Most people come to therapy feeling confused about why they struggle.

They know something hurts.
They know patterns repeat.
They know their body reacts in ways they don’t fully understand.

What they often don’t have yet is the picture on the box.

One of the most helpful ways to understand the healing journey is to think of therapy as putting together a puzzle — your puzzle.

Beginning Without the Picture

When you first start therapy, you don’t walk in holding a neat explanation of your life.

You walk in holding fragments:

  • A strong reaction that doesn’t make sense
  • A body that feels tense, numb, or exhausted
  • Anxiety, shame, or shutdown that seems to come out of nowhere
  • A sense that something happened, but it’s hard to name

This is what it’s like to sit down with a puzzle when the pieces are scattered and the picture is missing.

Therapy doesn’t start by forcing the pieces together.
It starts by spreading them out and getting curious.

Awareness: Finding the Edges

In puzzle terms, awareness work is finding the edges.

You begin to notice:

  • This happens in my body when I feel overwhelmed
  • This part of me always expects the worst
  • This is what shutdown feels like
  • This is what anxiety feels like — and where I feel it

Nothing is being solved yet.
You’re simply learning to see what’s there.

Awareness is powerful because it creates space.
Instead of being the puzzle piece, you can now hold it.

This kind of present-moment awareness has long been recognized as transformative — both spiritually and psychologically. In fact, many contemplative traditions describe this same practice of returning to presence, beautifully captured in Practicing the Presence of God.

Healing often begins not with effort, but with attention.

Protectors: Pieces That Don’t Seem to Fit

As awareness grows, certain puzzle pieces stand out.

These are the pieces that:

  • Jump in quickly
  • Try to control the situation
  • Numb things out
  • Catastrophize
  • Submit, freeze, or disappear

In therapy, we often call these protectors.

They formed for a reason.
They helped you survive something overwhelming.

At first, protectors can feel like the problem.
But over time, you begin to realize they’re simply pieces of the puzzle that don’t yet make sense.

Rather than trying to get rid of them, therapy helps you:

  • Name them
  • Understand when they show up
  • Feel compassion for why they exist

This is where the puzzle starts to take shape.

The Middle of the Puzzle: Making Sense of the Story

As therapy continues, patterns emerge.

You begin to see:

  • Themes that repeat
  • Emotions that were once too big to feel
  • Experiences from earlier in life that shaped how you learned to cope

This is often when people say:

“I can see it now — I understand why I’m like this.”

But insight alone isn’t the end of healing.

Sometimes, at this stage, people notice something surprising:
They understand their story, but they don’t feel much.

This isn’t failure.
It’s often a sign of numbness — another protector.

In puzzle terms, you can see the picture, but the pieces haven’t fully settled into place yet.

Feeling the Pieces — Safely

Healing doesn’t require reliving everything all at once.

It happens one piece at a time.

As safety increases, your system may begin to allow:

  • Grief
  • Anger
  • Fear
  • Sadness
  • Relief

These emotions aren’t random.
They belong to specific pieces of your story.

In trauma-informed therapy, reprocessing work helps the body finally digest what it couldn’t handle before — so those pieces no longer carry so much charge.

The puzzle doesn’t disappear.
It becomes coherent.

When the Puzzle Is Mostly Complete

Over time, something important shifts.

You can look at your story and say:

  • Yes, that was painful
  • Yes, that shaped me
  • But my body is calm now

The memories remain, but they no longer overwhelm your nervous system.

You’re no longer constantly stepping on loose pieces.

The puzzle is mostly assembled — and you can finally see it as a whole.

What Healing Really Is

Healing isn’t about becoming someone new.

It’s about:

  • Understanding your story
  • Integrating your experiences
  • Allowing your body to come to rest

Therapy is not about rushing, forcing, or fixing.
It’s about patiently, compassionately putting the pieces together.

One piece.
One session.
One moment of awareness at a time.

And eventually, you realize:

I’m not broken. I was unfinished.

Disclosure: Drafted with assistance from ChatGPT from my original reflections; final edits are mine.