There’s a Reason You Just Can’t “Get Over It”

For anyone who is stuck, stressed, or starting to spiral

People don’t always say “get over it”, but they say other things that mean the same thing. The message comes through loud and clear — whatever we’re feeling has gone on long enough, and it’s time for us to move on and, most importantly, to shut up. We would if we could, right?

But that’s the point. When we get stuck in our feelings, the last thing we need is everyone telling us that we’re wrong for it. We already know that it’s unhealthy. Why do they think we’re so stressed out about it?

For a long time, I was stuck. I just couldn’t move forward. My grief was complicated, and the non-linear healing journey seemed to go backward more than forward much of the time. I had done all the things people say to do. I’d had therapy. I focused on myself. I spent quality time with the people I love. I dated. I started new hobbies and made new plans.

And I was still stuck.

I was still grieving for a relationship that was long over. So, I tried all the other advice. I focused on all his faults, but that didn’t work because I’m the kind of person who loves people more for their flaws and vulnerabilities. I focused on the lessons I learned; there were many. I turned my attention to gratitude and found much to appreciate. I took every possible step in an effort to let go — but getting over it felt impossible.

That’s when I finally realized that we don’t get over it. In fact, trying to get over it isn’t even a rational thing to do. We will, ideally, move through it and move on, but it will always be something that happened to us. We are forever changed by our experiences. We can’t ever return to who we were before.

I got beyond the anger and hard feelings of disappointed love. I got through the loneliness and despair. I gathered gratitude, lessons, and love, and every day, I took small steps to make my life what I wanted. The life I’m creating no longer includes him, and some days, that still makes me sad. But I don’t feel stuck anymore.

These days, I’m not trying to get over it. I’m allowing myself to feel all the feelings that come up, but I don’t try to hold onto them. I’ve found some things that have worked and more things that didn’t. Here’s what helped.

Find a Designated Friend

I had one friend who let me vent and process the experience as much as I needed to, for as long as I needed. It didn’t matter if it had been weeks or months since the relationship ended. She never made me feel wrong for my feelings or tried to hurry me out of them. She just listened. She offered support.

She also told me the truth. She didn’t let me romanticize the thing that broke my heart. She reminded me that much of my mistakes came from trauma and that nothing I could have done differently would have actually changed the outcome. She reminded me that I deserve love I don’t feel like I have to earn. We all need a friend like this when we’re stuck in our feelings.

Return to What You Love

It also helped to return to what I loved. As I went through the healing process, I asked myself what made me happy. I love to travel, so I planned trips with my children. I even revisited a place I had visited with my former partner and made new memories. I returned to other interests, too, that I’d lost touch with while grieving.

It’s important to figure out what makes us happy and then do that. Sometimes, it’s the simple things that help — the first cup of coffee in the morning while everyone else is still asleep, a book we’ve been looking forward to reading, a walk through a beautiful park. We need to return, as many times as it takes, to what we love and to let it heal us.

Return to Who You Love

I also began to make more time for friends and family. It’s become an important part of my week to meet friends for lunch or coffee or to plan outings with them. It’s easy to isolate ourselves when we’re feeling sad or angry, but I found that it helped to make a conscious effort to nurture those relationships.

I began to see which relationships felt good to me and which didn’t. I even learned which friends I could talk to on the sad days, and which were better for when my mood was elevated. When I felt lonely, I planned a date with friends and felt better.

Accept Reality

There is no getting over it and instantly being okay, never again returning to those feelings. For most of us, it just takes time. We might even get triggered about old grief years down the road when something reminds us of it. The process isn’t supposed to feel good, and there’s not a lot we can do to make it feel better.

Frustration is normal. Sadness and anger — they’re normal, too. We need to stop labeling our emotions as “bad” or “good” and just feel them.

I think that was the thing that finally clicked for me. If I loved that person better than I’d loved anyone else with the exception of my own children, then why did I expect to just bounce back with ease? The harder we love, the longer we grieve. I don’t regret loving hard, so why am I so hard on myself for grieving with equal intensity?

Ignore Outside Criticism

I finally had to silence all the voices in my head (and around me) telling me that I should be over it by now. I had to ignore the criticism and just feel my emotions without judgment. The fact that they didn’t feel good didn’t make them bad. It just made them … normal. This is normal grief. The intensity of it was in direct proportion to the love. What is more beautiful than that, really?

No one else can tell us how to feel because no one else shares our individual lived experience. They can imagine what it’s like to walk in our shoes and what they would do in that situation, but they can’t really know. We are the only authority in our own lives when it comes to our emotional experiences. Sadly, if we never actually process our emotions and allow ourselves to feel them, we’ll get stuck in a different way — never healing and hurting others in the process.

I can’t tell you that I’m over it. I stopped trying to get there. I will say that I only have rare and passing moments of anger or sadness. I’ve accepted what is, and I’ve built a beautiful, meaningful life for myself. Some days, I miss him. Some days, I forget to miss him. Some days, I have hope that I will love someone as fully who will love me the same way.

Sometimes, I still wonder “what if”. I try very hard not to judge myself for this perfectly ordinary thought. I’m getting better at fully feeling my feelings without judging them. Today, I feel calm with a little bit of wistfulness around the edges. I accept that it won’t last, and I still enjoy it.

Someone somewhere will get to this point and think they’re over it. The truth is that life happens, and sometimes in all the mess and madness, we find someone who touches our hearts and leaves their mark on it. What if we saw it as a blessing rather than a curse? Maybe we wouldn’t try so hard to get over it.