Is It Still Trauma If They Meant Well?
When I used to hear the word trauma, I never thought of my childhood. Trauma sounded…big. Bleeding. Violent. Undeniable.
But me? I’m whole, I’m functioning. I have a family, a job. I make jokes, I seem fine.
Surely trauma survivors don’t function in normal society, right?
So I couldn’t have trauma.
I Didn’t Think It Counted
For a long time, I believed my experiences didn’t “count” because they didn’t cross some imaginary threshold I had in my head.
To me, real trauma meant physical abuse, adult predators, hospital visits.
None of that happened to me, so what I was feeling clearly didn’t “qualify.”
How Can I Hold Both?
But something else stopped me from claiming my truth, too. Something deeper than denial.
I also believed that acknowledging what happened - what hurt - would make me a villain.
Or worse, it would make a villain out of them.
And whether out of fear or love, I wasn’t ready for that.
I wasn’t ready to challenge what I believed about the people I loved.
So I stayed quiet. Because how could I hold both things?
That I loved them.
And that they hurt me.
It felt like admitting the second would erase the first.
That if I said I was traumatized, it meant that I was saying they were monsters.
But I didn’t want revenge. I didn’t want to hate them. I just didn’t want to keep carrying the ache alone.
For 20 years, I showed up to therapists offices, looking for where this ache in me came from.
But I could never trust anyone enough to fully open up, and instead wound up treating the symptoms instead of the illness itself.
I told myself, over and over: Nothing bad happened to me, so these patterns must just mean I’m a bad person at my core.
And since no amount of therapy or meds ever worked, that just confirmed the story:
I must be broken at the root.
And that became the lens through which I viewed myself and the world for the next 30 years.
What I missed, though, is that there is no healing while you’re still denying the wound.
Healing only happens when you’re willing to face it head on.
I learned that it’s okay to name your pain - naming it does not deny the good times you had.
Naming it does not mean you can never have a relationship with the person again.
Naming it is for you and you alone.
You Don’t Need Permission
Here’s what I finally understand:
Trauma has nothing to do with the intent of the source.
And everything to do with how your nervous system was wired to survive.
You don’t need external proof. You don’t need bruises and broken bones.
You don’t need permission to feel how you feel. You just need truth.
If you’ve been waiting for permission to call what happened to you trauma, I’ll say it: you qualify.
If your body remembers, that’s enough.
If your story aches, that’s enough.
If you’ve spent years trying to downplay the pain, you’re not alone.
And you don’t have to keep doing it - you get to take up space. You get to feel how you feel. You get to heal.
Because what happened matters.
And so do you.
