Time Doesn’t Heal, Consistency Does.
When was the last time you heard yourself say, “I think it’s just going to take some time"?
We’ve all been fed this lie that time will heal, but the truth is, the passage of time doesn’t heal our trauma, but consistency will.
How Traumatic Memories Work
In fact, when we experience trauma, years can pass by but one triggering event will make us experience the trigger as intensely as the initial traumatic event. Crazy, right? The reason for this is that our brains store unprocessed traumatic memories without context or a time stamp. The hippocampus, the part of the brain that normally would put a time stamp on a memory, is impaired during that moment of surivival. Instead, the raw, unprocessed fragments of the traumatic memory are stored in the amygdala (the emotion and threat-detection center of the brain that is ready to respond if any threat is sensed).
So what are we left with? A traumatic memory that can be brought back to life at any moment–even years later–as if it were happening all over again in the present moment.
So no, time will not make the trauma go away or heal. What you do during that passage of time is what makes the difference.
Creating a New Normal for Our Nervous Systems
In order to survive our trauma, our nervous systems, as brilliant as they are, adapted by learning certain skills that would help us survive. These “survival skills,” or if you have done IFS/Parts Work you may refer to them as your “parts,” are learned skills that helped us survive in a threatening environment. They became so practiced that they became our autopilot even after we no longer were in a threatening environment.
Your people-pleasing, perfectionism. inner critic, hiding behaviors…they are all practiced skills that you learned in order to survive (thank you survival skills for getting us through!)
But now they don’t work–in fact, they are working against you. You want them to stop, so what do you do? Rely on your inner critic (another survival skill) to get your perfectionist in line? No!
We have to create a safe enough space for ourselves to practice the unfamiliar new pattern untiil it becomes our new autopilot. Bullying ourselves into healing will only make us feel more unsafe and as a result, fire up those survival skills again.
Let’s talk about the 300/3000 rule.
It takes around 300 repetitions to learn a basic skill. It takes 3000 quality repetitions for that skill to become effortless and subconscious.
3000 repetitions. That’s the bare minimum of what it takes.
So over the last couple of decades of your life alone, think about how many times you practiced people-pleasing, shaming yourself, or told yourself the same old defeating thing over and over and over? How many times in the last couple of decades did you practice abandoning yourself?
It’s been practiced because it was your only option for surviving the trauma. It had to become muscle memory for you to survive. That’s why your trauma runs your life on autopilot.
Your survival skills have been practiced because it was your only option for surviving the trauma. Now that you are safe, it will take a minimum of 3000 repetitions to make self-compassion and self-trust muscle memory.
I say this not to say “this is hard, give up now, you’ll never get there.” I am here telling you all this today because I have put in my reps and I can tell you, it is worth it. Get there. Keep showing up until your relationship with yourself is completely unrecognizable to the person you are in this moment.
Don’t quit before you even begin. The first 300 times you practice showing up for yourself will feel forced, awkward, and maybe even wrong. But keep showing up.
Master the skill of showing up for yourself.
Because at the end of the day, time doesn’t heal. Consistency does.
Practicing the Art of Responding to Ourselves (With Compassion)
Each moment you are responsive to yourself, you are teaching your nervous system a new normal: safety.
Let your insight move you to embody a deeper, more compassionate relationship with yourself, where you create the safety for your nervous system to learn that life can be more than survival.
You can write a whole dissertation on how your trauma formed you but if you don’t use it to have a new relationship with yourself, you won’t get far. (I share more on this here.)
This is the shift: You turn from seeing yourself and your triggers as problems and begin listening listening to what arises as you would a wise guide.
We…
Turn our focus from stopping our symptoms to listening to them
From shaming ourselves to responding to ourselves
From stuffing our emotions to giving them space to feel
From distracting ourselves to noticing what’s arising within us
From judgement to curiosity
From living on autopilot to acting intentionally from what we’ve learned we needed.
If you need it broken down more simply, I’ve got two words for you to hold onto: Compassion & Responsiveness. Become masters in these.
So let’s give it a try: Next time you are noticing your trauma spill out, call to mind the most compassionate person you know. This can be someone you know personally or it can be a character in a book, an author, a quote you came across at one point. Let their voice wash over you and borrow their compassion for a moment. Allow yourself to absorb that compassion into every fiber of your being.
When the critical voices in your head begin to grow silent, try asking yourself, “What is this trying to tell me?” What can it tell you about what you fear or what you need? Give that part of you some space to share with you what it has been longing for you to hear.
