It’s hard to ‘get over it’ if pain of abuse turns to rage against self

By David McElroy · August 15, 2024

The advice is almost always well-meaning, but it’s completely clueless.

“Come on,” the advice goes. “That happened a long time ago. He didn’t really mean to hurt you. They did the best they could. You just need to let it go. It’s time to get over it.”

I know what it feels like to think this about someone, because I’ve done it, too. I remember a conversation I had years ago in which a friend and I mocked someone who couldn’t “get over it” and move on after childhood abuse. That was before I understood my own childhood trauma, so I eventually felt guilty about having said such things about someone else.

But I get it. When you watch someone else go through the agony of long-term pain and anger from emotional abuse, it’s baffling if you don’t have a frame of reference. The person who’s suffered abuse can come across as crazy — at least it can look that way to someone who’s not hurting.

It’s not easy to watch people deal with their pain and with the genuine damage that’s been done to them by an abuser. Hurting people often act in irrational and extreme ways — and those who have no understanding of what the person has dealt with are prone to say (or at least think), “That’s in the past. You need to get over it.”

I saw an example of that the other day — and I think the person had the best of intentions. But if you haven’t lived with the effects of severe abuse, you might not realize that the inner damage you’ve suffered can make it impossible for you to “just get over it.”

After awhile, you’re not really even dealing with the abuser when the rage goes through your head. You’re dealing with the damage in your own mind and heart and psyche that’s been left by abuse.

Maybe it’s an accumulation of a lifetime of abuse that started decades ago. Maybe you can’t quite trace the path of abuse you’ve been through. You just know that you’re in tremendous emotional pain that you can’t explain to others.

You might even hate yourself for the decisions you’ve made to bring additional abuse onto yourself. Even if you seem focused on your abusive parent or an abusive ex or whoever it is, you reach a point that this other person is more of a symbol for something far deeper. You’re fighting something in yourself. You’re fighting damage to yourself that you don’t know how to repair (even if you’ve believed before that you were healed).

You’re fighting demons you can’t name. You’re angry at God. You’re angry at the world. You’re angry at everyone who you’ve ever counted on to protect you — everyone who let you down.

When you’re going through that, it very well might look ugly from the outside. You might be lashing out. You might be acting irrationally. And those who’ve never gone through such abuse and such pain are quietly (or even noisily) judging you.

But even if others are judging you, the judgment you’re heaping onto yourself is far worse. Even though you understand with your conscious mind that someone else is responsible for what’s happened to you, there’s a huge part of you that somehow blames yourself.

You question everything you’ve done. You’re sure you could have avoided some of the abuse. You should have seen it coming. You shouldn’t have trusted that person. You shouldn’t have let the abuse last so long. You can come up with a million reasons why you should get part of the blame.

Part of you hates yourself, even if you haven’t named that hate yet.

It’s hard for me to watch others go through this, partly because I understand what it feels like once you’re no longer in denial about the way you’ve been abused. But it’s also hard for me because I know how this person looks to the folks who watch the hurting person and have no idea what’s going on inside.

When you see someone who’s experiencing this sort of hurt and rage, be grateful that you don’t understand. The fact that you don’t understand how the person feels — and why he or she looks out of control — probably means you haven’t suffered the same sort of abuse.

I know it’s easy to think you would have handled the abuse better than that person is. I know it’s easy to feel superior and to think, “I never would have allowed that to happen — and I would have gotten over it.”

You might even be right. Maybe you would have handled it differently. But that makes no difference. None at all.

The only thing that matters is that a human being is hurting very deeply. Even if you can’t understand it and even if you can’t do anything to help, don’t make it worse for the person who’s in pain. He or she already feels far worse on the inside than you can possibly imagine.

That person really would like to “get over it.” But it might not be today. And your harsh judgment doesn’t help at all, so maybe you could give the person some grace. Maybe you can be thankful you’ve never faced the sort of abuse that has taken this person into a hell that you probably can’t understand.

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