Surely You're Over That?

"Healing is not about moving on or "getting over it," it’s about learning to make peace with our pain and finding purpose in our lives again."
Shirley Kaminsky

Some experiences and interactions have a significant impact on your life. Others are forgettable or leave you cold, even though everything you experience changes you in some way, no matter how small.

But then there are interactions and experiences that do more than change you. You're soaked, submersed – their impact is inescapable. It's hard to remember the "you" before it happened because it became part of every cell and fiber of the "you" that followed.

After one such painful interaction with a family member (which included them being untruthful), I set clear boundaries about certain behaviors because they had too significant an impact on me to ignore.

Why Aren't You Over it Yet?

Months later, I had to remind this person of those boundaries when I noticed their behavior veering into a "no-go zone." The person seemed surprised and said, "I thought you forgave me for that?"

"I have forgiven you," I replied.

Then came the kicker. "If that's the case, why aren't you over it yet?"

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What: #MTtalk

Where: Twitter

When: January 20 @1pm ET (6pm GMT / 11:30pm IST)

Topic: Surely You're Over That?

Host: @Mind_Tools

I wish I could say that I had sat them down and calmly explained the difference between boundaries, forgiveness and being "over" something.

But, almost instantaneously, I felt tears of anger, frustration and disappointment gathering behind my eyes. I didn't want to cry in front of them. So I mustered just enough energy to politely excuse myself from the conversation while still holding it together. And then I didn't hold it together anymore.

Later I realized what had most upset me: they had put my enforcing boundaries down to me not being over a situation, rather than them understanding how problematic their behavior had been. Blaming me was easier than dealing with the truth.

Bigger Things

I had another experience with people needing others to be over something.

One evening in 2015, I was in a conversation at a Friday evening social gathering at my partner's work. The topic of politics and name changes surfaced. At the time, there was a spate of street and other names being changed from historically colonial and apartheid names to original geographical, cultural and ethnic names.

One of the men (also a white South African and an Afrikaner, like me) went on a bit of a rant about the name changes and ended with, "It's more than twenty years later! They (meaning, black people) should be over it (meaning, apartheid) by now!"

Wait, What??

The comment was jarring enough in itself, but then it hit me: this man couldn't stand the English language or the sight of an English person. He was angry about the suffering the "scorched earth policy" of the British army caused his great-grandparents and other Afrikaner people during the Anglo-Boer War (also called the South African War) that waged from October 1899 to May 1902.

Do you spot the issue? He wasn't over a war that had ended sixty years before his birth (and certainly there are legitimate reasons as to why he wasn't over it), yet he expected black people in South Africa to be over apartheid after 21 years. So, I poked the hornet's nest and asked, "How do you explain your dislike of everything English in relation to how you think black people should be over apartheid already?" Oh my, the mayhem that ensued... it was quite spectacular! (He still doesn't like me much. That's okay – I'm over it.)

Forgiveness Is Not Being Over It

I'll share a few observations with you, and please feel free to share yours in the comments below or during our #MTtalk Twitter chat on Friday.

You want others to get over something quickly if you are in the wrong. I know because I've noticed this in myself. It suits me much better if others get over my wrongdoing quickly and we can carry on as if nothing happened.

We confuse the act of forgiveness with being over something. Even if someone has forgiven a perpetrator, it doesn't change them back to who they were before. And certain things we never get over, we just learn to live with them differently.

Events, such as the Covid pandemic, have had different effects on different people. Two people who both came through it okay and who didn't lose any loved ones, might handle the aftermath completely differently. One of them might not lose much sleep over it, while the other still has a visceral reaction when they think of that time.

How Do Our Values Affect Getting Over It?

Our values play a role in how we think about these things. Integrity is one of my top five values and when a person breaks my trust, I take forever to get over it. If upholding a certain image is one of your most important values, you might take forever to get over the "humiliation" if someone sees you in the street when you're not wearing a very expensive brand, for example.

You often want people to be over something because you find it hard if they become emotional. It's basically a selfish wish: you want them to be over it so that you don't have to deal with the awkwardness of witnessing their emotion.

Just as some people have a fast metabolism and others have a sluggish metabolism, people don't all process and digest events at the same rate. But people should have the space and the grace to process events according to their own personal energy and capacity.

The kindest thing we can probably do is to get over wanting others to be "over it" and to hold space for them to process things however they need to.

In our upcoming #MTtalk twitter chat, we'll be discussing why people want you to be over something, what it means to be over something, and how we can better support people who find it difficult to cope with life events. Come and join this safe discussion space to share your thoughts and experience!

In our Twitter poll this week, we wanted to know how you feel if someone says you should be over something. Most participants felt invalidated! To see all the results, click here.

We'd love you to participate in the chat, so we've prepared some questions to get you thinking:

What does being "over something" look like, sound like, feel like?
Can we get over things too quickly? Explain.
Why do we want others to be "over" something?
How do you feel when someone says you should be over something?
What tools or tips have you found useful to process major events?
How can we support people who are having difficulty coping with life events?

Useful Resources

To help you prepare for our upcoming chat, we've compiled a list of resources for you to browse. (Note that you will need to be a Mind Tools Club or Corporate member to see all of the resources in full.)

How to Be Tactful

Asking for Help

Standing Up for Your People

Solution-Focused Coaching

Meditation for Stress Management

Bell and Hart's Eight Causes of Conflict

How to Join the #MTtalk Chat

Follow us on Twitter to make sure you don't miss out on any of the action this Friday! We'll be tweeting out 10 questions during our hour-long chat.

To participate in the chat, type #MTtalk in the Twitter search function. Then, click on "Latest" and you'll be able to follow the live chat feed. You can join the chat by using the hashtag #MTtalk in your responses.

The post Surely You're Over That? – Join Our #MTtalk appeared first on Mind Tools.