I hate it when NTs tell me "just get over it"

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Adam82
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27 Oct 2010, 6:13 am

This year, both of my grandfathers died within the space of a few months, I have been struggling to find regular employment, and a good lady friend of mine who I loved and trusted rejected my advances, and shattered my self esteem.

Even my own mother tells me to 'get over it'. :(

NTs just do not get it. Aspies hate changes to their routine. 'Getting over' anything takes ten times the effort of anyone else.



Locustman
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27 Oct 2010, 8:42 am

irishwhistle wrote:
Sparrowrose wrote:
People can be so unthinkingly cruel. I was told to "get over it" a month after my daughter died. "Why do you keep talking about this? Just get over it." I think people tell you to get over it . .. not because they really think you can or should get over it but rather because they don't want to deal with it.


I've got to say that NTs with any sense would consider that horribly inappropriate. I mean, there's a point where the insensitivity of other becomes something that isolates them because others around them, Aspie and NT alike, consider their words to be cruel and callous. Telling someone to get over the death of a close family member, especially their own son or daughter, would not be considered good form no matter how many years had passed. Suggesting they move on with their life might be needed if the person was really doing nothing else, but even so it would be a risk. The phrase "get over it" is pretty much regarded as rude and abrupt any way you say it. As much as it can anger in these individual situations, we should remember that it really reflects badly on that person, rather than representing the views of all people like them. That's a dangerous direction to go anyway... the sweeping generalization.




I agree. Telling someone to "just get over" the death of their daughter is blindingly insensitive, even by NT standards, and the person who said it deserves a smack. I doubt that even most NTs would consider that an acceptable response to a major bereavement.


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27 Oct 2010, 10:08 am

Sparrowrose wrote:
People can be so unthinkingly cruel. I was told to "get over it" a month after my daughter died. "Why do you keep talking about this? Just get over it." I think people tell you to get over it . .. not because they really think you can or should get over it but rather because they don't want to deal with it.


I think even a socially unaware Aspie would be able to figure out how inappropriate this is. Sometimes people are vile jerks. NT or Aspie, a jerk is just a jerk.



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27 Oct 2010, 11:53 am

roseblood wrote:
Stim to your heart's content in their company and tell them to "get over it" because it's more convenient for you that they do that. If we have to endure their norms making things difficult for us without complaint then they should have to do the same for us.


I have had the same thought as well. Furthermore, they would have to change towards far fewer people than we have to, so if they expect us to change to most people, why couldn't they change to a minority? After all it was them who were supposed to be the strong and "abled" ones.

As for the quotes: I have never understood how it can make things better simply "not to be the only one".



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27 Oct 2010, 12:53 pm

Sparrowrose wrote:
League_Girl wrote:
Yeah even none autistic people lack emotional and social reciprocity and unfortunately miscarriages, family losses, and stillborns is one of the tough topics for anyone to deal with. People don't know how to give support or what to say so they all tend to say the wrong things in it or not understand how the person is really feeling because they never experienced it. Plus they might get uncomfortable because they don't know how to handle the topic. Sometimes they even get logical than giving emotional support like they might say to someone who has had a miscarriage "At least you weren't that far along, imagine having a stillborn?" or "you can try again" "lot of women miscarry in the first trimester and they end up having a successful pregnancy after that" "at least you can get pregnant" or "there was probably something wrong with the egg."


One guy told me, "I know exactly how you feel. Lucas was a difficult birth." And I just looked over at where Lucas was playing with his brother and wondered how anyone could be so crazy/thoughtless/blind as to tell me they knew exactly how I felt because something totally different happened to them.

But at least it was better than the guy who started telling dead baby jokes to me a week after the stillbirth. At someone else's baby shower, no less. Not funny.



You went to a baby shower? I don't think I would have gone if I lost mine. It was hard seeing pregnant women and babies when I lost mine. Even on TV. Even at work it was hard because there were at least three other women at work who were also pregnant but at least I didn't work everyday.



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27 Oct 2010, 3:38 pm

League_Girl wrote:
You went to a baby shower? I don't think I would have gone if I lost mine. It was hard seeing pregnant women and babies when I lost mine. Even on TV. Even at work it was hard because there were at least three other women at work who were also pregnant but at least I didn't work everyday.


I was fairly emotionally numb. I still am. I only cried once and that was three days afterward when I woke up from a dream and thought I could smell her.

My mom told me she was worried about me that I might be in shock because I didn't cry that night when she met me at the hospital (I had a home birth and the EMTs had to come because she was stuck (shoulder dystocia) and her heartbeat slowed to about a tenth what it should have been and when the EMTs broke her collar bones and got her out she wasn't breathing and had no heart beat so we all went to the hospital.)

My former friend (she's since decided she wants nothing to do with me, despite having been best friends for over a decade) said she was worried about me the next day when I didn't cry while I asked them to bring my baby so I could hold her, dress her, have photos with her. The nurses seemed worried, too and said things like, "you do realize she's dead, right?"

On Mother's Day (a month after my daughter's death), a group of friends took me to a bar and one girl kept raving about how great the art at the bar was and how I was going to love it. It turned out that the black walls had been painted with dayglow images of uteruses full of babies that glowed in the black light. I was offended that people would think it was a great place to bring me (although, yes, the artwork was stunning. Especially the twins painted to look like a yin yang) but I didn't cry and I didn't even yell at anybody. I just waited until no one was looking (because I didn't want a fuss) and left and walked home.

A few months later, another friend decided to "purge" me or something with a home-made ritual: she handed me her baby a bit later in the year, on Lammas (a summer pagan holiday) witht he lights low and only candles lit and started talking really low about pretending it was my baby and how even though her son was three months older than my daughter would have been that she would have been the same size by then (she was ten pounds, twelve ounces at birth) and I held Ryan and loved him but never pretended he was Gwynneth and never cried.

I don't know how a stillbirth would feel to an NT. But I've been relatively numb about the whole thing and still am, although I still think about it regularly and wear a special pin with her name on it on her birthday and for Stillbirth Remembrance Day (September 6) and Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness month (October) and day (October 15). I keep a framed photo of her beside my bed and she is still a part of my life even though it's been 16 years now. It's possible that she is so important to me because she is the only child I will ever have. I might have let her memory fade a bit mor eif I'd had other children to distract me -- I don't know. And maybe if I'd had some great, purging, hysterical breakdown I wouldn't still keep her memory so close to me. I don't know that, either.

In the weeks after, people kept telling me I was so strong or that I didn't have to pretend to be so strong. But I wasn't strong or pretending; I was just numb. And what the people who wanted me to get over it and shut up and the particular individual who actually said to get over it and stop talking about it didn't realize was that they were asking me to erase the last almost-year of my life. What they wanted me to do was to pretend a big chunk of my life didn't exist. Because not having been pregnant herself, the woman who said to get over it and stop talking about it couldn't have realized that there was nothing I did or thought or experienced in the previous months that didn't have something to do with being pregnant and expecting a child so the only way I could not talk about it was to cut a chunk of my life away and destroy the continuity and pretend that two months ago didn't exist and pretend that ten months ago was what really happened two months ago. And there was no summer fall or winter but somehow my life magically leaped from spring to next spring.


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LittleTigger
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27 Oct 2010, 4:09 pm

If someone had said that get over it rubbish
afrer my Tammy passed I would just have
to scream at them and kick them down.

I think id have gone mad.


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27 Oct 2010, 4:49 pm

I think NTs still go through the same thing you went through. They're sad, upset, they also hold their stillborns and dress them up and take pictures, even give them a name and they treat it like it's their real baby. One of my friends from elementary school had a stillborn at 27 weeks and had to go into labor. She had a name for her and dressed her up and they buried her in the cemetery.

I don't know if they ever get over it (I mean do they get over if their older child died or their teen or adult child?) but I found out it's one of the strong topics over at Babycenter so anything you say, women can get all bent out of shape about it taking what you say out of context or getting offended for no reason when you meant nothing bad by what you said and sometimes a choice of word you use can cause someone to flip out they interpret your whole entire post differently. Some women there have pictures of their sillborns as their avatars and some even post them in their profiles and in the miscarriages, stillborn, and losses group. Some post them in their journal when they tell about having their baby early and it passing away. Some go into early labor and the baby is alive after it's born and then it dies or some find out their babies died inside them so they had to go into labor to have it or they have complications and they rush into the hospital but their baby dies inside them. I don't read lot of that stuff because I don't want to get all stressed out about what if I have one too so I mostly avoid those stories. Same as the group. I refuse to step a foot in that group even though I once looked at the photos there because I had heard how mothers posted pictures of their stillborns there or miscarried babies and my curiosity got me. Instead it made me sad to see them so I stopped looking at them. Since it's a strong topic over there, I wouldn't even ask how a stillborn felt to them and if they felt numb or not or if they didn't cry or cried or how did they feel because I don't know how that be interpreted. Unless someone had one themselves and decided to talk about it, I think that mother get better treatment.

I even heard some continue buying baby stuff after having a stillborn or losing their baby after birth and I heard in some cultures, hospitals give the mother a doll to take home. Everyone grieves differently. I didn't cry either at first when I found out I had a miscarriage and then two days later it finally hit me and I was all of a sudden crying. Then I'd feel better and then those feelings comes back when I see a pregnant woman or a baby. Sometimes I would cry. Of course I tossed everything out except for the pregnancy book and breastfeeding book and a few baby stuff I had. I never bought anything new either for my baby I lost. But I eventually got a doll and pretended it was my real baby and my husband kept saying I was playing with it and I made him play with it. He held it for me. I even had a name for her and then I started to forget about her so I was leaving her in my room and stuff because I got so focused on something else. Now she is just in the closet with my other baby stuff. I never had to get counseling either when I was starting to think about it but kept forgetting to make an appointment. Then I was over it so I didn't need to anymore. It was like all of a sudden when I got over it because I got so focused on something else it kept my mind off my loss and my fake baby.



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27 Oct 2010, 4:50 pm

LittleTigger wrote:
If someone had said that get over it rubbish
afrer my Tammy passed I would just have
to scream at them and kick them down.

I think id have gone mad.


Was she your daughter too or pet?



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27 Oct 2010, 7:55 pm

She was my wife.
The most beautiful woman on the planet to me.

When she passed, I just came home and laid
on the floor and ran out of life, I almost totally
gave up on life and did not eat or drink anything
for days, I was just ready to give up, until
a cop showed up, a cop that is now one of
my best buds, in fact an adopted brother now.

I might be dead if it were not for him.


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27 Oct 2010, 9:16 pm

And the experts say that we're the ones who lack empathy. That doesn't make sense to me.


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LittleTigger
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27 Oct 2010, 9:32 pm

I hadn't heard that those of us on spectrum
lacked empathy until I came to this board.

That's interesting and weird.

My only guess and i am not a doctor,
but that most NTs antennae cannot
decode our (well not my) transmissions, I am have
alot of trouble decoding most NTs
and I need my brother to translate
alot of times, he seems to be very
good at translating AS -> NT and
back.


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08 May 2011, 9:45 pm

melbi wrote:
Some NTs in uni are nice...but I hate the way they talk to me when I'm depressed or anxious.

QUOTE NT "Does having an anxiety attack help you solve the problem? It doesn't! So just get over it!"

QUOTE NT "You're not the only one who has problems, everyone has their problems in life, so just get over it!"

QUOTE NT "You're not the only one who is stressed, so it's not a big deal, just deal with it."

QUOTE NT "Why are you so depressed? There's nothing wrong with having autism!"

QUOTE NT "Stop using AS as an excuse, you're not the only one who has problems in life."

QUOTE NT "It's easy to talk to people, just open your month."

etc etc etc...anyone has similar expereince? I totally hate it!! !! !! !! !!!ARGH!! !! !! !! !! It also made me realise how hard it is for people to empathise with others.....



that's them just being ignorant :-(



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08 May 2011, 9:56 pm

My dad used to tell me to just relax when I get stressed out or have anxiety. He also used to tell me I need to learn to deal with it and get used to it.



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08 May 2011, 10:47 pm

Sometimes it helps to know other people have problems. Just getting over the problems isn't that easy. I have told people others have problems, too, but I know better than to advise them to "just get over" whatever they are experiencing because it doesn't work like that. It's better to try to help them get their mind off of it.



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09 May 2011, 4:08 am

melbi wrote:
"Why are you so depressed? There's nothing wrong with having autism!"

They were doing so badly until they spoiled it with good intentions! :lol: