The Thinning of the Veil: What Trauma and Grief Opens in Us
When trauma shakes your world, the floor becomes transparent. This is not post-traumatic growth. It is something prior — a thinning of the veil between what we know and what we have been too defended to see.
By Janeth Nuñez del Prado, LCSW | Desert Bloom Psychology & Consulting.
The thinning of the veil —
between us and our unconscious.
Between us and the spirit world.
WHERE THIS BEGAN
When your whole world shakes — when your system of meaning is fundamentally challenged — you begin to reexamine the very floor you ever stood on.
It becomes transparent. And you can see everything under it.
I know this from my own life. When I experienced a significant pregnancy loss, everything changed. What mattered and what didn't. The noise of ordinary life dropped away — the scheduling, the planning, the careful management of how I appeared and what I felt. And what remained in the quiet was not confusion.
It was signal.
Something unmistakable moved through me — not as instruction, not as clarity in the way we usually mean it. Something quieter than that. Something that had been waiting beneath the noise for a long time.
How precious life is.
That was the signal. Simple. Complete. Irreversible.
THIS IS NOT POST-TRAUMATIC GROWTH
There is a well-established framework in psychology called post-traumatic growth. It describes how, after significant suffering, people can develop new strengths, discover new meaning, and expand their capacity for life. It is real and important and worth naming.
But what I am describing here is something different. Something prior.
Post-traumatic growth happens after the wound begins to heal. The thinning of the veil happens while the wound is still open. Before integration. Before narrative. Before the psyche has had time to rebuild its scaffolding.
Post-traumatic growth says: I can handle more.
The thinning of the veil says: I can see more.
It doesn't feel like the same person becoming stronger. It feels like perceiving from a different layer of reality entirely.
What neuroscience might describe as shifts in the default mode network — the brain's self-story system — I have come to think of as the veil thinning. When that self-story becomes permeable enough, deeper truths, memories, and meanings can come through. Not because they are new. Because the usual filters have softened.
This is not about believing in anything supernatural. It is about what becomes perceptible when the usual filters soften.
WHAT BECOMES VISIBLE
When the system can no longer sustain the effort of holding everything together, something gives. The structures that usually organize reality — certainty, distraction, narrative, control — loosen their grip. And what was always present becomes visible.
I see this in my clinical work. When clients experience loss or profound disruption — the kind that shakes their entire system of meaning — the floor of their reality becomes transparent too. And what comes through is different for each person, but recognizable across all of them.
Some people start to feel closer to God. Not through doctrine or practice, but through a sudden, felt sense of proximity to something larger. As though the distance has shortened.
Others begin to dream differently. Not the ordinary dreams of the overstimulated mind, but vivid, organized dreams that feel purposeful. Dreams of moving. Dreams of becoming younger parts of themselves. Dreams of flying — no longer constrained by what was. The unconscious, suddenly less defended against, begins to do its reorganizing work while the body sleeps.
The default mode network gives us a map. But maps are not the territory. And the territory, for me, began in my dreams.
In one, I was moving through a place that was both familiar and disorienting — my childhood home, but not as it had been. The space no longer held the same rules. Rooms opened into one another in ways that didn't quite make sense. At one point, I found myself inside a vehicle that could expand and contract — an ordinary car that could suddenly make room for more, shifting its shape depending on what was needed. I didn't fully understand how to control it. The mechanics were unfamiliar. But I was moving through the space anyway, learning as I went.
Something was moving — not through the rooms, but through me. The walls were still there. The car was still there. But none of it held the same way. Everything I had relied on to stay in place had simply… loosened.
I remember a quiet awareness in the dream: that I was learning how to navigate something new, without yet fully understanding the rules.
And that sense has stayed with me.
What I noticed in myself, I began to recognize in the people I work with.
Others notice that meaning arrives uninvited. A piece of music. A phrase on a bumper sticker. An encounter that feels, unmistakably, like something more than coincidence.
My Bolivian grandmother spoke of magical beings that moved quietly alongside us — guiding us, teaching us, protecting us. She did not call this superstition. She called it how things are. I understand now what she knew then: these were not fantasies. They were what becomes visible when the veil thins. What was always there — finally audible, because the machinery of ordinary life had gone quiet enough to hear it.
WHAT YOU REALIZE
Things can never return to how they were.
Nor should they.
This is one of the hardest truths of the thinning. The person who stood on the opaque floor — who moved through life without seeing what was underneath — cannot fully return. Something has been seen. Something has been heard. And once received, it cannot be unreceived.
This is not loss, though it can feel like it. The life that existed before the shaking had a kind of ease that came from not knowing. From the floor feeling solid. From the ordinary noise filling all available space.
What comes after is harder and larger. Harder because the transparency requires something of you — requires you to live in a way that honors what you now know. Larger because you are no longer living only on the surface of things.
You are not the same person. You are not meant to be.
WHAT YOU NEED WHEN THE VEIL THINS
The thinning of the veil is not a state you maintain. It’s a relationship you learn to hold.
And it asks something specific of you — and of anyone who is accompanying someone through it.
Not answers. Not interpretation. Not the rush to organize what is arising into something manageable and explainable. When the veil thins, premature meaning-making is one of the most common ways the opening closes again. The psyche, sensing that its experience is being collapsed into a framework before it is ready, retreats.
What is needed instead is space. Presence. The right questions, held lightly. Time for seeds to grow without being dug up to check their progress.
In my clinical work, I have come to think of this as the gardener principle: you are not the gardener. They are the gardener. Your role is to tend the conditions — to protect the soil, to keep the weeds back, to make sure there is enough light. But what grows, and when, and in what form — that belongs entirely to them.
This is also why I have come to think of clinical work during the thinning as less about hierarchy and more about shared field. Less about positioning above and more about sitting beside.
ON WHAT DESTABILIZES IT - AND WHAT HOLDS YOU
When the veil thins, the nervous system is wide open. Porous. What you take in matters more than usual — because more of it gets through.
This is the time to be mindful of what you consume. Not as a rule, but as a kindness to yourself. The news, the noise of social media, alcohol, substances — when the system is this open, these things land differently. They can overwhelm what is trying to emerge, or numb the signal that is trying to get through.
It is worth naming the difference between opening and fragmentation. When the veil thins in a generative way, there is usually a thread — however thin — of the observing self still present. Something that can witness what is arising without being completely consumed by it. Fragmentation looks different: the floor doesn't become transparent so much as it gives way entirely. There is no witness, only flood. This is where clinical support becomes not just helpful but necessary — when the person can no longer find the thread back to themselves, when the opening has become overwhelm, when what was meant to illuminate has become destabilizing. The presence of ordinary anchors is often what keeps the thinning generative rather than disorganizing. They are not just comfort. They are the thread.
An ordinary anchor is a small, repeatable thing that keeps you tethered while the veil is thin. A walk at the same time each day. A meal with someone you love. The particular quality of morning light in a familiar room. For some people, it is picking up an instrument they haven't played in a long time — and finding that their hands remember something their mind had forgotten.
These anchors do not close the veil. They give the experience somewhere to land. Without them, the thinning can become disorganizing — a flood without a riverbank. With them, it becomes something the self can stay in contact with over time, integrating slowly, poco a poco, without being swept away.
The goal is not to get back to normal. Normal is what the floor felt like when it was opaque.
The goal is to learn to remain here — grounded, present — while still staying in contact with what is emerging.
A GENTLE INVITATION
If you are in a period of loss or profound disruption — if the floor has become transparent and you are not sure what you are seeing underneath it — you do not have to rush.
What is coming through has been waiting. It will wait a little longer while you find your footing.
Notice what you are taking in. Protect the soil. Find your anchors.
And when you are ready to look up — what you need to see will still be there.
If you need someone to sit beside you while the veil is thin — not to explain it away, but to help you stay with what is arising — reach out to schedule a private consultation.
This piece is intended for informational purposes and is not a substitute for individualized mental health care.
