system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: How does time actually help us recover from traumatic experiencies such like a heartbreak or death of a close one?
gpt
Memories are VERY powerful. Traumatic experience is a particularly powerful collection of memories. To understand the power of memories, know that a physical injury heals, and you can not have a recurring injury without the cause of injury. But one can relive a bad experience with full intensity if one is able to recall it vividly, even if the event is not occurring anymore. In fact, one cannot create a false injury with the power of mind, but one can live an entirely fake experience as good as real, by creating false memories, and so vividly that one doesn't know that it is real or imagination (called delusion).

Thus, memories are powerful. What these memories result in is feelings. There is an intermediary level of hormones that we are not discussing. Feelings are what we call depression and heartbreak. 

So, experience -> memories -> feelings of sadness. 

Every once in a while, when you are free or having a good time, the memories come flying by, flooding your mind with associated emotions and feeling of sadness. And just like that, you grow sad out of the blue in the middle of the day. 

Usually, memories fade over time, and they don't recur that frequently. When they do occur, you don't recall the vivid details. Additonally, your logic has regrouped enough to help you reason your way out of sadness. Over time, like the memory of anything that happened in the past, it fades away.  This is called getting over a bad experience. 

This is not related to only sadness. You may feel anger and fear too. When the feeling of anger, sadness or fear is very strong or real due to the memories of past, and not only are you living through the traumatic experience again, but its uncontrollable recurrence affects your lifestyle, it is called post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which affects the rape victims, witnesses of violence and war veterans.