Does this count as trauma? Small Hurts That Leave a Mark
Trauma doesn’t always occur from big events. Maybe there were small hurts that didn’t get witnessed and addressed with the sensitivity and kindness that you needed, over and over again. This can have an impact on you long after, and shape your behaviours. Here are some of my insights from David Bedrick’s Trauma Clinic course with an example.
Maybe you had a teacher who was terribly mean to you all the time, and when you confided in someone, they dismissed it. They said you were being too sensitive and that the teacher was only trying to help you.
When this happened to you over and over again, you began to feel ashamed about your own feelings. As an adult now, it’s likely that you’re still sensitive, but you often try and minimize your feelings and tell yourself to get over things.
Or perhaps the adult you confided in, denied it and said I’m sure you are making this up. Now you have a hard time trusting yourself.
Or, you had no one to tell or chose not to, because you didn’t want to be a burden. Today, you try and continue to manage everything yourself. You make self-deprecating jokes about your hyper-independence, laugh and move on.
Why does this happen? When the experience of a hurt and a lack of a loving witness happens repeatedly, shame enters. And it can potentially become the lens with which you perceive yourself and every experience thereafter.
What this means is that you begin to doubt your feelings and question your experiences. If something hurtful happens, you think, "This is not a big deal. I need to handle this better," or you completely dismiss that this even happened and move past it without acknowledging it.
Art, psychodrama and EMDR are some of the safest ways to approach and explore past trauma.
Internalization of the witness and altering self-perception
David Bedrick explains this beautifully: when you undergo some form of abuse or something happens that hurts you…
and if there is no one to witness it
or the person that you share it with dismisses it as not a big deal
or flat out denies it, that can turn into shame.
It can really alter how you see yourself.
It becomes the lens through which you see every single experience thereafter. What has happened is that when your hurt is repeatedly met with the same kind of witnessing, you internalize that witness. It becomes a part of you, and that is how you respond instinctively to whatever happens.
The worst part? You’re probably unaware that this even happened.
If you struggle with a harsh inner critic, this could be a reason why.
If you struggle to say no, stand up for yourself and set boundaries, this could be a reason why.
If you’re constantly questioning your experiences, your feelings and your reactions to things, or feel a lot of shame about small things, I hope you found this helpful.
To answer the question…
Yes, it can still count as trauma even if it wasn’t big and dramatic. Things like someone’s constant criticism, emotional unavailability or discrimination can also be traumatic. Even if someone else doesn’t think it was trauma, or it doesn’t fit the typical DSM criteria for PTSD.
A gentle reminder: It’s not you that’s broken and needs fixing, it’s just that you didn’t have a kind and loving witness to validate your experiences when you needed it the most.
Safe ways to approach these past hurts are experiential modalities like art, psychodrama and EMDR. These offer a way to externalize it, offer some distance, without re-traumatizing you while revisiting it. With the right kind of support, you will be able to address and work through your small ‘t’ trauma.
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