Why “just get over it” is bad advice
Parents, this is for students. People sometimes say “just get over it” but this sentiment is wildly misleading, and does not help students learn what they need to learn in order to EFFECTIVELY deal with problems. This video explores how to better look at difficulties so students can have more effective tools to process.
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Video Transcript: Click here to download the transcript PDF.
You see that right there? That’s a big mountain. Can you imagine getting over that thing? Let me tell you, getting over that mountain, and there’s a point to this, getting over that mountain is way harder than it looks. And ii’s way harder than it has to be. Right now, I just hiked uphill for a while. Now making down for a little bit, so I’ll catch my breath in a second. But, what is up students? My name is Seth, SethPerler.com. I’m what’s called an executive function coach based in Colorado. I help struggling students navigate this thing called education so that you can have an awesome life.
What I want to talk about here is getting over it, versus getting through it. You know, in your life, you’re gonna hear a lot of people tell you, “Just get over it. Just get over it.” There is no such thing as just getting over it. It’s so wrong. People who say that, often are people who do not know how to deal with their problems or their feelings. They stuffed them. Our culture teaches us to stuff our feelings, to not feel our feelings. It teaches us that it’s not okay to feel our feelings. “Don’t cry about it, just let it go. Just forget about it. Just stop thinking about it. Just get over it.” Well, let me tell you something. Let me impart some wisdom on you that I have learned in my life the hard way, and I’m sure some of the people in your life have learned this the hard way, maybe you’ve learned it the hard way. There is no getting over it. Getting over it is way harder than it seems. That mountain. If you were to get over it, you would have to have serious rock climbing equipment, serious belayers, people who would keep you safe during that rock climb, and it’s extremely technical and extremely difficult. However, what I’m doing right now is I’m getting through it. I’m getting through it. I’m getting through the mountains here. Okay?
One of the differences between getting over it and getting through it is this. When you are getting over it, when we are getting over it, what we’re often doing is we are stuffing it. We’re stuffing our feelings, we’re pretending it’s not there, we’re acting tough. We’re trying to act like it doesn’t matter, trying to forget about it, trying to just let it go. Trying to distract ourselves with electronics, TV, even social life, even things that are not inherently bad. But when we are using them to distract ourselves from feeling the feelings we need to feel, that’s not good. So that’s getting over it. But getting through it, getting through it is the real courageous thing. Feeling your feelings is the real courageous thing, allowing yourself to move through emotions. So we have basically these two parts of us, we have sort of a rational and logical mind, and we have an emotional mind. When people are able to get through it, that means that they are feeling the difficult emotions, and it is very courageous. It’s very hard to feel our feelings. It takes a lot of time, patience, and persistence. But what we find is that we’re afraid, and we don’t like to think we’re afraid. We’d like to think “Oh, yeah, I’m not afraid. I don’t get afraid of things.” Well, fear really can rule us a lot of times, and being afraid to feel our feelings can really rule us. Even people that look like the strongest people you would ever think, a lot of them are afraid to feel. They’ll act like they don’t, because they’re so terrified to feel they want the whole world to think that they don’t feel. We are supposed to feel we are human. So getting through it. A lot of times what we find is that when we get through it, and we feel those feelings that are so scary, they can be so terrifying, when we allow ourselves to feel them and do what’s called process our feelings in healthy manner. Whether that’s seeing a therapist, journaling, just sitting quietly and allowing it to pass, thinking about it, bouncing it off of a friend, telling a parent, telling somebody about what you’re going through, someone you trust, having a good conversation, a good cry, a good sad moment, lonely moment, it’s okay to feel those things. And what we find is that when we feel them, first of all, they pass a lot quicker than when we try to act like we don’t feel anything. When we try to get over it, it turns out that they pass a lot quicker. It also turns out that they’re not as bad as we were afraid they were going to be. We tend to catastrophize. We tend to think our feelings are so scary, it’s going to kill us, like “How can I feel this? This is terrible. This is awful. I just wanted to stop I just want to go away.” But when we move through it and we allow ourselves to feel the anger, or the sadness, or the loneliness, or whatever the feeling is, we notice that like a cloud, what ends up happening is if you watch that cloud long enough, right now, as you’re watching it, it might seem like it’s sitting still. But if you watch it for a minute or two, you’ll notice that it passes. And that’s what happens when we are processing feelings in a healthy way. They can pass, they can do their work. They have a message for us too. Whenever we feel something, the reason we feel anger, sadness, loneliness, all these things, they’re trying to tell us something that we have a need. A need we need to express or we need to fulfill. If we’re angry, anger is what’s called a boundary emotion. So anger is telling us that a boundary is being hit. We need to work with whatever boundary is being taken advantage of. Now, that may not be true, we may be perceiving things differently. But it also we may not, we may really someone’s pushing our boundaries. And the anger is telling us this doesn’t feel right. I need to, in a healthy way, communicate and move through this, and yada yada.
Anyhow, I really just wanted to make that point. I want you to leave this video knowing when someone says, “Get over it.” That’s not where it’s at. Getting through it and having the courage to feel and process difficult emotions takes time. It’s a skill, it takes years to learn how to do, but that is what’s going to serve you. That’s what’s going to help you create the life of your dreams. That’s what’s gonna help you have a better career when you’re older. That’s what’s gonna help you have better relationships with your family, your friends, your community. That’s what’s gonna help you have peace in your heart. All right, that’s all I got.