Suspicion in your body
Suspicion is not only thoughts. It lives in your stomach and chest and hands, and it often drives the checking before you have decided anything.
Your body on high alert
Suspecting a betrayal puts your body into threat mode. Racing heart, knot in the stomach, poor sleep, a need to do something right now. In that state the brain is built to scan for danger, which is why everything starts to look like evidence.
You cannot think clearly in threat mode. Calming the body first is not avoiding the problem. It is how you get enough of your head back to deal with it.
Researchers who study infidelity, including the psychologist Shirley Glass, observed that people who suspect or discover betrayal often show trauma-like symptoms: hypervigilance, intrusive thoughts and checking. Body-based calming skills, such as slow breathing with a long out-breath, are standard first steps for that kind of arousal.
Where do you feel it?
Out of threat mode
Put the phone face down, out of reach.
Your first move, next time it hits.
Your words
When I notice ____,
I'll ____
before I check anything.
Take this with you
Calm the body first. You think more clearly out of threat mode.