There’s a biochemist in our part of the world, Dr Libby. She teaches how different nutrients function in our bodies and how just one deficient nutrient can affect multiple processes. For example, one blog mentions that zinc is “vital in the healing of wounds”, amongst other things. That got me thinking. If we get a cut, we expect that it will heal, given time. But when we’re run down or older, it can take much longer for our skin to heal.
Why does healing progress quickly for some and slowly for others? Possibly because of the nutrients in our bodies or the lack thereof. Healing can also slow from infection or chronic inflammation. Where infection sets in, time makes things worse as the wound festers. With chronic inflammation, time prolongs our pain.
No one likes to experience pain, yet we all do. Pain is not the bad guy. Pain is a warning system to drive us from danger. When our pain is in over-drive and we’re walking with an ache, let’s stop and take some time out for healing.
The pain (and the self-reflection that pain sparks), are a normal response and can have a positive outcome.
Pain in a relationship, signals that we need a danger assessment. What is going on. Is this interaction a threat to us? To the relationship? Is it just a difference of opinion? Is it a reflection of me or the other party? Armed with the answers, we can navigate the relationship, alert to what is going on. Pain may take a little time to heal before we approach the relationship again; older, and wiser, and from a different angle. Perhaps we need to address the danger rather than damage the relationship.
When we have a wound, inflammation is part of the healing process. It warms up the affected area, traps harmful substances, releases your immune cells (causing swelling), and promotes tissue repair. That’s its job. It’s supposed to do that. When we heal, it switches off.
When we experience an emotional wound, it hurts. Our thoughts and feelings zero in on the offense and if we process it well, we will trap the harmful words or actions, reject any lies aimed our way, then heal through forgiveness (of ourselves or others) and letting it go. We all experience pain. Some of us heal. Others hold on to the pain and won’t move on.
Where we allow hurt to fester and become toxic, time is only going to solidify our belief and spread toxin throughout our being. To our detriment.
I looked up ‘time heals’ quotes and what did I find?
“They say time heals all wounds. It doesn’t. It just patches a broken heart. It doesn’t get any easier with time. You just learn to live with the pain.”
Mary Ting, Paulo Coelho, Rose Kennedy
“Time heals almost everything. But when you are healed you are too old to enjoy.”
“It has been said ‘time heals all wounds’. I do not agree. The wounds remain. In time, the mind, protecting its sanity, covers them with scar tissue and the pain lessens. But it is never gone.”
Imagine someone with a prickle in their foot. They don’t get it out and the skin heals over the top. Every time they stand on that spot, the prickle causes them pain. Inside the foot, fluid builds up around the prickle to cushion it and make it easier to expel, but the skin has covered it over and it’s going to take a little digging to get that prickle out (along with the gunk around it). Sadly, Rose Kennedy never got the prickle out. When the hurt became toxic, she didn’t cleanse it and let it go, she let it fester.
These testimonies are tragic. These are people who haven’t healed. They’re expressing their reality, but they haven’t provided time with the ingredients it needs for healing. Reluctant to forgive or let go, they face their pain daily. Like low level inflammation, they learn to live with the pain. When inflammation becomes chronic, when it doesn’t switch off, then it works against the healing process and affects the whole body.
Where we experience an emotional wound and we don’t process it well, we will zero in on the offense, trap the harmful words or actions and replay them over and over. When we play them over and over, time will not heal, because we do not allow any time to pass until we relive the moment. This is what festering looks like.
Trapping our trauma and replaying it is like inflammation. It is meant to be short term and beneficial. It is meant to support the healing process. When we replay it to deal with it, we heal and the replays gradually stop.
The challenge with chronic inflammation is that it’s not always clear where it stems from. One source can be some sort of infection. Festering. If you’ve carried offense for years, you’ll be constantly on edge trying to protect your already fragile system from further pain. What you want is to be free of pain, instead you now carry it with you wherever you go.
When you try and figure out the source of your pain, it can get overwhelming. If you have constant low level emotional pain or painful memories, it might take time to figure out what caused it. It might even take support from a professional to tease out the memories that play over and over and learn a new way of processing them, so they stop lodging in your system.
Where nursing that hurt was designed to be short term to bring healing, now, by carrying offense, the smallest misunderstanding floods your thoughts and emotions and sends you reeling. This is not a healthy way to live.
Inflammation is part of the healing process. When we heal, it switches off.
Let it out, forgive, let it go.
Where we refuse to process offense, we end up with low level inflammation in our thoughts and emotions that affect our whole body – not just our physical body, our emotional wellbeing our mental wellbeing and our spirit.
Time alone won’t heal us if we’re living in a state of perpetually trapped perspective. But, given the permission to clear those harmful substances and memories away, time will allow us to process our offenses, forgive and let the pain go.
We don’t have to take forever to heal. It is possible to cultivate the habit of processing pain when it happens and healing from it. The memories might stay, but the pain is gone.
It is worth digging out that prickle! Your whole foot is priming to get rid of that thing. There will be discomfort in the process if the skin has healed over the top, but you know you will heal if you can get it out. Your body is designed to heal.
Time will heal if we let it. If we feed it with the key nutrients of forgiveness, different perspective, and rejecting the lies that we wrapped around our story in an effort to protect ourselves, we will discover that the healing process will naturally kick in. Sure, it might take time, some hurts are deep. But let’s not leave the healing process until we’re too old to enjoy the benefits. Let’s practise keeping short accounts and allowing the process of healing to unfold on a daily basis.
