"Just get over it" "Just let it go"...

Insensitive to say the least. If you underwent major surgery, no one would expect you to be completely healed the very next day. Emotional wounds are the same. It takes time.

Best things to accellerate a facilitate healing are counseling and therapy. There are minor differences between the two, a major one being frequency. I see my counselor every week, and I can call her in between if things are rough. My therapist I only see once a month. Group counseling is great too, because you see other women with the same stories and experiences and it helps to know you aren't alone and other people understand exactly what you went through.

The other thing: self care. Our self-esteem gets shattered, and we have to work to raise it back up. The time when you want to hurt yourself or end your life is the most important time to practice self care. I understand that is when you LEAST feel like doing it, but I had to just force myself. I started getting up, making my bed, getting dressed nice, putting on makeup, taking nice long salt baths and using some nicely scented bath soaps. I'm getting my hair done for the first time in over 5 years tomorrow! You will be amazed at how these little things can help you to feel better.

Part of self care I forgot to mention: eating right and exercise. some of us feed the depression, and others of us starve it and just stop eating. Some of us punish our bodies by over-exercising, while some of us give up and remain stagnant. Finding the healthy balance is also important part of feeling better.

Be kind to yourself and give your heart time to heal. (((hugs)))

SMRK, I hope you have sought some professional counseling and therapy to deal with all this trauma. It will be very hard to get past it without some very good help.

Pandora has a lot of good advice.

Someday, you may be able to "let it go" but not until you've done a lot of healing....

Insensitivity comes from people who are abusive themselves, in denial that they are being abused, or have never experienced or witnessed it. No that isn't EVERYONE in those categories, but those are usually the main reasons people use the "Just get over it" response.

No, it doesn't help. In fact, it causes secondary wounding which is just as harmful as the abuse itself.

These are the people you DO NOT want in your circle of support.

This is going to sound "abusive" and I may be bashed, but here goes.

If it is not possible to "let it go" and "get over it", what is the option? To "hang on to it" and "mull it over again and again"? How can that be positive?

True, it doesn't happen overnight, and it is a painful and difficult process. But at the end of the process, you will feel a new freedom, no longer chained to the past and your abuser.

And to JillieBean, many of the people who say "let it go" do so because they have been able to do so and are no longer crippled by the past.

I think the option is to work through it & to work on healing. Just as our bodies may need to go through physical therapy to get back to normal, so it is with our emotional & psychological lives...

Time does not heal all wounds.

Emotional abuse is as bad as humans can inflict and endure. Tell soldiers coming home from Iraq with PTSD to just get over it? Horrific.

Many people are clueless about the evils that are inflicted through emotional abuse. It's why I don't talk to many about it and I come here for support. People on DS get it, thank god.

Real recovery comes from working intensely with a trained counselor, with a lot of soul searching, journaling, support from loving family and friends. Hope you can find the peace you need...hugs to you.

Letting abuse go? Impossible imo. And when someone makes such a remark while knowing the pain that has been endured, is abusive imo. i think feeling that outrage and that anger is incredibly healthy for anyone who realizes that they were treated abusively by someone who others are only shown the facade, the 'good guy.' It is beyond infuriating. Coming out of an abusive relationship you will have to go through all of the tages of grief and in the process you learn how to be discerning with who you chose to talk to about your experience. Not everyone is helpful and some will just blurt out flippant remarks without thinking. Or will justify those remarks with the fact that they have reached a place where they have been able to "let it go" so they just assume everyone should be like them and in the same place of their healing. It's rude and inconsiderate to say the least.
To me I don't like the term letting it go, instead I use the term acceptance, by that I don't mean tolerating abuse as being acceptable or that abuse is acceptable in any way. i mean accepting one's experience and getting to the place, imo the last and final step in healing where the pain of the past no longer controls one's every waking moments or life. Acceptance doesn't mean not seeking justice, if that is called for and it doesn't even necessarily mean forgiveness. it just means putting past abuse in the past and moving forward at whatever pace a survivor feels ready for.

That was supposed to read...all of the stages of grief....

My psych basically told me my ex boyfriend had a raging personality disorder. ASPD. Now you are a kind wonderful person-that's why he was attracted to you. They can do things to shatter you because they aren't full human beings. It is a game to them. And no you can't "get over it". Prolonged stress can cause complex PSTD which can make you tired, lethargic, cause panic attacks ect. How are you to fight all of what happened to you when you are already weakened? Take your time-there is no magic pill. If you could get to a counselor that would help so much! Don't be hard on yourself in the meantime!

just let it go is a remark that basically says your holding onto it. How thou ? There is nothing in your hands so what is it these people seem to think we are holding onto. The thing is about healing is being honest wiv yourself firstly. Those who have been abused have to realise it and it sounds like u have come to this stage. So advice like get over it is like saying brush everything under the carpet and pretend to yourself that A) it didnt happen and B) your feel absolutely nothing about your experience. This in itself is the complete and exact opposite of actually getting over it because u dont let it go u simply mask it and actually hold it and lock it go your brain to the cal and then carry it forever. Real healing and lets face it thats what really your seeking here, comes from process and filtering throu everything at your own pace so u are able to feel differently about it. And this does not mean your aim is to feel ok or positive about it. This also includes the negative and anger. The real change will be when u feel differently towards yourself and ultimately u eliminate most off the negative feelings u have towards yourself just like pandora said about self care. Your experience was and is very real regarding what happened to u and how u was abused and your feelings are even more real to u. Dismissing your feelings is the same thing as saying u are a nothing and are not really here because wiv out your feelings who are we anyway? Its part of your very being and your soul. It defines u as an individual so do not ignore yourself. Better to ignore poor advice because not Everyone knows what they are talking about and there is such thing as bad advice. Do as pandora suggested she gave u some gr8 and healthy advice!

and scarlet angel. I think that it is possible to reach a place of healing but there depending on individual process it whether or not a person in that place will describe that feeling as being over it. Some May use the word acceptance and others May say Ive learnt to live wiv it. I think ultimately its an individual expression to describe a place of changed perceptions and healing which your trying to get at and i think that what her friend said was not the same point u was trying to make and there is a massive difference between the two

Some great advice here.

@ scarletangel, I can see what you are saying, but there are a couple of things I'd like to say about it. One is that you may have missed the VERY important word "just" in what SMRK wrote. Yes, we do eventually have to let go of the pain, but that happens as others have said by taking the time and doing the work necessary to work THROUGH the pain. You don't "just get over it" and letting it go isn't as easy as saying "just let it go".

I don't, myself, believe anyone who has truly worked through the trauma of abuse, even if they have got out the other side, would say something as insensitive as "just let it go", like it's as easy as snapping your fingers. The word "just" in there is the really insensitive part, in my view. I may also be playing semantics, but I don't think you can get over it ever - but you can get through it and out the other side.

Best wishes to you SMRK in working your way through it. Don't listen to people who seem to think recovery is as easy as "just" letting it go and getting over it. You CAN get to the place you want to be. Healing DOES happen. But it's not simple, it's not easy, and it's MUCH harder to try to do it alone.

Yes, 'just' is the offensive bit, for sure. As if letting go is a simple choice and not part of a healing process. Too many people think it's mind over matter, that they can 'just' choose to let it go and it will be gone. Healthy people will recognize this as denial. My husband did exactly that, with the help of his counselor, 'just' let it go, chose to forgive, put it in the past. Only he was going through the motions, burying it a little deeper and, because it wasn't right there at the surface, figured it was gone. Nothing but denial. His anger over having been abused still sits right under the surface, ready to bubble through and be misdirected at all of us who love him, with no warning at all. Then, when he's behaved like a total asshole and he's faced with his own Self Hatred, the only thing he can do to escape the feeling is....go figure....more denial.

When you ask how to "get thru my fucking day with out wanting to hurt myself", what I hear is your anger and pain turned inward, turned on yourself. Judging yourself for having been a victim? Like my husband judged himself for having been too small to protect himself? I don't know what it is for you, only what he's told me about his experience.

You have to find the path to healing and eventually letting it go, not for the sake of your abuser, but for your own sake. So that you don't become that person who, like my husband, can pass the pain on to the next person. Or remain that person inside whom pain is an ever present and destructive resident.

You work toward letting go because the alternative is letting this live inside you forever.

"just get over it......"

Oh God, how I hate those words. those words have been the story of my life. Growing up being a "sensitive" child, my feelings were always brushed off. " That Daisy, she never lets anything go."

Problem with this is I grew up feeling like I didn't matter, my feelings didn't matter, no one listened when I spoke. I became invisible in my childhood home.

Then surprise, surprise....I married someone who expected me to forget that 5 minutes earlier he told me I was a worthless piece of crap.
"What is your problem? Oh my God Daisy, you never let anything go."

This statement is very abusive. A person cannot "JUST" get over abuse just like that. It takes time, a good therapist, and alot of self care.

What people don't understand is that in abusive relationships things are never worked out. You cannot have a mature conversation with an abuser. They stonewall the process and there is never any closure.

How do you just let that go?

As I sit here and read the responses. So many things sound so right. The word JUST is the offensive push behind the statement. In my head though when she said this to me. What I heard was . You are choosing to feel this bad, you are choosing to allow his behavior to effect you. You are choosing to be the victim. Like i had a choice. Did she really think that if I could get up tomorrow and say to myself, okay I am done with this and I am moving on. I am now over it. That I wouldn't choose to do just that.
I am a firm believer and always will be, that if you have not walked a mile in my shoes you have no idea how badly this hurts. So I guess she knows not the impact of what she said.
And to fiberjunkie.....One point you made...I believe is the biggest hurtle for me to get over. I do judge myself for being the victim. I spent the 1st 18 years of my life being abused by both my parents. I could read an abuser from a mile away. Then I walked right into his web and then because he needed me. I kept allowing him to do what he was doing. Instead of walking away. He kept throwing the punches..And I kept stepping into his path. He was looking for a target...I painted a big red circle on my chest and stood where he couldn't miss it. He hurt me and I apologized for causing him to do so. He would call me a fat fucking whore..and i would say. That's okay..I know you don't mean it. He would make me feel like I was a burden for him to have to talk to me or look at or be in the same room with me. So I started hiding in my room. Because you know. I didn't want to make him uncomfortable. I changed the food i ate. The clothes I wore, the shows I watched the music i listened to. I changed everything in my life and about myself to make him happy. I lied for him..i stood up for him..I listened to his lies and acted like i was impressed. But I did nothing for me. I did nothing to help myself. I did nothing to protect myself from him. I gave and gave and gave. And now there is nothing left of me. So yes there are days when i want to hurt myself. Because all I can think of is how fucking stupid i was. I did this to myself by allowing him to do this to me....And for every mean and hateful thing he said to me. For ever slash into my self esteem he carved me down to some who has no will. I believed his words. I believed his words.
When he was dying. I laid my head on his chest. And begged him not to go. What am I going to do with out you. I told him. I don't know how to think without him instucting me. I don;t know how to feel without him permitting it. And in alll the time I was with him and I knew that what he was doing was going to shatter me forever. Even with that knowledge I satyed and allowed him to do this to me. Only thing is. i had no clue just how shattered i was going to be. No clear picture of the total damage. Until now. Now that I have to live with it....Now that i have to breathe it and sleep it and walk it along side me everyday. I had no clue......I am so tired...I am so depleated....