The Missed Opportunity in "Time Heals All Wounds"

Many of the clients we support sometimes conclude that time will take care of it—whatever the "it" is. This isn’t true. Time is simply a phenomenon that correlates with all things that happen, including recovery, but it is not the cause of healing itself. As you may recall from introductory research or statistics classes: correlation does not imply causation.

Beyond this technical inaccuracy, there's a compelling clinical reason to challenge a client when they insist that time will heal their wounds. If time is the vehicle of change in a client’s life, then the client is not—and their recovery becomes a circumstantial, passive process rather than an active one. The critical skills of living that allow healing to happen may go unrecognized by both therapist and client. (Or worse, the client may draw on no such skills at all, deciding to leave everything in Time’s hands.) Challenging this belief can be profoundly empowering.

Let’s consider an example. Imagine a client grieving the loss of a loved one. Toward the end of therapy, they might say, “It just took time to stop crying every time I thought of them.” A therapist might be tempted to accept that statement and move on, but doing so would miss the opportunity to highlight the subtler skills the client used to support their grieving process. Perhaps they allowed themselves to feel sadness when it arose, rather than denying it or suppressing it with distraction or substance use. Perhaps they made time to connect with friends and family for emotional support. Perhaps they created a private ritual to honor their loved one—visiting their grave weekly, for example—and allowed the associated emotions to surface. Perhaps they offered themselves compassionate thoughts like, "You can get through this," or practiced patience on days they felt overwhelmed. They may have continued taking medications, prayed to their god(s), or engaged in other forms of meaning-making.

These “skills of living” can become so woven into daily life that they slip into psychological white noise, unrecognized for their powerful contribution to healing. When we misattribute recovery to time alone, we risk overlooking the agency, resilience, and self-support our clients actively practice—even in small, quiet ways.

To further illustrate that time itself does not heal, consider a second person who also loses a loved one, but who relies on time—and time alone—to mend their wounds. Imagine they isolate in their room, stop bathing, subsist on non-nourishing foods (when they eat at all), disengage from work, and distract themselves from sadness with social media, substances, or binge-watching TV shows. While it’s common—and even useful—to numb from our grief at times, in the above scenario this person’s grief is likely to feel raw months, and perhaps years, after the loss. Without allowing themselves to feel and process their emotions, without engaging in behaviours that support wellness, their pain remains stuck.

Allowing painful emotions to arise and be experienced is a necessary precursor to habituating to those emotions, making meaning of them, and eventually integrating the loss into one’s life story. Healing requires active participation—however small or gradual—not merely the passage of time.

Time itself does none of this. Clients do.