The Wisdom of Time

The old adage that “time heals all wounds” is a comforting sentiment, but in the context of your trauma, it is a dangerous myth.

Time, by itself, is passive. It is merely the ticking of a clock while you sit in your suffering. To believe that the simple passage of days or weeks or months will erase your psychological devastation is to misunderstand the neurobiology of trauma. For you, time does not heal. Healing takes hard work, deliberate learning, and the forced restructuring of your brain. Healing is an active, grueling process of acquiring the specific knowledge needed to overcome your amygdala’s hyperactivation and the negative coping mechanisms deployed by your own mind.

When you fall victim to a scam, you are not just losing money or a relationship. You are experiencing a profound psychological injury. Your brain interprets the deception and the sudden loss as a threat to survival. Your amygdala, the primitive part of the brain responsible for processing fear and threat, becomes hyperactivated. It floods your system with stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline, putting your body into a state of constant high alert. This is the biology of your trauma. In this state, your prefrontal cortex, the part of your brain responsible for logic, reasoning, and emotional regulation, is effectively suppressed. You are cognitively impaired. You may struggle to focus, make decisions, or trust your own judgment. You are operating in survival mode, unable to access the higher-order thinking required to process your complex emotions or plot a course for recovery.

If left unchecked, this state can persist indefinitely. This is where the myth of time fails you. Without intervention, your brain can remain stuck in this trauma loop. The negative coping mechanisms that your mind deploys to stop the pain, such as denial, dissociation, or blame, become entrenched neural pathways. Just waiting for these things to fade away is ineffective. In fact, the longer you leave these patterns unchallenged, the stronger they become. Your brain is plastic, meaning it adapts and wires itself based on repeated activity. If you spend months ruminating on your shame and avoiding the truth, your brain wires itself for shame and avoidance. Time alone reinforces your trauma.

To truly heal, you must force your brain to acquire new knowledge. You must engage in the hard work of rewiring your neural circuitry. This is not a passive process but an aggressive one. It involves consciously choosing to activate your prefrontal cortex to calm your amygdala. This requires learning about the mechanics of the scam, the psychology of manipulation and your own mind, and the neurology and biology of trauma. Knowledge acts as a counterweight to your fear. When you understand exactly how you were manipulated, the mystery fades, and your amygdala begins to quiet down. Your narrative shifts from “I was stupid and weak” to “I was targeted by professional predators.” This cognitive shift is the first step in breaking your trauma cycle.

However, you must be in a state where you can absorb this information. This is where the wisdom of time actually plays a role for you. While time does not heal, it does bring stabilization. Immediately following the discovery of the scam, you are often in a state of acute crisis. Your cognitive impairment is at its peak. In these early moments, you may be unable to process complex information or engage in deep introspection. Trying to force profound lessons on yourself in this state can be overwhelming and counterproductive. You need time to come down from the physiological high alert. This is why we have the basics of what you need to know at this stage on www.ScamVictimsSupport.org

As the days and weeks pass, the immediate shock begins to subside. The constant flooding of stress hormones lessens, allowing your prefrontal cortex to come back online. The fog lifts slightly. This stabilization does not mean your trauma is gone, but it means your brain is becoming more receptive to the learning you need to manage it. Time provides you with the window of opportunity necessary for the hard work of learning to take place. It grants you the mental space to step back and look at your situation objectively. It allows you to develop the attention span required to read, to reflect, and to practice new coping strategies.

But, you have to take advantage of that window. If you do not, your own mind will make it harder in the future.

Therefore, the relationship between time and healing is not one of cause and effect, but of preparation and action. Time prepares the ground by stabilizing your nervous system, but you must still plant the seeds and tend to the crop. The wisdom of time lies in recognizing the right moments for different stages of your recovery. In the earliest days, stabilization and safety are your priorities. As time progresses and your mind clears, the heavy lifting of cognitive restructuring can begin. This involves challenging the negative thoughts that have taken root, replacing them with accurate, evidence-based beliefs.

The process is arduous. It requires you to do things that feel unnatural and uncomfortable. It means facing the whole truth about your vulnerability and the reality of your loss. It means forcing your brain to think when it wants to shut down. It means practicing emotional regulation when your body wants to react with panic. But this exertion is what strengthens the neural pathways of resilience. Just as physical exercise builds muscle, cognitive exercise builds your mental strength.

Eventually, you will reach a point where the lessons have been learned and the new patterns have been established. Your amygdala no longer hijacks your brain at the slightest trigger. Your negative coping mechanisms are replaced by healthy ones. At this stage, you might look back and say that time healed you. But it was not the passage of time that did the work. It was what you did with that time. It was the thousands of moments where you chose to learn, to grow, and to fight against your own biology. The wisdom of time is not in its ability to cure, but in its ability to offer you the canvas upon which you can paint your recovery. It is the resource, not the remedy. The remedy is your relentless pursuit of knowledge and your unyielding commitment to do the hard work of rebuilding your mind.

Prof. Tim McGuinness, Ph.D.
January 2026