The Body Remembers What the Mind Can’t Bear
For so many of us who grew up with incest, “fear” wasn’t an occasional visitor — it was a houseguest that never left.
We learned to live with it tucked behind our ribs, whispering, “Stay quiet. Stay safe. Don’t be seen.”
So when therapists talk about “exposure therapy,” it can sound almost cruel — as if they’re suggesting we willingly walk back into the fire we barely survived.
But Dr. Edna Foa’s work invites us to consider something radical: what if healing isn’t about avoiding the memory, but about teaching the body that the danger has passed?
This isn’t about reliving the trauma.
It’s about reclaiming the self that went missing when it happened.
1. Who Is Dr. Edna Foa — and Why Her Work Matters to Survivors
Dr. Edna Foa, a clinical psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania, has spent decades studying anxiety disorders — obsessive-compulsive disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and phobias.
Her research changed the field of trauma treatment forever, not because she discovered something “new,” but because she had the audacity to look closer at what survivors already knew instinctively:
that avoidance — the silence, the emotional numbing, the constant scanning for threat — is both a survival mechanism and a prison.
Her development of Prolonged Exposure (PE) therapy became a cornerstone of modern trauma treatment.
It was the first structured, evidence-based method to say, “You can walk back through the memory — safely — and emerge stronger.”
For many incest survivors, that idea sounds almost impossible.
We’ve spent a lifetime not remembering.
We’ve built entire identities around not being “that child.”
But the brilliance of Foa’s work lies in how it aligns with what the healing body naturally wants: to finish what was frozen, to release what was never expressed, to turn the body’s scream into the soul’s song.
2. The Science of Avoidance — and Why It Feels So Familiar
Foa discovered something profound:
every time we avoid a trigger — a smell, a room, a person, a word — our brain learns that avoidance equals safety.
But here’s the cruel twist: that safety is an illusion. The world grows smaller, and our body becomes the cage.
For incest survivors, avoidance is not just mental; it’s embodied.
We avoid our own bodies — the way our skin feels, the way arousal confuses us, the way love terrifies us.
We avoid intimacy, conflict, mirrors, and sometimes even sleep, because night still belongs to him.
Dr. Foa’s work teaches that to heal, we must retrain the nervous system to understand that the past is no longer happening.
That means — slowly, gently, and with immense compassion — allowing ourselves to feel what we once had to suppress to survive.
“The goal of exposure,” Foa writes, “is not to retraumatize, but to reeducate the mind and body that the danger is gone.”
In Holey House language: it’s teaching your nervous system that the war is over — and you made it out alive.
3. Prolonged Exposure Therapy: The Art of Returning to What Hurts
Prolonged Exposure therapy is structured yet sacred in its own way.
It asks survivors to revisit the traumatic memory in a controlled, safe space — with support, repetition, and emotional grounding — until the memory no longer holds the same power.
That process can sound clinical on paper, but in practice it’s deeply human.
For survivors of incest, PE can mean finally telling the story that’s been trapped in the body for decades.
It can mean saying, “It wasn’t my fault,” out loud — and believing it for the first time.
It can mean sitting in the same type of room, hearing a similar sound, and realizing that your adult body now has choices.
You can walk out. You can breathe. You can say no.
Every “exposure” becomes an act of reclamation.
Every heartbeat in the present becomes proof that you are not the same powerless child anymore.
4. Healing Is Not Logical — It’s Biological
Foa’s research aligns with what neuroscience has confirmed:
trauma is not a memory problem — it’s a body problem.
Our amygdala (the fear center) fires long before our logic kicks in.
Our prefrontal cortex — the part of the brain that says, “You’re safe now” — goes offline when the body senses threat.
That’s why telling a survivor to “just get over it” is like asking someone with a broken leg to sprint.
PE therapy, when done safely and collaboratively, helps rewire that system.
It’s not about thinking differently — it’s about teaching your brain to feel differently when it remembers.
This is what makes Foa’s work revolutionary for incest survivors: it acknowledges that healing must happen through the body as much as through the mind.
5. The Controversy: When Exposure Hurts Instead of Heals
Let’s be honest — exposure therapy can go terribly wrong in unskilled hands.
Many survivors have been retraumatized by therapists who pushed too hard, too soon, without attunement or consent.
The problem isn’t Foa’s science; it’s the system that forgets the humanity behind it.
In incest recovery, the therapeutic relationship itself must be the first exposure: the experience of being safe in the presence of another human being.
If that foundation isn’t there, no protocol will save the client from emotional collapse.
That’s why trauma-informed therapists emphasize pacing, choice, and co-regulation — not rigid adherence to a manual.
Healing from incest requires what I call “Sacred Exposure” — an embodied return to memory that honors the survivor’s pace, their boundaries, and their agency.
We do not rush sacred work.
6. What Foa’s Anger Management Protocol Teaches About Suppressed Rage
Foa also created a 10-session Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) protocol for anger management.
It wasn’t designed specifically for incest survivors — but oh, how relevant it is.
Many of us were taught that anger was dangerous, especially toward those who hurt us.
We swallowed our rage, turned it inward, and called it depression.
Foa’s structured CBT approach invites us to name our triggers, challenge our inherited beliefs about anger, and learn to express emotion without fear of annihilation.
Her model gives language to what survivors often feel:
“I’m not angry because I’m broken. I’m angry because something sacred was broken in me.”
In healing, that anger becomes fuel — not for destruction, but for boundaries, truth-telling, and rebirth.
7. Exposure in Everyday Life: The Survivor’s Practice
Exposure therapy doesn’t just happen in therapy rooms.
For many incest survivors, it happens every time we let someone see us — really see us.
Every time we make eye contact, every time we allow love, every time we trust touch without dissociating — that’s exposure.
When we choose to tell our story publicly, we expose the shame that once held us captive.
When we name our abuser, we expose a culture that protects perpetrators more than children.
Healing, in this sense, is a rebellion against silence.
It’s exposure therapy for the soul.
8. A Note on Spiritual Exposure
Dr. Foa’s work focuses on the mind, but survivors know — healing is spiritual too.
When we begin to feel again, we are also re-exposing ourselves to faith, to hope, to the possibility that love could be safe.
Every spiritual tradition has some form of exposure practice: confession, purification, surrender.
For survivors, our ritual of exposure is truth-telling.
We name what happened not to live in the past, but to release the grip it still has on our nervous system.
9. Reflection Prompts for Survivors
If you are reading this as someone reclaiming your story after incest, take these prompts as gentle invitations:
When was the first time I realized avoidance was keeping me safe — and small?
What part of my body still reacts as if the abuse is happening right now?
How can I remind that part of me that it’s safe to feel again?
Where do I need to practice “sacred exposure” — telling a truth, setting a boundary, or feeling an emotion I’ve avoided?
What would it look like to reintroduce my body to peace?
These reflections aren’t meant to be completed — they are meant to be lived, one breath at a time.
10. Recognitions, Awards, and the Legacy of Compassionate Science
Dr. Foa has received international awards and recognition for her work — the Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Psychological Association, and countless others.
But her real legacy isn’t in medals or manuals.
It’s in the moments when a survivor realizes, I’m not broken. I’m healing.
Her methods gave science permission to meet the sacred — the measurable alongside the mystical — and to prove what survivors have always known: the body can learn safety again.
11. When Science Meets Survivorhood
Foa’s methods work best when adapted through a trauma-informed, survivor-centered lens — the kind we cultivate here at Holey House.
Because while exposure can rewire the brain, it’s relationship that rewires the soul.
A survivor’s nervous system doesn’t heal in isolation.
It heals in safety, in presence, in being seen.
It heals in the moments when someone stays — when someone listens and doesn’t look away.
That, too, is exposure therapy.
12. The New Frontier: From Avoidance to Aliveness
What if we redefined exposure as aliveness?
Every time we choose presence over numbness, expression over silence, love over fear — we are exposing ourselves to life again.
Dr. Foa gave us the map.
But we, the survivors, are the ones walking each sacred step back toward ourselves.
And maybe that’s the truest exposure of all — letting ourselves be seen as we are: trembling, tender, and still choosing to rise.
Closing: A Call to Return
Dear survivor,
you are not the fear you feel.
You are the witness, the one who made it through, the one who can now look at what once broke you and say, “I’m still here.”
Dr. Foa’s science gave language to what we live every day — the practice of returning to the scene of our pain to reclaim what was stolen: safety, trust, worth, and power.
At Holey House, we hold that sacred return.
We walk with you as you expose the lies of shame and re-inhabit your wholeness.
Your healing is not a performance. It is a resurrection.
Come home.
Visit HoleyHouse.com
— where trauma becomes truth, and truth becomes freedom.