Very common stages of recovery: retrospective disbelief.

It sounds like:

• “How did I live like that?”
• “How did I not see it?”
• “How did so many years pass?”

That reaction is painful—but it usually means your perspective has changed.

Your current self is looking back with clarity that your past self did not have.

Why it can feel like a “black hole”

Long-term stress, trauma, or emotionally harmful environments can create a kind of psychological narrowing.

Tunnel Vision

The brain becomes focused on:

• getting through the day,
• managing the next crisis,
• keeping the peace,
• surviving.

Life gets smaller.

People often describe it as:

• fog,
• autopilot,
• numbness,
• living in a bubble.

That’s not weakness.
That’s adaptation.

---

Time can feel distorted

Time Perception

Under chronic stress:

• days can feel long,
• years can disappear.

People often look back and say:

“Where did the time go?”

That’s because survival mode prioritizes immediate threat, not broader life reflection.

---

Don’t let clarity turn into self-attack

It’s tempting to think:

“I wasted decades.”

But that can be unfair to your past self.

A kinder truth is:
you survived decades.

Your brain and body did what they knew how to do.

Now that circumstances have changed, your brain can finally do something new:
understand.

That’s growth.

---

The black hole metaphor is apt

A black hole pulls everything inward:

• time,
• energy,
• attention,
• identity.

Recovery often feels like escaping its gravity.

At first:
you’re still looking back.

Eventually:
you start looking forward.

That’s when healing deepens.

---

A helpful reframe:

Don’t measure those years only by what they took.
Measure them also by what surviving them taught you—and by the life you have now.