Healing From the Inside Out

By Cliff Potts, CSO, and Editor-in-Chief of WPS News

Baybay City, Leyte, Philippines — February 15, 2026

Grief Is Not a Straight Line

Grief is often described as something that fades with time, like a cut that closes and leaves a scar. That image is comforting, but it is not accurate. Deep grief does not act like a surface wound. It acts more like something internal — something that must heal from the inside out.

Anyone who has lived through serious loss knows this. Grief does not move in a straight line. It comes in waves. There are quiet stretches that feel almost normal. Then, without warning, there are emotional ruptures — anger, sobbing, exhaustion, numbness. These moments can feel like failure. They are not.

They are part of the process.

Why the “Explosions” Happen

Some deep wounds in the body heal by releasing pressure over time. When material builds up beneath the surface, it must come out. The release can look dramatic. It can feel frightening. But it is the body clearing what it cannot carry forever.

Grief often works the same way.

People hold themselves together because work must be done, children must be fed, bills must be paid. They compress their emotions to function. Eventually, that pressure forces its way out. The eruption is not weakness. It is the system trying to repair itself.

The Myth That Time Alone Heals

The phrase “time heals all wounds” sounds wise. It is incomplete.

Time creates distance, but it does not do the work. Healing requires processing, memory, and often pain. If grief is pushed aside or rushed, it does not disappear. It hardens. It resurfaces later, sometimes more intensely.

Research on bereavement shows that grief rarely follows a predictable path (Stroebe & Schut, 1999). It moves back and forth between coping and confrontation. That movement is normal.

The Pressure to Move On

Society prefers visible recovery. People look for signs that someone is “better.” They want laughter to return quickly. They want routines restored. They grow uneasy when sorrow lingers.

So many grieving people learn to perform strength. They say they are fine when they are not. When emotions break through later, they feel embarrassed. They assume they are regressing.

They are not.

Those releases often signal that something buried is finally being processed.

Isolation and Survival Responses

Deep grief can be lonely. Even caring friends cannot fully understand what it is like to carry a constant internal ache. Over time, some people withdraw. That withdrawal is often misread as bitterness or depression.

In many cases, it is conservation.

Grief drains energy. It narrows tolerance for noise and conflict. Anger and exhaustion are not moral failures. They are survival responses to prolonged stress. Studies on resilience show that human reactions to loss vary widely, and fluctuation is common (Bonanno, 2004).

There is nothing abnormal about needing rest.

Fear of Who We Become

Loss changes people. It strips away assumptions about permanence and control. That clarity can be unsettling. Some fear that healing will make them harder, colder, or unfamiliar to themselves.

Healing does change identity. It does not restore the old version of a person. It reshapes them.

That fear is understandable.

What Healing Really Means

Healing from the inside out does not mean erasing pain. It means allowing grief to move when it needs to move. It means accepting that there will be calm days and rupture days.

Over time, the eruptions usually lessen. The pressure eases. The loss does not vanish, but it becomes less volatile. Life reorganizes around it.

Healing does not mean forgetting. It does not mean replacing what was lost or “getting over” it. It means learning how to live with what remains once the wound has healed from the inside out.

For more social commentary, please see Occupy 2.5 at https://Occupy25.com

References

Bonanno, G. A. (2004). Loss, trauma, and human resilience. American Psychologist, 59(1), 20–28.

Stroebe, M., & Schut, H. (1999). The dual process model of coping with bereavement. Death Studies, 23(3), 197–224.