When a partner finds out about an affair or a history of deceit, he/she will experience the full constellation of trauma symptoms, including intrusive thoughts, flashbacks, hypervigilance, depressed mood, anxiety. As a result, it is completely normal to feel disoriented and not thinking, feeling, acting like your old-self. Here are a few important ways to cope with distress after uncovering an affair.

It usually starts pretty innocently: a text exchange, a reconnection via Facebook, a regular coffee date to catch up, but before you know it, you're sharing more personal information with this other person than your spouse or significant other. While everyone should be entitled to have a private life outside of their core intimate relationship, how do you know if you've entered the world of emotional affairs? Here are a few tell-tale signs.

No marriage gets through life unscathed. You can always count on some hurt feelings, emotional injuries that rear their ugly head on occasion, but nothing (nothing!) is as painful as uncovering an affair. Both the injured and the injurer will be hit by a tsunami of thoughts and emotions; often left drowning if they are not guided through a recovery process to get them back on their feet by a therapist who knows how to work with this very specific issue.