Why Time Doesn’t Heal All Wounds

Last summer, Amy and I took a trip to England, and I invited her to literally take a walk down my memory lane. We went back to the neighborhood in London where I grew up, which I hadn’t been back to in almost 30 years.

It was a surreal experience.

Most movies depict England with stately houses and prestigious schools. But that wasn’t my childhood. I grew up in inner-city London during the 80’s and 90’s in government housing—a place where drugs, violence, and occasionally, even murders were part of everyday life.

Much has changed since I lived there, but as I walked those streets again and pointed out to Amy the places where significant moments occurred, I realized just how much anxiety I had lived with as a child.

My nervous system was trained to constantly scan my surroundings, always anticipating what might happen next.

And here’s what struck me.

Many people try and convince themselves, “Well, that was then. This is now. I survived. It doesn’t affect me anymore.”

We think that time somehow erases the impact of our past.

But it’s a lie that time heals all wounds.

The brain doesn’t work that way.

The part of our brain that stores traumatic or overwhelming experiences doesn’t recognize time. It codes emotions and physical sensation to the experience and creates associations to be on the lookout for the danger again. Then it activates our nervous system on a subconscious level every time one of those associations is present—and this is what we call a trigger.

So, although I left England decades ago and moved halfway across the world, the vulnerable young boy from the Silwood Estate came with me.

His fears, protective strategies, and anxious reactions followed me into adulthood and impacted the relationships that mattered most—especially, my marriage.

The good news is that attachment research shows something really hopeful. It’s not simply what happened to you that predicts how you’ll connect with people today. It’s how you’ve come to make sense of those experiences.

If you can develop what researchers call a coherent narrative—a story of your life that is honest, integrated, and makes sense of the pain, then you can grow.

That’s why healthy relationships are about more than sharing the good times—vacations, funny stories, and enjoyable activities. It’s easy to feel close to another person in those moments.

But intimacy often grows deepest when we courageously share the painful parts of our story.

When we risk saying, “Here’s what happened to me… and here’s how it shaped me.”

And when someone responds—not with quick fixes, but with curiosity, compassion, and comfort—the brain begins to recall the memory in a new way and the trigger loses its power.

Amy and I have been practicing that together more intentionally. Instead of just solving today’s problems, we’re learning to listen to one another’s childhood wounds that have formed our reactions to help the other get healing.

The goal isn’t to become detectives trying to determine whether every childhood memory is perfectly accurate.

The goal is to understand the meaning we gave those experiences and how they’ve shaped the way we love, trust, and self-protect.

So, here’s a question to think about this week:

What’s the part of your life you’ve been hoping was left behind… but know you are still carrying with you?

Maybe today is the day to begin telling that story in a safe place, where healing can finally begin.