that these are only a small portion of situations where clients find themselves struggling.
* A person who is unfaithful may be involved with someone that has caused them to feel uncertain about continuing their primary relationship. They may find that this person provides them something their partner may be lacking and they are not sure they want to terminate this relationship.
* Perhaps they had wanted to terminate their primary relationship and entering into an affair with someone allowed them to transition out of the relationship. For some clients, it is easier (nothing is ever easy in infidelity, though) to tell a partner that they are cheating rather than tell them they no longer love them.
* They might also be in the process of breaking up with their affair partner and are struggling with the loss of that person from their life. In some occasions, people have long relationships with affair partners and it can be difficult to cope with the void that a breakup would cause. Sometimes people who are dealing with this loss do not find couples therapy helpful because they know their spouse does not want to know or hear how much they miss their girlfriend.
* This person may also feel exhausted by keeping secrets and I am the only person in the world with whom they’ve shared their secret.

I’d also say that it’s hard for some people to accept that someone involved in a transgression should be shown any compassion. On this, I have to strongly state that I do not feel that way. My job is not to shame or to pass judgment. I recognize that in some areas of your life, you may be struggling. Just because you are having an affair does not necessarily mean you are having the time of your life. Or maybe you are and you don’t feel guilty about it. It isn’t my position to correct your behavior. What you decide to do is up to you and I am here to support you and help you understand yourself better so that you can decide what direction to take.

The person who has been betrayed
It is not universally the case that the person whose spouse has gone outside the relationship wants to work on the relationship. It seems that there’s a societal expectation that if your spouse has cheated, you call a couples therapist and you both get to work on mending the hurt. But sometimes it isn’t that clear-cut. Here are some occasions where people who have been betrayed may find value in individual counseling:
* The person may be so hurt and distraught that they can barely communicate with the partner who hurt them, let alone be in the same small room together with a therapist. There is a possibility that they may come together for counseling at some point, but some people feel the need to process a hurt like this on their own with a therapist.
* The person who has been betrayed may have wanted to terminate this relationship and they would like to speak with a therapist to process whether to work on the relationship or end it. They also may come in with some existing insights such as their understanding of why they stayed in an unsatisfying relationship and they’d like to work on changing that characteristic.
* They might also have had a history of anxiety or depression and they have had difficulty managing the symptoms alone. A crisis such as a revelation that their partner has gone outside the relationship may need to be handled first before processing the direction of their relationship.
* As a result of discovering their spouse has been having an affair, they realize they have been cheated on in prior relationships and have a desire to understand why this has happened to them. Sometimes people recall in the course of therapy that one of their parents may have had a history of infidelity which affected them in their own relationships.

If you find yourself in any of these situations and would like to explore the possibility of working with me, please reach out to me at christine@snyderlcsw.com. My office is located in Livingston, NJ.