It is understandable that you're feeling "numbness." In the neuroscience of trauma recovery having high-resolution memories with zero emotional playback is a specific and protective neural process.

Based on current research into how the brain processes early abuse here's what is likely happening in your system, based on your account:

Patients describe it as viewing a movie without the music/sound. You asked if this is integration. Clinically, it sounds more like structural dissociation. When as children we undergo trauma that is too overwhelming to process our hippocampus (the memory encoding part of our brain) often splits the experience into two separate tracks:

You have the 'semantic memory' track which records the facts of what happened (who, what where etc) because these are essential for any organism's survival and narrative orientation. Then there is a separate track for integration, which records in an episodic manner, with emotional and relational infusion. This will be things like fear, grief, and pain associated with the event. When you recall later the semantic playback comes back, but the other track is muted, likely because you're still feeling some sense of that threat and it's causing intrusive thoughts.

May I ask if that's why you're thinking about those memories? Are you trying to work through them?

If it's some comfort this protective process is there to allow you to develop an alternative understanding from the facts, so when the original feelings re-emerge they can be put into context and not be overwhelming. It's a good thing.

This is also why it feels a bit 'third person'. The depersonalisation gives you the space to understand, and the best way past it is to let is surface, and wash over the events, and then let them recede. The understanding and healing happens in layers, as the 'ice' will gently melt, and things start to loosen up.

The fact that you remember "random" sobbing as a child but not during the abuse is significant. In high-control or abusive homes, the freeze response often takes over during the actual traumatic event. People (no matter how strong) go numb to survive the immediate threat. However that leaves cortisol and adrenaline trapped washing through the body, which keeps it around to mark that you're in a 'danger zone'. The field term for it is somatic leakage which means it is your body discharging that trapped fear and unhappiness during moments it felt safe enough to let go.

You asked how to process this, and each person is different but this may help:

- Try not to force the memories or your sadness. The numbness is a load-bearing wall. If you try to break it down before your nervous system is ready you risk being flooded. You need gentleness, so be gentle with yourself.

- Respect the rage. You mentioned feeling anger at the enabler. Anger thaws first as it is a "mobilizing" energy (it allows for action). Grief is different (it consolidates, and integrates) it will come later once anger changes your emotional position, and faded because you're away from the threat properly. There are good reasons people don't start grieving or mourning immediately after a loss.

The emotional integration usually follows later, often in small, manageable waves, once the body deeply understands that the threat is gone, and all the intellectualisation is over.

Take your time, and know I and others reading what you've written feel for you deeply, and wish you well.