Why Healing Can Feel Like Losing Yourself

(And Why That’s Not a Sign You’re Doing It Wrong)

Living with trauma can be hard to identify—especially when your survival responses become second nature. I always knew I came from trauma. It existed in my family long before me, tucked into the dark corners, wrapped in shame. We all carried it. But I didn’t realize how deeply I had internalized it. We turned our pain into silence. But silence doesn’t protect families—it protects abusers.

No one tells you that healing can feel like grief. More often than not, healing is lonely, disorienting, and isolating. Trauma doesn’t just live in your head—it rewires your brain and embeds itself in your nervous system. Research shows that early trauma changes the architecture of the developing brain. Areas like the amygdala and prefrontal cortex, which control fear, memory, and emotional regulation, can become dysregulated—leaving survivors more vulnerable to anxiety, depression, and chronic stress responses (Nemeroff, 2016). This kind of rewiring doesn’t disappear overnight—healing takes time, safety, and consistency to slowly reestablish a sense of self.

When I finally stopped living in survival and denial after 40 years, I crumbled. It felt like being launched 50 feet into the air and crashing sideways. I didn’t see it coming—and I didn’t recognize myself when I landed. You expect healing to feel like clarity. But instead, it feels like fog—so thick and overwhelming that your body can stay locked in survival mode long after the danger has passed, shaping your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors (van der Kolk, 2014). In that fog, it’s easy to feel like something is wrong with you—when really, it’s a sign that your body is finally safe enough to start feeling.

Stopping the trauma cycle may feel like it's breaking you—but in truth, it’s breaking you open. You are not unraveling. You are remembering who you were before survival became your full-time job. Stopping the trauma cycle isn’t a one-time decision. It’s not a yoga class punch card. It’s a lifelong commitment to sit in the discomfort of what we once buried—shame, grief, rage—and slowly learn to re-love the parts of us we abandoned.

For me, it began the moment I gave voice to what happened. When I personally acknowledged the abuse and began revisiting those memories, it triggered a cascade of CPTSD symptoms. For over a year and a half, I experienced silent panic attacks and carried those symptoms at their height. These included intrusive thoughts, emotional flashbacks, hypervigilance, sleep disturbances, difficulty concentrating, numbness, intense guilt and shame, a deep sense of disconnection, and persistent self-doubt—all hallmark symptoms of Complex PTSD.

Looking back, I’m still not sure how I survived them. It felt unbearable—like something inside me was going to snap if I didn’t seek help. It took an entire year of extreme CPTSD symptoms and six, almost entirely silent therapy sessions before I could finally say it out loud: I. Was. Sexually. Abused. My. Entire. Childhood. Saying it wasn’t new—but saying it as a grown woman, a wife, a mother of four? That changed everything.

I’m still learning what it means to stop living from trauma. Right now, it means learning who I am now that I’ve stopped denying what happened—and reckoning with the fact that my family completely disregarded me and scapegoated me as the problem instead of acknowledging the truth sexual abuse lived in our family for decades, affecting more than a dozen survivors. Trauma forces the survivor to experience the world with a different nervous system. So much energy goes into suppressing the chaos inside, it becomes hard to feel present or safe—even in calm moments (van der Kolk, 2014). It means including my trauma in my wholeness, not erasing it.

You’re not lost. You’re unlearning.

You’re not becoming someone else—you’re unbecoming who trauma trained you to be. Unlearning is rarely linear. I’m rediscovering who I am with intentionality—meeting myself where I’m at, responding with compassion on some days and with firm boundaries on others. Sometimes, I still can’t tell which part of me is reacting—trauma or truth.

When you take away hypervigilance, people-pleasing, numbing, or fawning… it can feel like there’s nothing left. I think back to all the times I tried so hard to be liked. I thought I was being polite. Kind. Helpful. But deep down, I was searching for safety and validation. This disorientation is normal. It’s what happens when your nervous system is no longer running on autopilot.

I remember my time as a nurse, checking if patients were oriented to person, place, and time. But no one ever taught us how to oriented the soul. I had to reorient myself, every single day—reminding myself I am safe. Because trauma thoughts can transport you back in a heartbeat. It truly felt like I’d been kicked from behind, flung into the air, and landed in a world where everything I believed about myself was a lie.

Your identity was shaped for safety, not selfhood.

Trauma psychology shows that our sense of identity is often formed through the lens of what we’ve endured. Especially in cases of childhood or sexual trauma, these experiences can fragment the self—leaving behind patterns of fawning, dissociation, or emotional shutdown that once helped us survive. These are adaptations, not character flaws.

Survivors often build entire personas around their trauma responses, mistaking these patterns for personality. It’s not uncommon to look back and realize you’ve never really known yourself outside of defense mechanisms. And when you begin to heal, it can feel like you’re losing your identity—when in fact, you’re shedding what was never truly you.

Even when the body begins to regulate, the mind can still ask: Who am I without the chaos? The hopeful truth? Many trauma survivors go on to experience post-traumatic growth—deep internal transformation that emerges through the healing process (Tedeschi & Calhoun, 2004). While the pain doesn’t disappear, it can become the foundation of something new, resilient, and real. Instead of crumbling under the trauma, you flourish because you healed.

This is what healing often actually looks like:

Healing often looks like feeling disconnected from your goals, your body, and even your loved ones. I stopped doing things I loved—gardening, creating, laughing with my kids. Eventually, I began choosing three small actions a day to help me stay productive and grounded. These small rituals were anchors. They helped—even on the hardest days. But before that, I would sit on the couch for days, numb and exhausted. I often worked from there because it was all I could manage. Starting somatic practices slowly allowed me to feel, process, and accept what had happened to me—and how my family treated me. Once I could begin integrating that truth, I started to reclaim parts of myself.

Letting go of the roles I once clung to—the fixer, the peacekeeper, the strong one—felt like losing the language of love I’d always used. Being accommodating felt like love to me. But I’m learning to differentiate between offering care from a place of wholeness versus offering it to earn safety. There was tremendous grief and guilt in this shift, and sometimes it still washes over me. But now, when those emotions arise, I have new thoughts to anchor to: “This shame isn’t mine to carry.”

Fawning was my norm—smiling too much, over-apologizing, worrying constantly if someone was upset with me. I shrank myself to be safe. I now realize how often I lived in fear. My posture was collapsed, I avoided eye contact, and I felt blocked in my sacral, heart, and throat chakras. I was always trying to be liked, to be chosen. Staying silent became most intense when my CPTSD was at its peak.

There were stretches where I didn’t know what I wanted, liked, or believed. I felt completely lost. But as the chaos softened, I began to rebuild awareness of my own voice and needs. I still ask myself every day, “What do you want?”

I grieve a lot. I grieve the family I lost when I told the truth. The version of family I once believed I had. My confidence. My presence. My ability to stay grounded in the moment. I think of who I was in my 20s and 30s—before I spoke the truth and did not back down. Before I knew how deeply people could judge. Before my identity was fragmented by the weight of truth and silence. I didn’t lose myself all at once—it was slow. Like watching pieces of me slip away. And yet, what’s left is still here. Still alive. Still reaching for light.

I’m learning now, in the quiet after survival, that I am deserving and capable. I’ve proven that to myself again and again. The soft parts of me are emerging, day by day, and I’m learning to meet myself with authenticity and care.

Losing the false self is the beginning of meeting your real one. This discomfort is a sign you’re healing at the level of identity—not just behavior. You’re not starting over. You’re meeting yourself for the first time. Rebuilding self-trust and clarity takes time. But you’re already doing it.

A Truth to Hold Onto

You’re not lost—you’re in between who you had to be and who you’re becoming. Trust the discomfort. This is the wilderness before the rebirth. You’re not failing—you’re awakening.

References

Feldmann, R., et al. (2020). Frontiers in Psychology, 11, 570644. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.570644

Nemeroff, C. B. (2016). Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, 77(6), e902–e909. https://doi.org/10.4088/JCP.15ac10420

Tedeschi, R. G., & Calhoun, L. G. (2004). Posttraumatic growth: Conceptual foundations and empirical evidence. Psychological Inquiry, 15(1), 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327965pli1501_01

van der Kolk, B. A. (2014). The Body Keeps the Score. Viking.