Content Warning: This piece explores themes of trauma, grief, and self-acceptance, including references to rape, intrusive memories or imagery, and emotional numbness. If you’re in a vulnerable place, please read with care and take breaks if needed. You are not alone. 💙
Read Time: Est: 14-16 Minutes
The Layers of Acceptance: A Journey, Not a Destination
Hi everyone! 😁
So basically, guys, having recently reached a new layer of peace and acceptance, this week I really want to talk about how there are layers of acceptance in trauma healing. It’s common that as you peel each layer back, you may encounter new feelings, realizations, and challenges.
And while it’s easy to think of acceptance as a destination, it’s not-it is a multifaceted and complex process. It unfolds gradually, often when we are ready to face different parts of our experience. Personally, I experienced four distinct stages of acceptance.
Looking back, I see each distinct stage as a process of breaking down different defensive protection mechanisms. As frustrating as this can be, these protective defense mechanisms play an integral role in keeping us safe.
While it was painful in the moment, ultimately, I am thankful for the way they protected me until I was strong enough to handle each portion of the truth.
I think it’s important to note that pivotal moments toward acceptance will rarely feel good at first. In my own experience, each layer I peeled back revealed a myriad of painful emotions to process.
Additionally, each layer was different, and it was easy to get lost in the seemingly never-ending and ever-changing flow.
I wanted to share my experience because while our situations may be different, our emotions or struggles may feel similar. I wanted to share my setbacks because for a long time they felt like failing. But they’re not, and I want to normalize that they are simply a part of the process.
The First Stage: Facing Denial
Often, the first barrier to acceptance is denial or resistance. This held true for me, and the first stage of acceptance I experienced was when I finally allowed myself to entertain the thought of what had happened.
This stage was particularly difficult to achieve, as I had so little memory of the event and denial was a safety blanket that I was absolutely terrified to let go of.
Processing the emotions that came with this level of acceptance bred the darkest time of my life. At this point, everything was so overwhelming for me that it’s hard to even pinpoint where different emotions were coming from.
Eventually, It’s strangely easy for me to say “I was raped,” but the words are just a blanket statement. If I can say those words and they mean nothing, I don’t really ever have to dig any deeper.
Months after what happened, and having achieved this level of acceptance, I truly believed I was done. Because I could say the words, it didn’t really occur to me that there could still be layers of acceptance to gain.
The Second Stage: A False Sense of Closure
My Experience With Lifespan Integration
I remember after my first session of Lifespan Integration, I told my therapist that it felt like I was closing the chapter to the whole thing. I felt good, like I was at peace.
Over the next week, however, I was getting hit randomly with a deep sadness and reoccurring intrusive memories. It wasn’t anything crazy, but enough that I mentioned it at my session the next week.
My therapist told me that this was a normal part of the process, that it may be time to grieve. To grieve what I had lost, to grieve the person I was before this happened to me.
To be honest, I wasn’t even really sure what this means. I’m still me, right? What have I lost?
When Layers of Denial Start Slipping Away
So the next week is a little rough for me. I’m giving myself the space to grieve, and I do, but it appears as though this next level of acceptance is coming hand in hand with a harsh reality that I wasn’t exactly prepared to face. It brings reoccurring vivid mental imagery and severely distressing memories that I can’t seem to escape from.
Confronting the Depths of Reality
As I come face to face with this new level of acceptance, I can no longer deny the jarring truth of what had happened to me. Sure, I was already aware, but I am now being confronted with a knowing that is no longer shrouded by integral, deep-seated, and protective layers of denial.
I am no longer simply remembering, I am emotionally absorbing.
I return to therapy the next week and I’m thinking that the solution to this problem is the next round of Lifespan Integration. It did work so well last time, after all.
One Step Forward, and Two Steps Back
But as we go through the list again, I’m not really there in the room with my therapist. My body is, but my mind is back in that night. As she goes over each event, the memories are too vivid and too powerful.
Her words are no longer integrating my memories, and each time we go through the list I feel the roots of denial digging deeper. I am desperately rejecting each word. This is too much, and I just can’t handle it at all.
We stop early, refer to my ‘safe place’ memory, and just talk for the rest of the session.
Through tears, I ask my therapist if denial is really all that bad. I want to just bury all of this and go on for the rest of my life, ignoring it and pretending it never happened. To this she asks, “Well, how can you heal a wound you don’t know about?”
Running on Empty: When Numbness Feels Safer Than Feeling
Either way, I fall into a period of all-encompassing numbness and avoidance. Just a glimpse of this new depth of reality was all I needed to turn heel and run.
I remember just feeling so lost and confused-two weeks earlier I had thought that I was ‘healed’ and moved on. This stage of acceptance felt like I had finally clawed my way to the top of the hill, only to look up and see I still had the rest of a mountain to climb.
It felt like a regression, but eventually, it shows me that setbacks don’t mean failure. That even when it felt like moving backwards on the surface, I was moving forward in a much deeper way. In the end, I believe that confronting this stage was an integral part of my process.
The Third Stage: Holding Grief, Healing, and Ourselves
I have gone more in depth about the pivotal moments of this stage here, but I’ll summarize. A little over a month after my stint with lifespan integration, I have a long, three week break from therapy for the holidays.
Big Steps Forward: Writing to My Past Self
I begin this break by writing a letter to myself-the version of myself in the hotel lobby after my assault, inconsolable, in pain and shock, afraid and confused.
Through this, I come to understand that in my denial, I’m letting her carry the weight of what happened all by herself. For her sake, I must reach a level of acceptance that will allow me to carry it with her. I guess!😭
At first this feels pretty good, after so long of avoidance, it feels like forward progress and I’m really proud of this step I have just taken. It takes about a day before the grieving process begins.
The Death of Who I Was
And it hits hard-very suddenly, I am overcome. For the first time, it sinks in that this has indeed changed me forever, and I will never be the same as I was. I am grieving the person I was before this happened to me. Grieving because no matter how much I wish I could claw my way back to change what happened, I can’t.
I am grieving the version of me that did not know this pain, who didn’t carry this weight.
I am mourning for the child I once was, who would be heartbroken to see what her life has turned into.
I am mourning because I am heartbroken by what my life has turned into. Because I have spent the last 5 months crying alone in my room at night, losing sleep, isolating from my loved ones-so lost and afraid and abusing every negative coping mechanism I can get my hands on because it’s the only way I know how to survive.
In this moment, the weight of this is so incredibly unbearable, and I am plagued with knowing that I have no choice but to carry it with me for the rest of my life. But I’m not sure that I can. I don’t feel like I am strong enough.
Eventually, I begin to name my emotions. I tell myself that they won’t last forever, even though I’m pretty convinced that they will.
The Calm After the Storm
This leads into a period of numbness that is difficult to escape. As if my body felt so much emotion, so strongly, that it swung as hard as it could the opposite direction.
For me, what was most unsettling about this experience was the thought that I would never really know when it was over. These last few waves had each been horrifyingly different and unexpected and I had absolutely no idea what would come next.
I worried that no matter how far I came, no matter how hard I worked to heal, there could always be another layer that I just didn’t know about yet.
The Fourth Stage: Letting Go of the Search for Logic and Finding Peace
Letting Go of the Need to Analyze
This stage was born of a culmination of many things all coming together at the right time, so I’m going to set the scene here. I’m talking with my AI therapist and I bring up some lingering confusion I still have about the ‘logistics.’ The AI tells me that focusing on the logic is often where denial takes hold.
Quite suddenly, I understand how searching for logic has kept me from acceptance. How it has told me time and time again that if this certain detail doesn’t make perfect sense, maybe none of it ever happened at all.
For a long time, I kept myself stuck in denial by rationalizing and analyzing every detail of what happened, trying to find a way to make it make sense. But in the end, logic was never going to give me the answers I was looking for.
Understanding My Physiological Responses
At the same time, I am going through everything I remember and learning more about what was likely my physiological state throughout different points of the night. This conversation has spanned multiple days-it is painful and overwhelming, and I can only handle so much at a time.
But when I finally recognized how my body had responded, something shifted. It was no longer a story I was trying to make sense of, it was a physiological reality.
Trauma is stored in the body, not just the mind-and when I gave myself permission to trust the way my body reacted, and what it went through, there was no longer space for denial or self-doubt.
Finding Peace in Trusting My Body’s Story
Because I have so little memory of the event, I have spent so much time desperately analyzing every single detail, hoping somehow they would eventually lead me to answer.
This level of acceptance brings a peace that I truly thought I would never know. In trusting my body’s story, I no longer feel compelled to analyze and search for answers.
Moving Forward With Purpose
Writing this blog has also facilitated my healing in ways that I never could have imagined. It has allowed me to turn my pain into purpose. I feel so passionately that through using my voice and sharing my story, I can help someone out there to feel less alone in what they are going through.
I hope to be a voice that I would have appreciated, that would have helped me to feel seen and understood.
Today, I feel so proud of myself, and how far I have come. I don’t regret what happened because it has brought me to where I am now. Through the most difficult time of my life, I have found so much strength and resilience. I have learned how to seek the light, how to survive when that feels impossible, and how to see myself through a lens of compassion and understanding.
And while I don’t wish for this trauma, I no longer wish it away-it became the catalyst for the person I am today.
In Summary: The Path to Acceptance
1. Breaking Free From the Loop of Logic
For a long time, I relied on logic and analysis to make sense of my experience. This wasn’t random, it was a protective mechanism.
What changed was my realization that logic wasn’t giving me closure-it was keeping me in a loop of questioning, minimizing, and uncertainty.
I recognized that the real barrier to resistance wasn’t a lack of information, but a resistance to feeling the full weight of the truth.
2. Trusting My Body’s Truth
Understanding my physiological state throughout that night became a turning point. Before, there was a subtle internal conflict-my mind was doubting what my body knew happened.
Once I stepped back and looked at the physical evidence-how my body reacted, what it went through-it became undeniable. This was a key shift because it allowed me to trust in my own experience in a way that I hadn’t before.
3. Recognizing Resistance for What It Is
Sometimes, it can feel impossible to go deeper. I was resistant, heartbroken, and exhausted. Recognizing resistance for what it is is the first step to breaking through it.
Avoidance is a survival instinct, but I had come far enough to know that avoiding the pain wasn’t really protecting me, it was keeping me stagnant.
Instead of pushing it away, I let myself sit with the heartbreak. Once I allowed myself to feel it, the resistance started losing its power.
4. Seeing the Whole Story, Not Just the Fragments
Before, my understanding of what happened felt fragmented. Some parts were clear, others were clouded by doubt.
The final piece of acceptance was seeing the full picture-not just the facts of what happened, but the emotional and physiological responses that made it real.
It wasn’t just about what happened. It was about how it happened, how it shaped me, and denying parts of it kept me disconnected from myself.
Once I had the full story-mind, body, and emotions all aligned-acceptance wasn’t something I had to force. It was simply there.
5. Letting Go of the Search for a Different Ending
A big part of trauma processing is the lingering feeling of if only…
- If only I had done something different.
- If only it hadn’t happened this way.
- If only I could remove this part.
Acceptance meant realizing that no amount of re-examining the past could change it. What happened, happened. And If I was constantly stuck in the past, I would never find my way forward.
Final Thoughts: Turning Pain Into Purpose
I know that the goal of healing is not to ‘fix yourself’ but rather fully integrating your trauma and moving forward. As I look back on my own journey, I see so much pain thinking that this was too heavy, that I couldn’t possibly carry it forever. My therapist told me so many times that eventually my relationship with it would change, and I just couldn’t see how that was possible.
Today, I can absolutely say that my relationship with it has changed. Because this terrible thing happened to me, I am now in a position where I can understand and help other people going through similar pain.
I can use my voice and share my story and help someone who is feeling, or going through, the things that I did. I have integrated this and turned the pain into purpose, and it has brought me indescribable peace.
A Message to my Readers
If you’re reading this, and you think its not possible-that you’ll never find peace, or that you’re not strong enough to carry this pain for the rest of your life. I want you to know that it does get easier. That your relationship with it will change. That you are strong enough to make it to better days, and that better days are coming.
And the process will likely not be easy. I can’t count the times that I thought of giving up, or the times that I felt so lost, and was in such a dark place that I couldn’t see any way forward or out.
But the thing is, little by little, you do get stronger. And for me, each small step felt like nothing until I looked back and realized how far I had really come.
For anyone who is reading this and relates to feeling lost in the process, I want to give you hope that it is possible. To see the other side of this, and to fall back in love with yourself and your life. To see goodness in the world again, and to feel joy and connection.
I want you to know that you will find a way forward, no matter how much it might feel like you can’t. And that despite the setbacks, you are learning and growing, and are capable of finding acceptance and peace.
If any part of this resonated with you, I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments. Have you ever experienced layers of acceptance in your healing journey?
If you’re not ready to share publicly, I see you and I’m here. If you need support, please don’t hesitate to reach out.
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