This Is What Integration Looks Like

It’s 3am and I’m tidying my house. Not because I planned to. Not because I’m trying to be productive. But because something is moving in me—and this is how it wants to move.

This is what integration looks like.

It’s not always neat. It doesn’t arrive wrapped in clarity or closure. Sometimes it wakes you in the middle of the night with a strange mix of restlessness and revelation. You find yourself walking slowly through your house, cup of tea in hand, folding socks while digesting the fact that—maybe for the first time—you were truly met in a therapeutic space.

Not interpreted.
Not analyzed.
Not managed.

Met.

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I’m realizing now just how healing it was when my therapist said,

“I feel thrown off by our work too.”

That simple honesty cracked something open. And in the space that followed, we didn’t fix the disconnection—we sat in it. Together. And slowly, repair began. Not theoretical repair. Felt repair.

And maybe that’s what I’ve been longing for all along.

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Looking back, I can see that earlier in my therapy journey, I was met with structure. I was given tools, frameworks, and language to understand my pain. And that helped—it offered stability and clarity when I was barely holding myself together.

But this new phase?
It’s helping me feel.

And that shift—from structure to softness—has stirred up more than I expected.

It’s made me reflect on why I’ve often felt disconnected from people. Not because I’m incapable of connection, but because I hadn’t yet learned how to attune to myself. I could speak my truth. I could analyze it. But I couldn’t feel it—not really.

And now, for the first time, I can.

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I’ve also been reflecting on why my tutors may not have seen my potential. Maybe I leaned too heavily on theory. Maybe I hadn’t yet begun the emotional stage of integration. Maybe I made people uncomfortable—not because I was unkind, but because I was showing up with more insight than they expected, and that can feel threatening.

I don’t say that with arrogance—I say it with humility. Because now I see that the next layer of my growth isn’t about sharpening my mind. It’s about softening into my experience.

And that kind of growth doesn’t happen in a classroom. It happens right here—at 3am, in a quiet kitchen, letting the echoes of a therapy session settle into my bones.

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So no, this year might not come with a certificate.
But it may offer something far more important.

A relationship with myself I’ve never had before.

And that, to me, is the heart of integration.

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