“It Wasn’t That Bad”.. So Why Am I Still Struggling?

When Trauma Doesn’t Feel Like Trauma

By Lindsey Novakowski

In the counselling space, I often hear clients sharing difficult experiences from the past, but with a caveat like, “But it wasn’t that bad” or “Other people have had it worse”. In this line of work, it’s common to hear about trauma, but rather than agreeing and saying, “You’re right, what happened to you wasn’t that bad; you should hear what the last client told me” these moments reinforce how trauma and its impacts are deeply personal, and no two trauma narratives are the same. And yet, even as people downplay their negative experiences, something still brings them in to therapy, often with a persistent sense of anxiety, overwhelm, or unease.

So why do we do tend to do this to ourselves, how does this keep us stuck, and how can we shift our thinking to a more helpful reframe?

Perception As Protection

In many ways, our tendency to minimize our experiences is protective. The word trauma can feel heavy and loaded with meanings, some that can be hard to identify with. In some ways, downplaying it can be a form of avoidance, because if it “wasn’t that bad” then it doesn’t have to be felt fully.

For some people, this can also stem from early attachment experiences, because maybe the way you grew up was difficult, but you were also taught that the adults in your life knew best and your role was to adapt to their expectations. There can also be protective parts that try to minimize the effects of trauma on identity, because if you were “traumatized”, what might that say about your life? About your past? About you as a person?

All of these responses to trauma make sense, and I never want to force a label onto someone’s experiences if it doesn’t feel right. At the same time, sometimes minimizing our experiences can keep us stuck, so let’s take a look at how we can frame trauma a bit differently.

Clarifying “Trauma”

When thinking about trauma, many of us picture “Big T” Trauma: events such as an accident or a violent assault that involve a clear threat to personal safety. However, there can also be “little t” traumatic experiences, which can be more subtle but still deeply impactful. Some of these experiences might be not having our emotional needs met by a caregiver, or being bullied in school. When these experiences happen in childhood, a pivotal timeframe for developing our sense of self and our nervous system responses, even seemingly insignificant interactions can be internalized as we begin to answer questions like, who am I? What does it mean to feel safe? And, what does it mean to be in relationship with others?

I often appreciate how EMDR founder Dr. Francine Shapiro frames the concept as “any event that has had a lasting negative effect on the self or psyche” (2018, p.39). By broadening the definition of trauma, space is created to recognize that an experience doesn’t necessarily have to be catastrophic to have a lasting effect, and that current struggles may be rooted in the past, even if those experiences feel far away.

Getting Past Your Past

Circling back to that sense of feeling stuck, sometimes this internal invalidation of our past experiences can actually prevent us from being able to process them and move forward. If something “wasn’t that bad” or “was so long ago it shouldn’t matter anymore”, then there is nothing to feel, explore, or work through. But then why do we sometimes still feel like something is off?

Rather than comparing our experiences to others or needing to meet some internal threshold of what counts as “bad enough”, it can be helpful to get curious about what impact did these experiences have on me, or, what did these experiences teach me about myself, others, and safety? Often our inner wisdom already knows that our current struggles are tied to the ways our past shaped us, but it can be daunting to start unpacking that directly, especially if survival up until now has meant minimizing or invalidating our own reality.

The good news is that therapy isn’t a space where you need to have everything figured out before you begin. It can take time to feel ready, and there’s no way to rush that. However, if parts of this feel familiar, it may be worth getting curious about ways your past may still be weighing you down in the present. And, if you decide that you feel ready to stop carrying it all on your own, therapy can be a place where we can begin to make sense of it all, together.

Shapiro, F. 2018. Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) therapy: Basic principles, protocols, and procedures (3rd ed.). The Guildford Press.