Does Time heals or it heals only there where is no pain?

in #psychology7 years ago

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"Time heals all wounds. A good thought, but it is not true" is the conclusion that makes at the end of her earthly journey, the German actress Marlene Dietrich in his autobiography, telling about the heavy human losses she experiences during her difficult life. About a century earlier, the american poet Emily Dickinson wrote:

They say that 'time assuages,'--
Time never did assuage;
An actual suffering strengthens,
As sinews do, with age.

Time is a test of trouble,
But not a remedy.
If such it prove, it prove too
There was no malady.

What does "time heals all wounds" mean? Can the passing minutes, hours, days or years have a curative effect after the loss of a meaningful, close, beloved man ?! The only thing that can do the passing time is to get us accustomed to the pain. But this is far from healing ... As Dostoevsky said: " Man gets used to everything. And that's the worst!"
Each of us, at some point in his life, faces the inevitability of parting with someone. There is no way, it is an essential part of human relationships. The greatest tragedy in our short-term existence is the death of a loved and loved creature. Secondly, according to psychologists, is the divorce / separation.
The time we burden with the task of curing our wounds can not do that. This can only do the way we experience it and the inevitable psychological processes that we have to go through while it is running. These processes are identical for almost all people and are basically five:

Denial

Denial is the reaction that occurs immediately after the initial shock. "This can not happen to me!" After a sudden death of a close, the human brain naturally falls into shock to protect itself from the force of the emotional blow. A very normal reaction is, in terrible news, that one begins to convinced that it has become a mistake that someone has not understood something right or that it has happened to someone else. After a severe and prolonged illness, although the relatives are aware of the upcoming end, they are again shocked, as no one is ever prepared for death. The abuse here has existed throughout the illness of the near, as well as the undying hope that the fatal outcome can and will be avoided. It is a common phenomenon, false hopes of being fed up with illusions that the diagnosis is wrong, that a miraculous medicine or a new and more competent doctor will appear; try all kinds of charlatan niggas that are marketed by people who abuse our pain, and so on.
If we do not look at cases of fatal outcome, but look at the loss of a relative due to breakdown of relationships such as separation from an intimate partner or the closure of precious friendship, we will have to note that the negation appears long before the physical separation between people. These are not cases in which we lose a person suddenly, suddenly.
This is a long, lengthy process during which one or both sides are closing their eyes on what is happening, and they try to ignore the signals of the coming decay through a variety of self-deception, though they are deeply aware of the inevitable end. At such times, it is not even allowed to steal thought into consciousness. Which, of course, destroys every opportunity, however, to do something to prevent it.
Dissociation is a disorder that is extremely striking for psyche. Dissociation is a mental process that interrupts the connections between thoughts, memories, feelings, actions or the sense of identity of the personality. Dissociation is a normal response to trauma and allows the mind to distance itself from experiences that are too much for the psyche at that time.
A person distances himself, separates himself from the problem because he does not want to face him because he feels he has not enough strength to deal with. At first, this is useful to protect the psyche, but it continues for a longer time, there is a danger of completely separating ourselves from our own feelings, thoughts and experiences. It comes to a state in which we look absurd on the side as if they belonged to someone else.
But even if we realize the reality of what has happened and what is happening, we have to face another suffering. One of the most terrible moments after the loss of a close being is that at first, while getting accustomed to the thought of its lack, every morning again and again has to experience the initial shock of the loss. In a sleeping state, one forgets what happened in his awake state. After each awakening, he has to remind himself again and again that things are not, and will never be the same again. Needless to say, the role of alcohol or various narcotic and pharmacological means of blurring consciousness at this time. They are again ways of escape from reality and denial.

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Image source

Anger

The next stage through which everyone, in one way or another, passes is the anger. Once you realize what happened to you, it is quite natural to be angry. Of course, according to temperament, character and degree of intelligence, anger is experienced differently by different people, but it always exists. We are angry with the god, the fate, the people (and their insensitivity, as it seems to us at such times), the doctors, the beloved ones who left us, ourselves, the whole world ...
"Why did he / she, not someone else!", "What did I deserve?" And many more such thoughts pass through our heads when we face the inevitable. This anger comes from the overwhelming sense of the immense injustice that has come upon us. To fight at such a moment with such an intense feeling is difficult for a person. All the more, the more negative negative thoughts come to him, the more guilty he feels, the more he destroys him. In the case of the death of a close, anger can cause the experiments of the others to comfort us, as they almost always seem ridiculous in many cases are actually) and often artificial, because no one can ever know how we feel.
In the case of any loss of a close person, the anger also stems from our tendency to return the tape back and again to remind us of the events that led to the fatal end, to wonder if there was anything we could do to get it prevent us, or ask how I may have been so blind all the time? The variants are countless, but the best we can do at this moment is to let this anger simply exist to experience it and let it pass by giving everything by itself, not to hurt words in the meantime or action people around us or ourselves. The Soothing Thinking "What so has happened to so many people before me ..." can also be very dangerous, as it overrides the person's right to experience the feelings and thoughts that happen to him at this time. An irrevocable human right and obligation is to experience our own emotions, feelings and thoughts, since they belong only to us and to no one else.

Haggle

Because of the terrible frustration, after the negation, often in parallel with the anger, many people are going through a phase called "bargaining", in which they try every possible means to change the situation. They try to "bargain" with God, with fate or with supernatural powers (directly or unconsciously). They usually promise to be good or do some great work, only the appropriate force to remove the punishment imposed, in this case the loss. The mournful people sometimes go on worship, become fanatical, engage in charitable events, begin a healthy lifestyle, write aposthetic letters to their leaving partner, asking them to come back and generally think or do all kinds of bullshit, only and only to overturn what has happened. It is good to restrict bargaining to thought only and not to proceed with concrete actions, since they never come from the soul of man, but only from his pain. Such actions are just the last "straw" for which the grieving people get caught up to avoid immersing in the severe pain that accompanies every major loss. After all, when you lose someone, no candle and no prayer, they will not change the fact that the only thing left to you is a void in your life, the place where the one you loved is standing.

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The Shadow of Sorrow

Sorrow

All of the stages listed so far pass either one after another or in most cases in parallel, and the fact that you have gone through one of them does not mean you will not go back to it again and have to experience it again many times. Very often a "vicious circle" occurs, in which one hour per day you are in the stage of bargaining, in another you are in the captivity of anger, in another you are again returned to denial, then you are again angry, and so on. The bad thing is that this whole spin can last for years. Many people fail to get out of this circle and spin like a washing machine with emotions that can be fatal to the psyche, even leading to suicidal thoughts and actions. But they are all the preparatory stages for the heaviest of all immersion in true sorrow. Many of us do not even allow themselves to enter this stage, which is actually the bottom we must get to get pushed back and float. This is the moment when you put the pain, the pure sorrow as it is, to enter your full strength into every fiber of your being, in every corner of your mind and heart. This process is strictly individual, sorrow has no sex, neither race nor social affiliation. Extreme courage and willingness to let her possess you is required, as it is something that is far beyond the words and can not be described, nor can any advice be given on how to live and live. Instructions for this do not exist.

Acceptance

Grief is our gateway to liberation. Once we allow ourselves to experience it, we will come to accept it, and to the suggestion that from now on we will continue to live with the loss that has caused it. Many people deliberately refuse to go to this point, as it would seem to diminish their suffering, destroy the value of the loss suffered, even the importance of the person who has gone and prefer to remain in the previous stages. Which can only lead to another loss loss of self. Acceptance has an extremely important element of identification. An example can be given with broken marriage if your family breaks apart, from a married woman / married man, you become a divorced one. That is, your role is changing. If so far one of the most important roles in your life has been that of your husband/wife and you have identified yourself with it, you will no longer be able to. You will need to identify yourself with your new role, which is extremely difficult for the psyche.
Mary Shelley says, "Nothing is as painful for the human mind as the big and sudden change." She certainly did not mean a change in the workplace. The big and sudden change happens when we lose a loved one. If a woman who has identified herself as a mother loses her child, not only the pain of loss will be ruinous for her, but also the inability to identify herself as a "non-mother". When we lose our parents, a man with a family, we have to identify ourselves as a mother without a father or a father without a father. And learn to live with it. This is the acceptance of identifying with the new role, with the realization that our lives and ourselves are no longer what we were before the loss. And that the pain of it will remain an accompanying element of our lives. And this is what measures the true power of a person.

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I strongly believe it all comes down to our own psyche and how we let things to occur inside our own mind. Regret, denial, anger, grief - and a lot of other stages that varies from person to person, these are those little or extended phases in our lives that we allow to exist within ourselves. I am always of the view that all of us are gifted with immense self-control, only if we dare to exercise it when it's really required. Situations and circumstances will be daunting one way or another - losing a loved one, separation, divorce, all these events will occur in our lives sooner or later. This means that at some point, we need to be mentally prepared for all the 'falling apart' moments that we are yet to be part of.

Whatever situation we're in, we should know that it's never going to be smiles and joys forever! The beautiful moments will be followed by the toughest moments of our lives. The joys will be followed by expected or unexpected sorrows. The ones who claim to be our 'forever and ever' will leave us when shit hits the fan. As humans, all we can do to protect our own souls is to know that whatever there is 'today' might not be there 'tomorrow'. Apart from a sudden death, it can be anything in the world! - It could be distance with your loved ones, it could be a divorce, it could be the phase where things were falling apart - anything that you didn't foresee when you were too occupied smiling, the little worrying sounds that you didn't hear when the noise of that laughter was too loud for your ears, those signs that were always there but you chose to ignore them and not let it affect you because you were too deeply connected with another person - it could be anything that was there. Yes, it was there one way or another. Just didn't pay attention, did we?

And when the day finally comes, we all wanna do so much to go back and change things - it's too late by then. Then, yes, we enter different phases of emotions. However, even then, what we can certainly do is to cherish the better times we had, the things that we did right all the while, instead of regretting the things that went wrong. That is something that can surely be done. Yes, there will be nights where you'd be banging your head in the wall, fighting with God and questioning your fate - but hey, ever thought about is that the same thing he/she is doing, too? Specially in cases where you were let go and soon you get to know there's another person already, well, before going through any of the aforementioned phase, just take a moment and think about the fact that you were 'dispensable' at the end of the day. If that was doable for your loved one today, then it was always on the cards! You need to thank your God (or whatever you believe in) that this happened to you sooner rather than later!

And in the cases where there is a sudden death, well, then yes time is the only factor that can actually make a difference. Even then, all we can do is to reminisce the beautiful times that were spent with someone, all the little things that were accomplished together, the moments of imperfections, the weird stuff we did together - anything that brings a smile on our face when we recall before the first tear streams down.

Time does heal, yes, but there will be a long war within ourselves, with our own soul - and only the ones strong enough to embrace the reality with arms wide open will be able to win this war eventually and be able to find beauty in their lives once again.

Nice comment! Thank you. I think we're build just very stupid, and the fate laughs - sometimes it gives us hope to get it, but we never do it, and we are disappointed for that. Sometimes it gives us a chance to reach that hope, but when we do it, we are disappointed with the expectations we have and the result that comes. I don't think that one should be blamed for not being able to see what he has and strives for, what he does't have. That's how we are build. Everything is vanity, our choice is whether to laugh at it or to mourn. :)

"The only thing that passing time does is to get us accustomed to the pain". And acceptance helps you to live with the pain as a companion.

I agree. Time heals nothing. Only Death heals.
You explained it accurately , @godflesh

Hehe, yes, without illusions you accepted the pain more as a companion. Some people make their life great achievements with this pain if they know how to use it.

Very true @godflesh . I turned it into art :) . No other option :)

I don't think time heals all wounds. I believe time is just a measurement given to the period from when an event starts and when it ends. I believe we have to make conscious efforts towards the healing of wounds. I believe it requires conscious effort and not passive effort like waiting for time.

Sometimes the habit is a great force. :)

Yah thats tru though, we have to ta that into consideration

It does heal so but takes its due time and requires the due patience to let it heal then.

Reporter: Mr. Lennon, do you feel any antagonism toward the people who have attempted to have you deported?
John Lennon: Absolutely not. I believe time wounds all heels.

Nice quote! :D

I had a feeling you would appreciate it. At first my dad had told me that John was Dyslexic... and that he meant to say Time Heals All Wounds... but after researching the phrase... I think he may have punned off his Dyslexia and used it to snub the Nixon admin along with Elvis. The irony is that the term Time Wounds All Heels... more than likely refers to “heel” being a contemptible person... and that "What Comes Around, Goes Around!" Thanks for the great post and for sharing your thoughts! =)

I think that pain will always be there. It is just that we got used to it and tend to end up ignoring it.

@gailbe, yes, and my opinion is that pain is in the essence of life, and happiness is ephemeral and is just a short escape from this pain.

I dont know why people even look at pain as something that needs to be healed and denied. I won't say yaaaay I love sadness and suffering lets roll in it....but when I do feel it I embrace it. It is natural ... I do not deny it. Could say more on this topic but since steemit is a bit buggy and im scared I'll write an essay and this wont get posted will just say...there is no + without the -. Maybe cuz I have had my share of passing people, maybe cuz i worked in healthcare... maybe I'm just wired differently. Death is also natural to me.

@atopy, I understand you completely and I am afraid to write long comments, hehe. Without pain we will never grow up as personality. To me pain makes people not so egoistic and makes them more compassionate. My opinion is that happiness separates you from others and you start to thinks for your own good . Schopenhauer's philosophy is a wonderful healing tool that helps you to take the pain in life without illusions.

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