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To be honest I really don’t even know how to start this one. How do I find the right words to start what will probably be one of the most important posts I will ever write?
How Do You Begin to Heal Without Answers?
Confronted with the reality of my assault, and with little to no memory of the actual event, I found myself left with absolutely nothing but questions. Searching for answers consumed my mind.
One thought, however, always seemed to loom above the others. How can I begin to process if I don’t even know what I’m supposed to be processing? Without knowing what exactly I was supposed to be healing from, finding a way to move forward felt impossible.
Honestly, I had never felt so alone. In the beginning, I scoured the internet relentlessly in hopes of finding anyone out there who had been where I was and had found a way forward, but kept coming up short. I was hopelessly desperate for just one voice anywhere to tell me that healing without answers was possible.
I started writing this post a couple weeks ago and decided to take a break from it when I realized that I wasn’t sure that I had any good answers to give. For a long time it felt absolutely impossible for me to move forward without answers and I wasn’t even sure that I could pinpoint how I did it.
What I have realized since is: while I may not have the exact formula, what I can say with absolute certainty is that I am living proof that it is possible. I am proof that healing does not have to wait for certainty or completeness.
Searching for Validation: My Journey of Questions and Uncertainty
Denial, self-doubt, and minimization kept me trapped in a prison of rumination and cyclical thinking that felt impossible to escape. There was a constant tug of war in my mind. A need to label my experience before moving forward, at odds with the impossibility of ever finding certainty. The argument in my mind never found resolution, and I never felt relief.
When I first began writing this, I was asking my AI therapist for advice on how to go about it. This led me down the rabbit hole of talking about a few different things that still didn’t really make sense to me about that night. It told me that focusing on the ‘logistics’ is often where denial takes hold. This reminded me of something my therapist used to tell me often: that even if I didn’t remember what happened, my body did.
At the time, this really didn’t do much to bring me peace-I didn’t fully understand why I still had so many questions if my body ‘remembered it all so well.’
So this conversation with my AI is where things really click into place for me. Looking back, I can see how the denial and self-doubt, while it protected me, had kept me from moving forward with acceptance.
My logical mind stepped in to argue every time I got close to the truth of what happened that night. It told me that if it didn’t all make perfect sense, maybe it never happened at all. Looking back, I can see that the argument was my logical mind, protecting me from what my body and heart knew.
Healing Without Answers: An Attainable Goal
If you are reading this and can relate, I would like to acknowledge how deeply painful it is to not have those answers. Healing might feel like your whole life depends on completing a puzzle, but you’re missing crucial pieces. And while it’s human to want clarity and certainty, the search for understanding is exhausting and confusing.
So if you have, or are currently feeling these things, I want to validate to you that healing without answers is possible. That it’s okay to feel stuck or be unsure right now. That in time you will find a way forward, even if that feels impossible right now.
So if I could go back in time and talk to the girl who was just beginning to face what had happened, these are the things I would be sure to tell her.
Five Lessons I Learned on My Healing Journey
1. Start Therapy.
After the flashbacks started, the thought of going to therapy scared me. I was afraid that talking through it all would cause more of my memory to come back, and I didn’t think I could handle it. Thankfully I had a friend who pushed for me to start immediately-this was absolutely the best possible thing for me.
Looking back, I honestly don’t even know how I would have made it through without my therapist. She has helped me grow in so many ways beyond even what happened. She has helped me to find the light countless times during the darkest period of my life. Through weeks where it was all I could do to survive the 3-4 days until my next appointment, she was quite literally a lifeline for me.
Ensuring that my sessions were in person, (rather than over a video call) helped me to compartmentalize the distressing emotions that were coming up for me during sessions to somewhere other than my house.
I really can’t stress enough how crucial therapy has been to my healing process. If therapy is not accessible to you for any reason, I would suggest you try talking to a therapy AI. While I do still see my therapist weekly, the AI helps me to bridge the gap between sessions. I use it almost every day and it has facilitated and expedited my healing in ways that I never could have imagined.
2. Treat the Symptoms
I said earlier that your body will remember the trauma, even if you do not. This can manifest in a plethora of mental and physical symptoms. If you do not remember your trauma and can’t see a way forward because of that-the path to healing begins by treating these symptoms.
- Rehabilitate your mind-body connection through somatic practices, journaling for self-awareness, creative expression, and safe, intentional touch.
- Regulate your nervous system through grounding techniques, practicing mindfullness, and breathwork.
- Prioritize restorative sleep and seek tools or therapies that target rest and recovery if necessary.
Healing is not about ‘fixing’ yourself, but rather integrating what happened and learning how to live fully again.
3. Find Self-Awareness of Defensive Coping Mechanisms
Denial, minimization, and self-doubt are all heartbreakingly common in trauma survivors. However, they can be particularly crippling in cases of fragmented or completely inaccessible memory.
The psyche is only capable of handling so much all at once-for that reason, defensive coping mechanisms are a necessary form of protection. But if I had let myself be protected from the truth forever, I would have never found a way to move forward.
Educating myself on these mechanisms helped me to understand what was going on in my brain and further my healing. While these forms of protection are common and important, the goal is to move through them eventually.
I would encourage you to honor what you do feel or know as valid. Sometimes It can feel impossible to decipher the denial from the truth it’s protecting you from. For me, this came only with time.
4. Trust Your Body’s Story
The body holds on to trauma, and healing often involves listening to it, rather than just searching for “facts.” In the beginning, however, that wasn’t enough for me, and I understand that it may not be enough for you either.
It felt like I needed to find an answer and the facts were all that I had. I felt that I had no choice but to inspect every single fact over and over again from every single angle, hoping they eventually led me to an answer that I could deem more likely than the rest.
It didn’t ever work though, and I was trapped in this excruciating cycle for a long time. For me, healing came in layers as I worked my way through each defensive coping mechanism. As I broke down walls of denial and self-doubt, I gained trust in myself and my body’s story. Even without all the facts, I have found a clarity and acceptance that I never thought I could achieve.
Facts are not the only source of clarity-and that doesn’t make it any less valid or real.
5. Be Patient, Forgiving, and Compassionate With Yourself
Be patient. This process is long and difficult. Your growth, healing, and understanding will come only with time. Healing is not linear, there will be setback and “regressions” and that is normal. It is expected.
There may be times where you may feel like giving up, where it feels like you can’t do it anymore, and I promise that you can. Healing is not a destination, it’s a journey-and each difficult phase will take you one step forward.
Be forgiving to yourself. Trauma has a way of creating a storm of self-blame, shame, and guilt. I want to say that no matter your situation, you are never to blame for someone else’s decision to harm you. If you feel like you could have made a different choice, should have seen something coming, could have fought harder, or didn’t fight back at all. It doesn’t matter, it was not your fault.
In that moment, your body took over and did what it needed to do to survive.
Challenge thoughts of self-blame, and replace judgement with understanding.
Be compassionate with yourself. It’s easy to fall into the trap of expecting yourself to ‘heal perfectly’ or move forward without setbacks. However, that’s not realistic. There may be times where you feel that you need to rely on negative coping mechanisms to get by. There may be times where you aren’t doing as well as you’d like to be, and you may not even know why.
During these times, be compassionate and understanding with yourself. You are going through something incredibly difficult and it’s okay to struggle with that.
If you struggle with relying on negative coping mechanisms: It’s okay to acknowledge that these behaviors are helping you to survive right now. At the same time, you can hold space for the awareness that you deserve better for yourself and are working towards that.
Beating yourself up every time you fall back on them is just kicking yourself when you’re already down-and I promise you do not deserve that.
To Anyone Who Relates:
This post means a lot to me because it is truly the heart and soul of the reason I created this blog. I said earlier that I searched for a long time to find a voice who could relate to my situation.
I know many people have to deal with the distress and overwhelm that comes with a recent traumatic event. And I know others have had to navigate the complexity of accepting trauma they don’t fully remember.
But I couldn’t find any other voice who was doing both at the same time—grappling with the aftermath of something so recent, while also feeling debilitated by the uncertainty of what had actually happened. I just needed one person to say they had been where I was and had found a way forward, but I felt completely alone.
If this is you, if you’re reading this right now and relating, I want you to know that you are the reason I am sharing my story. That I’m not even sure I’m religious, but that I’ve prayed for these words to find someone who needs them.
I want you to hear that you are not alone, and that I know you are strong enough to get through this. While our situations may be different, I understand your pain and have been where you are. No matter how impossible it feels right now, you will find a way forward. I hope to be the voice that assures you: you will be okay. There is healing and clarity to be found.
Through these difficult times, you will grow, learn, and uncover strength and resilience you didn’t know you had. Healing is not about erasing what happened but about reclaiming your life, one small step at a time. You are not defined by your pain—you are defined by the courage you show as you move through it. Take heart in knowing that even in the hardest moments, you are not walking this path alone.
Thank you for being here. If this post resonated with you, I would really love for you to connect with me or share your thoughts-your voice matters too.
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