NEVER Say 'Get Over It'

Frequently over the past few weeks I’ve thought about the folks who meet someone who has survived trauma and, when the survivor speaks about it or becomes overwhelmed with emotions related to it, these people say something along these lines:

“Well, you have to get over it at some point.”

“Don’t look back, focus on the future.”

“Think positive, don’t dwell on the negative.”

*Sigh*

I wish these folks knew how horribly insensitive that is. Or how painful it can be for a trauma survivor to hear something like that. I wish people knew these kinds of phrases are the polar opposite of compassionate and helpful.

When someone sustains and survives and LIVES WITH a traumatic incident or incidents, that pain is theirs. It becomes part of their cellular body, it becomes part of their DNA, it becomes part of their heart, their mind, and their soul.

You do not just “get over” something that becomes a part of you this way, any more than you can just stop being a human being on this planet.

In fact, the idea that anyone can and ought to “just get over” anything that seriously injured them in the way that trauma does is part of what’s wrong with our culture.

Put yourself in a trauma survivor’s shoes for a moment.

When do you think you’d be done feeling the pain related to your mother beating you for 18 years?

At what point do you suppose the memories of your uncle raping you would just stop causing you violent suffering?

That kind of emotional dismissiveness, that kind of emotional denial, that kind of emotional avoidance, that kind of emotional BURYING is WHY so many people on the face of this planet are walking PAIN BODIES.

And when people are in pain – pain they may not have even consciously acknowledged, the whole world suffers for it.

Because nobody can be truly happy if one heart in this world is suffering.

What affects one of us affects all of us: we are one soul split into millions of different bodies. The belief that we are separate is a lie and an illusion.

And the other side of the coin is that when people have unacknowledged and unhealed pain, they are more likely to act out that pain on others. They may emotionally abuse someone else. They may commit crimes. They may engage in domestic or child abuse. They may rape or murder. They may turn to a life of addiction.

As Shakespeare said, the truth will out. Pain will come out any which way it can if it’s not dealt with honestly and in a straight-forward manner.

Count on it.

Something else that bothers me about this emotional avoidance and emotional denial in our world is the arrogance of it.

How fucking arrogant is it for a person to look at someone who is suffering the after-effects of a trauma and tell them that they’re not PERMITTED, that they’re not ALLOWED to be hurt anymore?

Who the fuck do you think you are, dictating people’s feelings to them?

When someone is hurting, no other person has the authority or the right to tell them that the statute of limitations is up on their personal suffering.

“It’s been 20 years, Bob. You should be done grieving.”

Oh HELL TO THE NO.

Don’t you even start shoulding all over me.

It’s just like Louis C.K.’s quote, which I’m paraphrasing here: if someone comes to you and says something that you did or said hurt them, YOU don’t get to decide that you didn’t.

We all feel - some of us more openly, consciously, and freely than others because we’ve done the work necessary to be open to our feelings. And we have every right to every single one of those feelings.

It’s not for any other person to demand we put away our feelings for THEIR comfort, for THEIR sense of the way we should deal with our pasts – this is the definition of reprehensible.

Our culture doesn’t encourage us to feel. It only encourages us to purchase. So people have become utterly incapable of meeting their own feelings and those of others head-on. People get uncomfortable with shows of emotion. They don’t know what to say to people who have endured something unimaginably painful. Their go-to move is to tell them not to feel that anymore, like this makes any kind of sense.

What comes next? BLAME THE VICTIM. “You’re just hanging on to the past. You should let it go.”

Oh. My. God.

No.

It has to stop. This refusal to feel, this culture of running from feeling makes us nothing but sick. We are, as a whole human race, sick and tired – physically, emotionally, spiritually. We eat food that isn’t nutritious, we deny our feelings and insist that others do the same, we live meaningless lives focused on materialism and consumerism.

This isn’t what it is to be human.

To be human is to feel.

When we meet someone who is feeling pain, suffering, or any other emotion, we should embrace it and celebrate it. We should learn from it. We should stop running from it.

To the people who are telling others to “get over it” – stop.

Instead, maybe hold their hand.

Maybe hold them as they cry.

Maybe appreciate how brave they are for feeling so deeply.

And then try it yourself.

As Matt Kahn said, it takes bravery to feel.

People willing to face their feelings and emotions head-on, with zero distraction and without deflection should be praised, admired, and emulated. Because they help purge the world of its pain.

Without survivors of emotional trauma talking about their experiences, there would be no healing.

This is why I started my blog, why I started writing these posts. It’s for my healing, certainly. But it’s also for the other victims out there who survived sexual abuse of any kind, who endured it, who live with it, who maybe haven’t come forward about it, haven’t spoken up about it, haven’t started to heal because they feel alone.