“Another year gone already?” In 2025, I faced the trauma tied to time slipping away.
Early in 2025, I caught myself circling back to the same topic in every conversation—whether in my women’s group or during family constellation sessions: the passing of time. That feeling of having survived something I never wanted to get through, losing control, or that time is too fast, too relentless, too final. I didn’t yet realize that the year ahead would bring not only tangible losses but also a completely new way of relating to time by the next anniversary.
When the Passing Years Take Shape
My anxiety about time crystallized most intensely in one very specific situation: with my aging, graying little dog. Month by month, he needed more care, medicine, and attention—and I kept feeling, “Another day gone,” a day I’d never get back with him. I could almost touch the rush of time, knowing every moment I didn’t fully live would be missed. I tried to be as present as possible, storing away our thinning shared walks, quiet afternoons, and familiar routines.
I was almost training myself for the inevitable goodbye.
So much so that when “the day” came, I was able to greet it like an old, familiar friend. It was both predictable and completely unexpected. With cold awareness, I accepted the facts even as everything inside me shattered. That’s when I truly understood that time’s passing hurts not only in the moment of loss (and long after) but also well before it arrives: in the anticipated absence, the mourned future.
Traumas often connect to tangible losses, but the passage of time can also amplify a different kind of emptiness. Like when you look back on your birthday or year-end and ask yourself: “What did I do in the last 12 months?” If you don’t see progress, it’s easy to feel like life is rushing past you, and you’re just a bystander, not an active player with any influence.
Why Does Our Sense of Time Distort?
To understand what was happening inside me, I started exploring how our perception of time works. I realized that even the phrase “time perception” is misleading because time isn’t something our brain directly senses. There are no “time particles” like light or sound. Instead, the brain infers time based on changes.
We estimate elapsed time by adding up how much has happened to us. When there’s a lot of stimulation—events, emotions—periods feel longer in hindsight. That’s why accident witnesses often say time seemed to slow down: intense focus creates “dense” memories that, looking back, “stretch” the moment. For example, I still vividly remember falling hard off a horse as a child—the fear, the horse jumping aside, and me turning midair, seemingly “slowly” falling onto my back, gasping for air for minutes.
Why Do Years Fly While Days Crawl?
It’s key to distinguish how we measure time afterward from how we experience it in the moment. Waiting in a doctor’s office, watching the clock, time feels endless. But when we’re absorbed in something—not necessarily fun, just demanding enough attention—time seems to fly. This explains the strange feeling that:
Workdays drag on forever, but years pass in the blink of an eye.
Plus, childhood is full of firsts—the first day of kindergarten, first love, first fight with friends, first job. These moments leave rich memory traces. But as adults, most days become routine. Routine feels safe but boring to our brains: moments slow down, yet familiarity leaves fewer deep marks—looking back, years almost dissolve into nothing.
Can We Heal Our Relationship with Time?
I can’t say I’ve fully healed my trauma around time passing yet, but I’m learning to see it as a framework. I feel that time—harsh as it seems—is a human construct. That’s a small comfort amid loss, but it helps me shift perspective on the trauma of impermanence.
One therapeutic self-awareness method gave me a powerful experience to support this process. In a group exercise, everyone worked on their own trauma without knowing what others projected onto them (and vice versa). My “chosen one” represented a beloved family member I feared losing. Wherever they went, they always watched over me and somehow found their way back. I was starting to feel calm, thinking this strange sense of loss might finally ease—when suddenly someone stood straight between us, blurring our view of each other. Yet I still knew, felt they were there. That’s when it hit me: we might not always see each other, might not always touch physically, but our connection transcends human and natural laws, existing beyond time and circumstances.
So my trauma around time hasn’t disappeared, but I no longer expect myself to stop feeling anxious about impermanence. Now, I’m less eager to rush solutions or perfect every moment. Instead, I allow periods of pain and loss to surface, alongside times when circumstances hold me or gently carry me forward—into infinity.
