After Wayne Rooney was recently caught in a compromising situation alongside some young women he met on a night out with photos emerging on social media and in the press, there has been a lot of discussion about how anyone would deal with seeing the pictures before being told by their partner.

Here, stress relief, grief and self-worth therapist Laura Steventon (pictured) discusses the way to cope with being in this situation:

A person smiling for the camera

Description automatically generated with medium confidence”Discovering pictures of your significant other in compromising situations can create feelings of intense psychological shock.

“When this happens, your body will be producing a fight, flight or freeze stress response. This could make you take thoughtless, destructive action from the inability to think straight.

“You may also experience feelings of nausea or diarrhoea, feel as though you are disconnected from your body in a surreal out-of-body type experience, it could induce a panic attack and/or intense rage. For additional help in this area, you may want to check out these health articles as well as read on in this page, so you can get the best assistance out there during this intense time.

“You may start to feel numb or that you need to get away from the situation as fast as possible to alleviate the emotional pressure building inside you.

“The first thing that you should do regardless of which of these reactions you may feel is to walk away from the situation for at least 30 minutes to focus on bringing your body back to a calmer, more rational state.

“This is very key. The easiest way to do this is to go for a walk and to concentrate on your breathing. A 4:8 breathwork pattern is the most helpful as the longer out-breath will start to stimulate a calming sensation in your vagal nerve, which is responsible for innervating almost every organ in your body.

“Making a “haaaa” sound in the back of your throat will also stimulate this process, allowing your body to start to relax after two minutes. The reason that this is so important is that when we are being fuelled by stress hormones, our rational, problem solving executive functioning part of our brain goes “offline” and we are only operating from our emotional, non-rational part of our brain.

“This part of our brain stores all of our hurt and pain from the past and could trigger a very painful, buried emotion in you that you may not recognise. Operating from this state can see us take actions that we may regret longer term.

“The important thing is to ensure that you manage your reactions first before confronting the situation or your partner for your own emotional and mental safety and health.

“Reach out to someone for support in bringing yourself back to a balanced state rather than trying to handle the feelings and pain alone. Talking it out once you are in a calmer state will help you to process how you want to handle talking to your partner.

“When it comes to confronting your partner, ensure that you know what you want to say and the actions you want to take. It is best to discuss in a non-threatening environment, avoid using harmful words, although this may be exactly what you want to do, due to the violation of your trust, it will not help your situation.

“Stick to the facts – you have discovered this compromising information, it has violated your trust, ask questions to establish more facts about the situation, such as what the reason was, when did it happen, how did it come about or who was it with, etc.

“Aim to avoid the question of why as this will lead to a more emotional response and may trigger your own deep, hurt emotions.

“Once you have established the facts, you can either ask for time to process what has happened and the action you want to take as a result or discuss the action you are ready to take.

“The number one tip is constant self-emotional regulation and having the support of someone you trust. Once the shock wears off, grief will start to kick in regardless of the outcome you want to take.

“We often don’t recognise grief when it is intangible, so it is important to be aware that it may take you a while to recover from what has happened and that you should be gentle with your expectations of yourself.”