Why It’s Ridiculous to Tell Someone to “Move On” From Trauma

Why people can’t just “move on” from trauma:

Recently, I saw the video that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez posted to explain her reaction to the Capitol riots. I was moved by her words and reminded of the many patients I’ve worked with over the years who had also experienced significant trauma in their lives. AOC’s impassioned words motivated me to take pen to paper.

AOC was talking about how people in positions of influence tell the victims of the riot at the US Capitol that they should just “move on” from the experience.

Lately, we’ve also been hearing some people telling those who’ve been discharged from hospital for Covid infections to “move on,” seeing as how they’ve recovered physically from the disease. The phrase, “move on,” is highly problematic, and it’s packed with meaning — meaning that I intend to unpack here.

I feel uniquely qualified to write about trauma because in my psychiatry practice, I’ve been diagnosing and treating people who suffer from trauma for over twenty-five years.

First, let’s define the term. What is trauma? It’s an internal response to devastating events that is manifested by emotional, psychological and physiological changes.

The Statistics:

In Canada, approximately 8% of people who experience trauma develop the full-blown Post-traumatic Stress Disorder, with symptoms including intrusive thoughts or dreams, avoidance of any reminders of the traumatic experience, negative effects on mood and thinking, as well as symptoms of hyperarousal, like being hypervigilant and easily startled.

In the US, 3.5% of the population develops PTSD each year, and in many cases, affected individuals can also suffer from related conditions such as substance misuse, problems with memory, focus and concentration, and a variety of physical ailments.

I have long suspected that patients with fibromyalgia have developed this condition as a result of trauma and its effect on the nervous system. Many of my patients with PTSD also have this condition.

The symptoms:

The symptoms of PTSD can include anxiety, depression, poor sleep, nightmares and flashbacks, apathy, low energy and poor motivation; anhedonia – which is the inability to enjoy anything; feeling disconnected from others, cognitive difficulties; irritability and angry outbursts; self-destructive behaviour; impulsiveness, and not being able to relax or unwind.

These symptoms can take weeks, months, or years to diminish, depending on the type and severity of traumatic event the person experienced and sometimes on how old they were when it happened. Sometimes, they go away on their own; sometimes they never go away, even despite years of therapy and medication.

Just get over it? Really?

When someone tells a sufferer of trauma to “just get over it” or to “move on,” they’re displaying either a profound ignorance as to the nature of trauma or they’re being incredibly insensitive and self-serving.

The experience of trauma is not the same as being upset. We can “move on” relatively easily from being upset. We can’t do the same with trauma. The reason is that by definition, trauma is a profoundly negative experience that is difficult to recover from. If people were able to “move on” from it, it wouldn’t be trauma.

AOC equated being told to “move on” with a tactic used by abusers. I would agree with this, because one trait of the typical abuser is the unwillingness to take responsibility for their destructive actions.

The abuser will tell their victim to “move on,” implying that what the abuser did wasn’t a big deal, and what the victim went through wasn’t “so bad.”

It’s a way to make the victim’s suffering “their problem,” with the implication that they should be able to just “move on.” It’s a tactic to invalidate the victim’s experience, and absolve the perpetrator of their misdeeds.

What causes trauma?

Experiences that can be traumatizing include any type of childhood neglect, shaming, manipulation or abuse or the witnessing of abuse as a child.

In adult life, it could include life-threatening experiences like being a combat soldier; living in a war zone; being displaced or being a refugee; being held up at gunpoint; or being physically, emotionally or sexually assaulted. It can also come from witnessing horrifying scenes in one’s role as a first responder.

Trauma could arise from experiences of profound loss, such as the death of a parent or sibling in childhood, or the death of a child or spouse in adult life. It can come from having a life-threatening illness or from being disfigured.

Trauma affects us so deeply that it can take years to recover from, even with excellent treatment. Telling someone who has trauma to “move on” reveals the speaker’s lack of understanding about the way trauma lingers in the psyche, despite the best possible care.

Some people have a darker reason for telling a victim of trauma to “move on.” As I mentioned above, these individuals are invested in silencing the victim in order that they, or their associates, can escape any consequences for their role in causing the trauma.

Sometimes it’s a neglectful parent telling their child to “move on” from the abuse committed by the other parent, a relative or a family friend — abuse that this parent failed to prevent.

Sometimes, it’s a politician telling victims of trauma to get over it so that they, or their party, won’t be held accountable for their wrong-doing.

These culpable individuals, in negating the damage that’s been done, are grossly misrepresenting the events with the sole goal of trying to protect the perpetrators of the trauma.

Blaming the victim:

Sometimes, certain individuals will blame the victims for “holding on” to their trauma, as though it were a choice to continue suffering. That is an insult to all those who suffer from trauma and who want nothing more than to finally have relief from their pain.

The truth is that we can move on from being insulted, from being disappointed, or from having our feelings hurt. We can move on from being thwarted or frustrated or irritated. We can even move on from a bad break-up. None of these experiences are inherently damaging or require lengthy periods of recovery.

Trauma, on the other hand, can cause lasting psychological damage and it cannot be gotten over without a lot of effort on the part of the survivor and rarely so without the help of a skilled, compassionate professional.

It’s galling to hear people today telling the victims of the Capitol building riot, or for that matter, any survivor of trauma, to “move on,” because their words are implying that the victims are making a choice to wallow in self-pity. That attitude demonstrates a real contempt for the suffering that they, themselves, might be at least in part responsible for.

Most people who have experienced trauma would give anything to stop suffering. To imply that they’ve chosen to stay stuck in their pain is cruel and heartless. Trauma sufferers don’t need to hear that. It’s adding insult to injury.

Again, the nature of trauma is that it penetrates deeply into the psyche. It takes hold and won’t easily let go. If the affected individual is struggling, long after the events have occurred, that’s one way you know that the person has experienced trauma.

One trauma compounds another:

Another point AOC made in her video is that trauma is additive, and one experience of trauma is compounded by another. In her experience, the trauma of the sexual assault she lived through was compounded by the trauma of the violent assault at the Capitol, and being told to “move on” by people in positions of power was additionally traumatizing, as it negated the totality of her experience.

Past trauma makes a person more susceptible to being re-traumatized and in general, more sensitive to painful experiences than someone who has not experienced trauma in the past. The nervous system has been primed and further assaults to it can be devastating. The term, Complex PTSD is used to describe the experience of people with multiple traumas.

AOC also mentioned how certain individuals will accuse those who speak out about their trauma of being “attention-seeking,” as though there was some sort of “pay-off” to sharing one’s pain in public.

Trauma survivors don’t want attention:

I have worked with survivors of trauma for decades and I continue to work with these individuals. I can categorically state that I have never known survivors of trauma to seek attention. Many of my patients have done everything in their power to try and forget what happened to them – it was so deeply distressing.

What these individuals seek is not attention, but rather, relief from their pain, and sometimes, they seek to help other sufferers of trauma by sharing their stories.

Instead of focusing on what the victims of trauma are doing or saying, we should be paying closer attention to those people who are insisting that the victims of trauma “move on.” We need to consider the motivations underlying their actions.

Either these people are being willfully ignorant, refusing to acknowledge the simple cause-and-effect fact that destructive acts inevitably lead to psychological wounds.

Or, perhaps they’re trying to absolve themselves and their cronies of any responsibility for their wrong-doing. Either way, they’re revealing some extremely unattractive character traits.

When we hear someone telling victims that they should “move on” from their trauma, we should consider the possibility that these individuals are clueless and misguided or the equally likely possibility that they’re telling outright, self-serving lies.

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