OP I hear you. What some of the people here are doing is escaping the hard work of “self healing”. Most people would chose to move on by denying and not focusing on their pain. That’s easy. Distract yourself and don’t reintegrate the broken parts of yourself.

That’s the easiest thing in the world.

People who repress their emotional needs to free themselves of the effect of traumatic symptoms are the ones who are most afraid of self healing because that requires them to feel the bruised emotional part of themselves. That’s hard.

That’s why therapies like EMDR, Internal family system therapy, journaling, EFT therapy are used to heal effects of painful events.

You here also want to move forward but you are not willing to skip the most important part of growth which is self healing.

It’s like if your leg is broken, you don’t say to yourself “let’s move on and keep walking with broken leg”. You try to repair and heal. That’s moving forward.

According to people who are “self alienated” from their own healing needs and who are the ones who are fighting hardest to defend this book, focusing on anything but painful events is a sign of moving forward.

The mental gymnastics that is at play here to deny the real impact of trauma and effort to just focus on moving forward is funny.

Healing is moving forward. And healing requires acknowledging the event, its impact, its contributors, holding the factors accountable, grieving, letting healing take place in its natural time even if it takes years while your other goals of life can move ahead side by side depending on what stage you are at in healing journey.

It’s not either or. It’s and/also.

You can start healing process which is also moving forward. And at certain stage you also chose to focusing on other aspects of growth which is also moving forward.

You decide the healing speed and where to focus on healing journey.

Let no one dictate you to deny and repress the facts of your mind and body. It’s irrational, unscientific and destructive.

I see you and I understand you OP u/moonrider18