Your Experience Is Still Valid, Even if Others Have It Worse
Originally Published on 05/07/2024 on my Psychology Today Blog, Healthy Communication in Hard Relationships
One of the things that I hear all the time from clients I work with is that they should not be feeling so bad or having a hard time with what they are going through because “other people had it worse” or they “didn’t have it that bad.” This is a very common reaction, but it is not helpful when people are looking to find healing and growth.
Why Do We Minimize Our Own Experience?
There can be many reasons why people tend to minimize their own experiences and suffering. Often, minimizing what we have experienced by saying “It wasn’t that bad” or “Other people have had it way worse than I did” can help us to feel like our reactions and emotions are more manageable in size. It can keep us from feeling too overwhelmed before we are ready to be able to process our experiences and emotions. However, while it can be an effective coping mechanism, it is not one that is healthy in the long term. At some point, we have to process our experiences and feel our emotions, or it will start to come out in other ways—more anxiety or stress, a bigger reaction to a new difficult life experience, shutting down from other emotions (even the positive emotions we want to feel), or in behaviors like emotional eating or drinking more.
In addition to being a coping strategy, we often minimize our experience because the impact of the experience is not accepted by society at large. The term we have for this is “disenfranchised grief,” and it applies to any experience that we have that led to a loss (like a divorce or break up, loss of a pet, loss of a job, loss of safety in a relationship, not having the relationship with a parent that you would have liked to have had, etc.) that can cause us to feel a sense of pain or loss but that society does not expect us to grieve. This can lead to us minimizing our experience because the people around us also minimize what we went through.
But Other People Do Have It Worse
One of the hard things with minimizing our experiences is that when we say “Other people have it worse,” we are correct. There is always someone who has experienced something worse than we have. But that does not mean that our pain is not valid. Loss and pain exist on a spectrum, and different experiences will impact people in different ways—what was significant to one person might not have the same impact on someone else. And that is OK.
Many trauma therapists describe traumas as “Big T” and “little t” traumas. Big T traumas include events that are often associated with the development of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and can cause trauma in a single, significant event. Things like rape, witnessing a violent crime, being in a natural disaster, being physically abused, seeing combat, or getting in a severe car accident, or, in short, things that threaten one’s life or safety, are considered “Big T” traumas. These are often the experiences that people refer to when they say, “But someone had it worse.” And it is valid—these experiences are painful and traumatic, and can create a profound and lasting impact on the people who experience them.
But “little t” traumas can also have significant impacts even if they don’t seem “as bad” as the “Big T” traumas. Though these experiences are not life-threatening like “Big T” traumas, they are events or series of events that can cause difficulties in coping and emotional functioning. Examples of “little t” traumas include things like a difficult divorce, interpersonal conflict, being bullied or rejected by peers, chronic pain, a difficult relationship with a parent growing up, abrupt relocation, financial hardships, and so on. These experiences can also have a compounding effect where “little t” traumas may be experienced over an extended period or people may experience more than one, which can exacerbate the impact on emotional functioning including low self-esteem, anxiety, fatigue, irritability, and grief. While this might not meet the diagnostic criteria for PTSD, it can still have a significant impact on one's well-being.
These “little t” traumas, though, are often overlooked by society and by support people. While most people agree that “Big T” traumas are significant events that are likely to have an impact on the person who experiences them, this is not necessarily true with “little t” traumas. Often people who are struggling because of “little t” trauma have been told statements like “It is time to move on” or that they “need to get over it,” which can lead to internalizing the message that their experience really was not bad enough to have the impacts that they are experiencing.
So What Now?
Whether you have experienced a “Big T” trauma or “little t” traumas, your experiences are valid, and you deserve to be seen and understood, and to find healing. Trauma is trauma, regardless of how it was experienced. As I often tell clients, no one would choose to feel the way a traumatized nervous system feels. So, if you are struggling, the experience(s) that led to those struggles are bad enough. Even if someone else experienced those events and had different impacts and even if someone else experienced something harder, your experience is valid and understandable. If you feel like this article resonated with you, and you are looking for support, you may want to investigate working with a therapist trained in trauma. Healing is possible, and you deserve it, no matter what happened to get you to this place.
