The Brain’s Self-Healing Process
A few weeks after completing over 180 handwritten pages of autobiographical memory—my first attempt to process and give language to my traumatic childhood—I began to feel. Not just emotionally, but cognitively. For the first time, I began to understand the emotional weight I had carried for over 43 years. My responses to life had been automatic, driven by survival mechanisms rooted in trauma. I had functioned mechanically, without conscious awareness of the source of my reactions.
Through the act of writing, I began to dismantle the psychological defenses that had dissociated me from my own experience. The emotional and neural “freeze” response that had blocked access to my trauma began to lift. The writing created a pathway—both neurologically and emotionally—toward integration. I became consciously aware of how my brain, previously numbed by years of repression, began to initiate what I can only describe as a self-generated healing process.
My husband was working full-time and gone most of the day, which allowed me to dedicate uninterrupted hours to both memory retrieval and reflective writing. Gradually, and at first without noticing, I withdrew from daily routines and social obligations. I became increasingly disinterested in my external life, as my internal world demanded attention.
About three months later, I had revised and edited my manuscript, reducing and organizing the content into cohesive scenes. A friend helped me translate the work from German into English. Each time I returned to the manuscript, I re-experienced the memories vividly—as if watching a film in which I played the central role. These were not distant recollections, but visceral, embodied relivings.
In solitude, I often felt hopeless and emotionally overwhelmed. I began sleeping throughout the day—an avoidance response likely tied to the emotional toll of reliving early trauma. And yet, I continued to function in the present, fulfilling daily tasks, newly married, conditioned by childhood training to “perform,” to “act normal,” and to suppress inner pain. These behavioral patterns—developed through early relational trauma—overrode the body’s desperate call for rest and stillness. I began to fantasize about total isolation: a house with ten-foot walls, far from noise, people, and expectations.
When the pain became too intense, I would retreat to bed, sometimes locking the doors. Sleep came quickly, but was often interrupted by nightmares—early trauma material emerging in symbolic and fragmented ways. This marked the beginning of recurring night terrors directly linked to the abuse.
Then, one evening, something extraordinary occurred. It was a Friday. My husband left for choir rehearsal after dinner. I remember standing in the kitchen when he left at 6:00 PM—and according to him, I was still standing in the exact same place when he returned at 11:00 PM. He found me dissociated—frozen—and led me upstairs to bed.
What happened during those five hours was the beginning of a profound internal shift. It felt as though the emotional dam in my brain had broken. Repressed affect—grief, terror, pain—began to flood the neural pathways. Emotion and cognition, long disconnected, began to reunite. There was a physical sensation of reconnection, as if long-dormant neural circuits were reactivating. I could see—in my mind’s eye—neurons reaching out like tendrils, finding each other, plugging in. With each reconnection, new areas of consciousness opened, previously lifeless regions now becoming animated.
This was, undoubtedly, a self-healing neurological process—a trauma-induced dissociation slowly giving way to reintegration. The right and left hemispheres of my brain began to communicate again. Despite the emotional intensity, the process felt meaningful, necessary, and deeply intelligent. My brain had not shut down to die—it had shut down to protect itself. Now it was trying to reawaken.
The internal message was clear: I was becoming whole. I experienced spontaneous emotional insights, saw the roots of my symptoms, felt the original terror, and understood the developmental impact of the abuse. I didn’t experience these insights as pathological, but as a vital part of the healing journey toward self-integration.
I don’t remember much of that weekend, but by Monday, I found myself in a psychologist’s office, while my husband expressed concern that I had stopped eating and refused to get out of bed. When asked if I wanted to get up, I replied, “Let me be. Let me die here.” What I meant was: Let this process complete. It was the first time in my life I felt my brain was doing exactly what it needed to do. I resented the interruption.
I was physically and emotionally depleted—exhausted from the process—and yet I was forced into psychiatric treatment. A psychiatrist prescribed antidepressants, with the reasoning that I was a danger to myself. My own voice was ignored. The healing process, as overwhelming as it was, was interpreted not as recovery but as pathology. I was told I needed to return to “normal.” But what was normal? Years of dissociation, repression, and performing emotional functionality?
The medication dulled me. I entered a period of emotional numbness—another kind of dissociation, this time pharmacologically induced. My healing was halted.
In 1999, after years of living in this medicated haze, I chose to feel again. I weaned off the medication and reclaimed agency over my inner world.
Since then, my healing continues—not through reliving traumatic memories to the same extent, but through frequent active dreaming and symbolic processing. I’ve never again experienced the depth and intensity of that original self-healing episode, and I still wonder what might have unfolded if it had not been interrupted.
Yes, there was a risk of psychological destabilization—perhaps even a psychotic break. But was that risk not mine to assess? Who has the authority to decide what healing must look like? What gives psychiatry the power to override an individual’s deeply personal process with standardized, fear-driven interventions?
This experience has left me with fundamental questions:
What is “normal,” and who defines it?
Why does society insist on regulating the psyche into acceptable frameworks, especially when healing processes defy clinical expectation?
Does our fear of emotional chaos limit our capacity to support authentic healing?
Was it not, in the end, my illness that was preserved by the system, while the recovery was shut down?