YES! I know what you are describing and I have experienced this myself. Actually, I have been doing a newer therapy called Accelerated Resolution Therapy. This is based on EMDR therapy using eye movement to help a person process a trauma or what may be an accumulation of traumas a person never really processed. My therapist specializes in doing trauma therapy and helping ptsd patients including vets that suffer from ptsd. He explained to me that what they have learned about trauma patients is the area of their brain that is mostly affected is the back of the brain as when they test trauma patients that is the area of the brain that shows most of the activity when the individual is presented with reminders of whatever traumatized them. They noticed there was little to almost NO activity in the frontal part of the brain. It has been learned that our brains actually process things we experience every night through REM sleep and that the eye movement activates the brain where the daily events are connected to the area of our brain that has skills to sort out whatever we are trying to process. Often if someone is traumatized, their brain is overwhelmed and when it tries to do REM the individual may experience very bad dreams and often their ability to access average skills to process whatever it was isn't really enough and the person may experience what is called night terrors and flashbacks in their sleep where they can even grow afraid to sleep. The brain really needs a certain amount of sleep to process and refresh as well as remove chemical buildup from stress we experience during the day. After all, we take in a lot more information than we realize everyday.

Trauma affects a lot more than we realize and can leave us feeling very hypervigilant and that tends to affect a person emotionally, psychologically and physically. A person can get very confused as to "do I need to fight, flight, freeze?". So, what I have learned from my therapist with this therapy is he has me recall how my body feels first as often when I first sit across him I am all keyed up and nervous. He begins by having me watch his hand movement and focusing on how my body feels first. People who suffer from ptsd often complain about feeling pain across their chest, perhaps in their shoulders or neck, some have headaches and some experience pain down their arms too. I experience that myself so he focuses on noticing that while I follow his hand movement. Then he has me imagine things that are very soothing while watching his hands. After the first session I had with him, I did feel very tired yet I also felt like someone literally took a very HEAVY coat off of me too. I honestly had not even realized how much I had grown used to carrying the trauma, I even wondered if I really ever knew what it was like to feel what is supposed to be "normal" to be honest.

When I do these sessions where I revisit different traumas I have experienced, I often feel very tired for a few days "all normal" and what most patients notice. My therapist actually helps me take whatever events I am recalling and changing things around while I am still watching his hands. This is what we do during our REM sleep too. This helps our brain reduce the impact the trauma has on this area of the brain. We do not forget any trauma, however, what this therapy actually does is greatly reduce how a trauma "feels" like it is happening "now". They have learned by studying how trauma affects the brain and how the area that is very active when someone is reminded of a trauma is actually greatly reduced when engaging this kind of therapy.

My therapist explained to me how this is better than talk therapy because with talk therapy the person tends to get very uncomfortable talking about whatever the trauma they experienced was. Actually, after doing this therapy and leaving to do whatever between sessions, my therapist would ask me about how I was doing and he could see how much better I had gotten when it came to talking to him about whatever we worked on.

The reason I use "come to terms with" and "gradual" which you found so very helpful is because that is really how we need to deal with trauma. Any or Most injuries take TIME to HEAL gradually, this is how human beings are designed.

Trauma has an affect on so much and no one wants to "feel" how awful a trauma is. And when we experience a trauma the affects develop "after" whatever the trauma is. That is why therapy can be so challenging and often people try to not talk about something more because they don't want to get overwhelmed by all the confusing feelings they experience. We do LOSE something when we experience trauma, and it can take time for someone to mourn whatever that loss is. It takes "time" to figure out how to navigate despite whatever it is that was lost due to trauma.

One of the phrases I actually hate that people tend to respond when it comes to someone struggling after a trauma is "you gotta JUST let it go". Well, healing definitely takes time, there is no true "let it go" easy solution that so many tend to suggest doing.

You can't run from your feelings either, most people try to avoid feeling as though it's a bad thing. Sitting with your feelings is part of the healing. We do a lot of learning from our feelings. I have struggled a lot this year with being overwhelmed "emotionally" myself. Both my parents passed away and how they passed presented me with some VERY toxic upsetting things that made it all the more painful for me. It's definitely taking me TIME to come to terms with it all very "gradually" too. It's a very PERSONAL process and can be at times crippling. It's not a crime to need to sit and feel.

I do recommend that you see if this therapy I am describing is available near you. I have noticed that it's helped me. I am slowly seeing what my therapist has been explaining to me about it and he told me he has done CBT, DBT and talk therapy and has found this therapy to be the most helpful to his patients.