This entry discusses trauma in detail, but does not go into detail about the causes. 

One of the most isolating things about trauma is that we are so quick to compare it to others. We put our experiences up against extremities of things such as war, sexual assault, life-threatening violence, captivity, profound loss; and if we deem our trauma to not have been as ‘serious’, ‘dramatic’, or ‘painful’, we label ourselves as oversensitive and melodramatic. We convince ourselves that we are making a fuss out something that “wasn’t that bad” because “other people had it worse”. 

But trauma simply doesn’t operate that way. It’s not a competition, and it’s not reserved solely for people who have experienced an ‘obvious’ or ‘extreme’ event. SAMHSA (2024) state that trauma can result from a single incident, a series of incidents, or from ongoing circumstances that are perceived by the person as harmful and leave lasting effects on the person’s wellbeing. In other words, anything can be traumatic because it’s not about what happened, but how it affected you. This matters because so many people carry pain they feel they are not “allowed” to acknowledge. But just because you didn’t experience the worst possible scenario, doesn’t mean your experience wasn’t traumatic. 

Sometimes trauma comes from one dramatic, unmistakable event. Other times, it comes from a hundred small moments that slowly taught you that the world around you was unsafe. This could be growing up around unpredictable anger that constantly left you feeling on edge, being belittled or bullied, living with chaos. Especially in childhood, you may not have had the words to say “this is traumatising me”, you may not have even known the gravity of what you were experiencing, but your body learnt the lesson and remembered it. 

This is part of why speaking about childhood trauma can feel so difficult, because many people imagine trauma as this big, obvious thing but children don’t experience life the way adults do. Their sense of safety is still developing, and they have limited coping skills. According to the National Child Traumatic Stress Network (n.d), children can experience traumatic stress after one or more traumas, which in-turn can effect emotional distress, sleep, dysregulation and their ability to relate to others, amongst other things. 

But, still, people end up invalidating themselves. If your trauma did not appear “bad enough” to others, you may have learnt to doubt your own pain. You may have told yourself, or even been told, that because someone else “had it worse”, you don’t get to feel hurt. “Your childhood wasn’t traumatic”, “it wasn’t that bad”, “stop dramatising it!” … minimising becomes second nature to you; you may feel ashamed by how much something has affected you. 

But feeling the impact of something that has hurt you is not weak, or dramatic, it’s human. 

One of the most important, and validating, things I have learnt about trauma is that it’s personal: no two people respond in exactly the same way (Cumbria, Northumberland, Tyne and Wear NHS Foundation Trust, 2024). Two people can go through similar events and come out of it with very different wounds. That doesn’t make one person dramatic and the other resilient, it simply means that we are not machines and everyone responds to things differently – because we are all different! Also, pain isn’t measured by how ‘convincing’ it seems to others. 

This is particularly true with adverse childhood experiences. Potential traumatic events in childhood are not limited to obvious abuse or neglect; they can things like living with a family member who has mental health difficulties, parents splitting up, unstable homes, rejection. Such experiences can shape health, wellbeing and life outcomes for years (CDC, 2026). 

Often, it is not one single event but persistent instabilities, unpredictability, or the quiet message that you do not matter. And for a child, these can cut incredibly deep.

Recognising your trauma is not the same as exaggerating it. To say “this affected me deeply” is not the same as saying “my pain is worse than everyone else’s!” Trauma is not validated by being the most shocking story in the room, but by its impact. If something overwhelmed your ability to cope, shaped your self-perception, altered your relationships, left you hypervigilant, ashamed, scared, numb, angry, always braced for danger, or whatever the emotion may be, then that pain deserves compassion, not interrogation. 

There is nuance, though. Not every painful experience constitutes trauma, and not every hard childhood leads to PTSD. But that is exactly why comparing stories is futile. No one can determine whether something “should” have traumatised you, all that matters is that it stayed with you and changed how you navigate the world. 

Ultimately, you do not need a more dramatic story to deserve kindness. You do not need to prove it was “bad enough”. You do not need to wait until your pain sounds extreme before you are taken seriously. If it hurt you, if it changed you, if you are still carrying it, it matters. 

References:

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) (2026) About adverse childhood experiences. Available at: https://www.cdc.gov/aces/about/index.html (Accessed: 14 March 2026).

Cumbria, Northumberland, Tyne and Wear NHS Foundation Trust (2024) Post traumatic stress. Available at: https://selfhelp.cntw.nhs.uk/self-help-guides/post-traumatic-stress (Accessed: 14 March 2026).

National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) (2018) Post-traumatic stress disorder (NG116). Available at: https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/ng116(Accessed: 14 March 2026).

National Child Traumatic Stress Network (NCTSN) (n.d.) About child trauma. Available at: https://www.nctsn.org/what-is-child-trauma/about-child-trauma (Accessed: 14 March 2026).

Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) (2024) Trauma and violence: What is trauma and its effects? Available at: https://www.samhsa.gov/mental-health/trauma-violence (Accessed: 14 March 2026).