Are You Invalidating Your Trauma?
Due to the intensity that can be behind traumatic experiences, it’s common that people have the tendency to invalidate their own traumatic experiences.
Traumatic experiences can be distressing and painful, and as such, you may try to downplay your experiences as a way of coping. Facing your traumas can be emotionally overwhelming and taxing, and so you may choose to avoid or invalidate your traumas to protect yourself from the heavy emotions associated to it.
Additionally, the way that trauma is discussed and perceived in society can also directly influence the pressure that you feel to conform to these societal norms by invalidating your traumatic experiences to avoid judgment, criticism, or stigma from others.
You may also believe that you somehow caused the trauma or could have prevented it, which can make you reluctant to acknowledge your experiences. It’s also possible that you may compare your experiences to others and believe that your trauma is “less severe”, which can then cause you to invalidate your own pain.
If you don’t or haven’t received adequate support or understanding from your community, family, friends, social network, healthcare professionals, etc., you may begin to invalidate your own experiences from having had your feelings and experiences dismissed.
It can also happen where your mind protects you from the traumatic experiences you have gone through by having you dissociate from your traumatic experiences as a way of coping. Dissociation can lead to feeling detached from the trauma, which then makes it difficult to validate your experience and recognize it thoroughly.
Trauma can also lead to complex and conflicting emotions. You may have mixed feelings about your experience, which can make it challenging to validate or accept those experiences fully.
Acknowledging and validating trauma can be a process that involves revisiting painful memories (this is why it’s important to work with a professional to process and unpack your trauma).
Some people may fear that acknowledging their trauma and working towards processing it, will trigger distressing emotions and memories, making it challenging to validate their experiences.
Here are a few reminders about how your trauma is valid:
Your trauma is valid even if it happened a long time ago.
Your trauma is valid even if it took you a long time to realize and process that what you went through was traumatic.
Your trauma is valid even if nobody else knows about it.
Your trauma is valid even if your experiences and symptoms are different than someone else's.
Your trauma is valid even if it isn’t affecting you the same way it used to.
Your trauma is valid even if other people told you that it isn’t.
Your trauma is valid even if it “could’ve been avoided”.
