Time as Treatment, Part II: Healing Across Past, Present, and Future

10-09-2025

By Dr. Howard Friedman MD | Veteran | U.S. Army Medical Corps | Internal Medicine | HHOM LLC

Between light and shadow, the past and the future converge. Healing happens not by escaping time—but by learning to live fully within it.

I live in yesterday’s cold,

today’s pain, tomorrow’s hope —

each second heavier than the last,

yet lighter still

when I let them breathe together.

---Dr. Howard Friedman M.D.

Introduction

In Part I of “Time as Treatment” I explored how time itself can serve as medicine — how waiting, patience, and endurance shape the recovery process. But to stop there would oversimplify the truth.

Healing is rarely linear. Especially for veterans, recovery does not follow the neat arc of injury, treatment, and resolution. Instead, it circles back on itself, revisits old ground, and constantly asks the body and mind to renegotiate their balance. Veterans often describe living in three timelines at once. The past never fully loosens its grip: memories of service, exposures, or injuries return without warning. The present demands attention through symptoms, claims, and daily challenges. And the future, whether filled with hope or apprehension, pulls with its own weight.

Time is treatment, yes. But it is also terrain — not a straight road, but a looping path where progress can feel uncertain and uneven.

The Spiral of Healing

Healing does not move forward in a straight line. It spirals. The body, like memory, returns to old wounds again and again. Sometimes the pain is physical — a knee that flares each winter, a back that stiffens with age, frostbitten feet that ache decades after the cold is gone. Other times the return is invisible, arriving in a sleepless night, a sudden flashback, or the anniversary of a loss that refuses to fade.

What makes the spiral more complex is that it is not only shaped by the mind or the memory of trauma — it is built into the body itself. Our bodies are never static. We live by cycles we rarely notice: hormones rise and fall by the hour, circadian rhythms reset each day, immune cells pulse in weekly patterns, and over a month the chemistry of the body shifts again. Even when we feel still, we are in motion.

Then there is the world around us. Veterans often say they can feel storms before they arrive — and they are right. High pressure, low pressure, the charged electricity of thunderstorms, even the cold snap of winter air can all aggravate injuries and unsettle nerves. Healing cannot be separated from the weather or the invisible pressures in the air.

This spiral can feel like failure. A veteran who thought they were past the worst of their PTSD may feel defeated when symptoms return. Someone who believed their back injury was “under control” may wonder why it locks up again with age or with the shift of a season. But in truth, the spiral is not a setback — it is the body and mind continuing their unfinished work.

Each return offers the chance to reframe, to treat with new tools, and to build resilience where none existed before. Healing, then, is not about escaping the spiral. It is about learning to move with it, recognizing that each loop — internal or external, hormonal or seasonal — still brings you closer to strength and understanding, even if the path bends back upon itself.

Past, Present, and Future Colliding

For most people, time moves in sequence. Yesterday fades, today unfolds, tomorrow waits. But for veterans, time often collapses. Past, present, and future press together, overlapping in ways that make healing more complex.

The past lives close at hand. Service exposures, injuries, and memories do not remain neatly filed away. A scar aches in cold weather, a sound triggers a flashback, an old decision resurfaces in the quiet of the night. What happened years ago can feel immediate, as if it never ended.

The present demands its own toll. Pain that must be managed daily, VA claims that consume attention, family responsibilities that don’t pause for illness. Veterans wake each morning not only with the day ahead, but with the weight of all that came before. The future looms large. For some, it is filled with worry: Will this condition worsen? Will I lose independence? Will the VA recognize my service connection? For others, the future holds a stubborn hope: that treatment will advance, that justice will come, that life can still offer joy and purpose.

This collision of timelines is not weakness. It is the lived reality of service. Soldiers are trained to anticipate, to hold memory sharp, to act in the present under pressure. That training does not vanish with discharge; it lingers, reshaping how time is carried. Veterans are not trapped in the past — they are stretched across three time zones at once, carrying more than most people can imagine.

A Note on Time Itself

Human beings are among the few creatures who can measure. We created calendars, clocks, and years so we could orient ourselves, so we could say “back then,” “now,” and “later.” But this measurement is a kind of illusion. The past cannot be changed; the future is unwritten, filled with infinite possibilities. The only true ground we ever stand on is the present moment.

Yet we cannot escape time as language. To speak with others — to file claims, to remember service, to imagine healing — we must use the measurements of time. Veterans know this contradiction more than most: that life is lived moment by moment, but remembered and judged by what came before and what might come after.

This tension between illusion and reality shapes how time can either weigh us down or lift us up. And that is where the paradox of time truly shows itself: sometimes as an ally, sometimes as a burden.

Time as an Ally vs. Time as a Burden

Time can be friend or foe. Some days, it feels like a companion, steadying the ground under your feet. Other days, it feels like a weight that drags behind you. Veterans live at this edge more sharply than most, because their health, their memories, and their battles with the system are all measured in time.

Time as Ally:

• Distance can soften pain. Memories that once brought raw anguish may, with years, carry more meaning than sting.

• Medicine advances. Treatments for PTSD, chronic pain, and sleep disorders are more refined today than a decade ago.

• With age, some veterans discover resilience they never expected — a wisdom that makes suffering bearable, even purposeful.

Time as Burden:

• The body erodes with years. Joints wear down, scars thicken, and old injuries become louder with age.

• Anniversaries of trauma do not fade; they return with ruthless precision, pulling the past into the present.

• Claims and appeals stretch for months or years, leaving veterans suspended, unable to move forward.

  
  

This is the paradox: the very same time that heals can also harm. A decade can bring new hope — or deepen the wear of old wounds. A night’s sleep can restore — or invite nightmares.

To live with this contradiction requires more than endurance. It requires seeing time not as an enemy to defeat, nor as a savior to wait for, but as a terrain to be navigated. Veterans know how to march over uneven ground. Time is no different.

Navigating the Nonlinear Path

If time spirals, if the past collides with the present, if the future looms uncertain — how does a veteran find footing? The answer is not to straighten the spiral or to silence the past. It is to learn how to move with time, rather than fight against it.

One way forward is to record the past with intention. Writing down exposures, injuries, or service events — even decades later — preserves what the memory alone cannot. What may feel like a private burden today could become essential evidence tomorrow. Veterans who keep their own record of history protect themselves from being forgotten or overlooked.

Another is to attend to the present with discipline. Symptom journals, pain diaries, or buddy letters do more than document suffering — they anchor today’s struggles in reality. They remind veterans that pain is not imagined, that fatigue is not weakness, and that each day carries data that can build toward recognition and care.

Finally, there is the practice of facing the future with agency. The future is unwritten, yes, but not empty. Setting goals — to regain strength, to stay active with family, to pursue a claim, to find new forms of purpose — creates direction in a timeline that otherwise feels endless.

Navigating the nonlinear path does not erase setbacks. It reframes them. A flare of pain is not the end of progress; it is a loop in the spiral, another turn in the body’s ongoing work. Veterans who learn to read their own cycles — whether in symptoms, seasons, or even the weather — gain tools to move forward without being defeated by each return.

Healing may never be a straight line. But it can be a practiced walk, step by step, through time’s uneven terrain.

Call to Action

At HHOM LLC – Howard’s House of Medicine, we understand that healing is not linear, and time is not simple. Veterans live in all three time zones at once: carrying the past, enduring the present, and reaching toward the future. We walk beside you in each of those places — then, now, and in the years to come.

Whether through Nexus Letters, medical consultation, or simply the words we share here, our mission is to stand with you across time’s uneven ground. Because treatment is not only medicine — it is also memory, presence, and possibility.

The past gives me roots,

the present, my breath,

the future, my compass.

I walk all three at once —

and still, I walk.

---Dr, Howard Friedman M.D.

—Dr. Howard Friedman MD

Board-Certified | Internal Medicine | Veteran | U.S. Army Medical Corps

Founder of Howard’s House of Medicine (HHOM LLC)

https://www.hhomllc.com

Frequently Asked Questions:

Q: What does it mean that “time is treatment”?

A: Time itself can act as medicine. Healing isn’t just about what a doctor prescribes — it’s about what unfolds as the body and mind process change. For veterans, this means understanding that recovery isn’t linear. Pain, both physical and emotional, may circle back over the years. Each return is not failure but another layer of healing. Time gives the body and brain chances to renegotiate balance — to rewire, rebuild, and rediscover meaning.

Q: Why do veterans often feel trapped between the past, present, and future?

A: Military training and trauma reshape how time is experienced. The past never fully fades — it replays through memory, pain, or anniversaries. The present is filled with responsibilities, symptoms, and the daily work of coping. And the future carries both fear and hope: questions about worsening conditions, claims, and purpose. Veterans don’t live in one timeline; they live across three, carrying memories that still breathe. Recognizing this overlap is the first step toward integrating all parts of time into healing.

Q: How can veterans use time as an ally instead of a burden?

A: By reframing time as terrain rather than an enemy. Recording the past through journals or buddy statements preserves memory as evidence and meaning. Attending to the present through structure and routine grounds the mind in now. Facing the future with intent — setting goals, nurturing purpose — transforms uncertainty into direction. When time loops back, the goal isn’t to “get over” it, but to walk with it more steadily each turn. That’s how time becomes an ally in recovery, not a reminder of what’s been lost.