Give Yourself Time to Heal

Why it’s important not to rush the process

It can take months or even years to heal from a physical injury. When you sprain an ankle or break a wrist, you’re not back to normal in a day or two. Likewise, when harm is done, or an injury is suffered inside of a relationship, that too takes time to heal. How long it takes is unique to the person and the particular circumstances. When we impose our own timelines based on how long we think healing should take, it can cause us to rush the process. 

People have different reasons for wanting to rush through healing.

• They may try to force reconnection because they want to ignore that a disconnection happened. 

• They may not be ready to accept responsibility for their role in what happened. 

• They may not want to do the work necessary to deal with what happened. They may just want to get back to normal as quickly as possible. 

• They may be concerned about how being in conflict will look to others. It can be challenging to share a shift in a relationship with the people around you. 

• They want to avoid conflict. 

I went to see The Color Purple in the theater, a few months ago. When you look at the storyline between Celie and Mr.___, their relationship took many years to repair. He didn’t treat her terribly for years and then she took a week away from him and all was forgiven. Mr.___ had to take strategic actions and show remorse, and that took time. Only after all of that were they able to build a friendship. 

Time allows for radical repair. In that middle space between the injury and the repair, important things happen. We may gain new insights about the situation. We may realize the part we played, a boundary that is needed, or that there is a conversation that has been put off for far too long. When we give ourselves time, we can learn things that can aid in our healing and, sometimes, the restoration of the relationship. 

The amount of time healing takes is personal. It may sound cliche to say “Trust your feelings,” but that’s really what we have to do. Only we can know when we’re ready to re-enter a situation. We have to determine whether we think the situation is different, or whether we can show up differently inside of it — we have to give ourselves the space to figure that out. 

Journal Prompt

What steps do you take to repair a relationship that’s suffered an injury?

A Few Things That Caught My Attention This Week

• Maybe Your Teen Doesn’t Need a Mental Health Day, by Anya Kamenetz, in The Cut.

• Should Fathers be Screened for Postpartum Depression, by Emily Stone, in Science Daily. 

• Do Nothing: How to Break Away From Overworking, Overdoing, and Underliving, by Celeste Headlee. This book has been helping me to work with more ease and intentional flow. You can find it on Amazon and Bookshop.