When people hear the word trauma, their minds often jump to the most visible, intense experiences like natural disasters, violent events, war zones, or physical abuse. But trauma isn’t always loud. Sometimes, it’s small. What the difference is, is the relativity of these experiences. I have also included a simple trauma test * in this post.
Here’s the truth: trauma is deeply personal, and it’s always valid.
The Relativity of Trauma
One of the most misunderstood things about trauma is that it can’t, and shouldn’t, be compared. What deeply wounds one person might be a minor inconvenience to another, and that doesn’t mean one person is weaker. It means we all have different lenses shaped by our upbringing, temperament, past experiences, and resilience.
The Simple Trauma Test*:
- You think a lot about an ‘bad’ experience that happened to you (or that you witnessed)
- You struggle with trust, boundaries, or feeling safe in relationships, often fearing abandonment, betrayal, or being “too much.”
- You may have dreams/nightmares about the ‘bad’ event.
- You overreact or shut down during certain situations that others seem to handle calmly, especially conflict, rejection, or feeling out of control.
- You avoid certain people, places, or topics, not because you don’t care, but because they trigger deep discomfort, anxiety, or panic.
- You have intense self-criticism, shame, or guilt, even when you haven’t done anything wrong—often replaying past events over and over.
If you answered yes to these then it is likely that you have experienced a traumatic event. *This does not replace an actual diagnosis. To know for sure you have trauma (PTSD), please seek medical attention for a medical professional’s trauma test/diagnosis.
For someone, losing a beloved pet might create a spiral of grief that mirrors the loss of a family member. For another, growing up in a household where emotions were dismissed might leave deeper scars than a single moment of intense physical harm. These things aren’t quantifiable. There’s no trauma Olympics. There’s no gold medal for “worst pain,” and healing doesn’t require you to prove how bad it was.
Trauma is trauma. Period.
Moving from Victimhood to Empowerment
Acknowledging trauma is the first step, but it’s not the final one. There’s a significant difference between having experienced trauma and living your life through the identity of being a victim.
When you’re in survival mode, it makes sense to see everything through the lens of what happened to you. It’s a normal part of the processing step, and it’s how your brain protects you. But staying in the space forever can limit your growth. Over time, it becomes a lens that filters out possibility, connection, and joy.
Healing starts when you decide to stop waiting for someone to apologize, understand, or fix it and instead choose to reclaim your story. You have the power to chose what is best for you, and you deserve to have these event fade and become who you were meant to be without them weighing you down. Re-read the simple trauma test again, what can you work toward not letting it affect you? Maybe it’s letting someone you love in a little more, or doing something in your community more often.
You Can Move Forward
That doesn’t mean forgetting. It also doesn’t mean pretending it didn’t hurt. It’s saying, “Yes, this happened to me, and I still get to choose who I become and am becoming.” You don’t need to let experiences hold you back anymore. The simple trauma test above, not only shows you the trauma, it also shows you how you can break the cycle.
That is the power we carry to move forward. Being able to hold those memories and move forward. You can genuinely smile again when you can truly live in your shoes and feel sure-footed in them. It gives you a since of belonging in your own memories and helps you move forward in healing. But remember, this can take time and it wont magically happen over night.
Strength Isn’t How Much You Endured Through Trauma, It’s How You Chose to Heal
Strength isn’t measured by how “bad” your trauma was. It’s not about how much you pushed through without breaking; It’s about choosing to rise, to feel, to confront, and to reframe to build upon your growth mindset.
It’s about the courage to say:
“I deserve to feel better.”
“My past wont write my future.”
“I’m still worthy of love, peace, and happiness.”
Healing doesn’t erase what happened it reshapes your relationship to it. And you’re allowed to feel proud of yourself even if someone else had it “worse.” Because healing and trauma isn’t a competition. It’s allowing the growth mindset to come in and shift your perspective on things.
Take, for example, before modern science, people would think blood letting was a cure for wounds and diseases, it was their truth, it was how society operated. But when modern science came along we learned better. We evolved and we grew in knowledge. It’s the same with your own healing. It takes time to evolve. It takes knowledge to gain a new perspective and understanding to the traumas you faced.
Healing Over Time
If you’ve been stuck in guilt because you think your pain “wasn’t that bad,” this is me telling you from my own personal experience of comparison that it was bad, for you, else we wouldn’t call it trauma.
People tell me all the time how I’ve overcome so much, and that I am so strong and I’ve been through so much. And yes, I have, however, I know lots of kids that had it worse than me, and I was just their witness. What I saw that was terrifying, they lived through, but, here’s the thing, we all share the same 5 or more of the responses in the trauma test above maybe it’s in different degrees, but nevertheless, we can also all overcome the responses to our emotional wounds listed in the trauma test.
There was a lot of back and forth in my own mind about giving myself the permission to heal, not from others, but within me. If someone once told you to “just get over it,” including yourself, this is your reminder that healing isn’t linear, and there is no timeline on when you need to heal. It is all up to you and where you are at right now.
Letting Go to Move Forward
And if you’re still walking with a limp no one else sees, know this: You are not weak. You are healing. That is one of the strongest things a person can do. Staying in the victim story will not allow you to move forward. However, you get to write a new chapter the way you want too when you leave it behind.
You don’t need permission from anyone else to let it go either, you just need you; your breath, your willingness, and your truth.
And that is more than enough to begin unfolding your journey.
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