Real story: from panic to peace (one small step at a time)
- Shawn Haywood, PhRD
- Dec 26, 2025
- 2 min read
I want to briefly share about “Emma” (name changed for privacy), because her story might feel a lot like yours.
When Emma found out about her husband’s affair, her whole body went into overdrive:
She couldn’t sleep without waking up in a panic
Her mind replayed the discovery day on a loop
She felt jumpy, flooded, and exhausted all at once
She constantly worried about where her husband might be, even though she was tracking him
And worst of all, she continuously compared herself to the ‘younger’ women he had been with.
She kept telling me, “Even when nothing is happening, I feel like something bad is about to happen.”
That’s what betrayal does to the nervous system.
What changed?
Instead of trying to “think her way” out of the pain (which is literally impossible), Emma started with one small, consistent step:She committed to doing a guided meditation a few times a week.
At first, she could only sit still for a few minutes. Her mind wandered, she got frustrated, and she wondered if it was even working...
But during the first week, she noticed:
Her heart wasn’t racing all day long
The images and questions quieted down faster
She could fall asleep more easily and stay asleep longer
She had just a bit more energy to make decisions about her future
And she began to notice more patience with her children again
She told me,
“It’s not that I forgot what happened. It’s that my body finally stopped feeling like the affair was happening right now.”
That’s the power of calming the nervous system while you heal and become whole again.
If you’d like support doing the same, I created a set of Guided Meditations for Affair Recovery to help your body and heart begin to exhale again:
You don’t have to fix everything today. You just have to give yourself one gentle, supportive moment at a time.
With you,
Shawn 💛
About Dr. Shawn Haywood
Dr. Shawn Haywood is the founder of Reimagine Love. She is a classically trained therapist, as well as a life and marriage coach, who loves to work with women and couples to help them heal fully after an affair. Over the past 25 years, she has helped thousands of women move from the cycle of disconnect to one of unbreakable love and connection, while healing fully after infidelity, in a fraction of the time of traditional marriage counseling.
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