It Wasn’t That Bad
How minimizing my trauma sabotaged my healing
It’s true: No matter what I’m going through, there are people in the world who have it worse. But that doesn’t make my experiences any less real. It is possible to empathize with others while acknowledging and working through my own pain.
“Nikki’s got such a positive attitude about stuff,” I overheard my mom saying to a friend of hers when I was a young adolescent. “Everything happens for a reason, she always says.”
It was true. I never seemed to let the setbacks in life get to me. Something shitty would happen, and I would think to myself, Well, that’s over. It sucked, but it could have been worse. Hearing my mother gush about my positivity, I doubled down, taking all upsets, large and small, in stride. After all, I figured, I shouldn’t waste my time dwelling on something that was already over and couldn’t be changed.
I used to think this blind acceptance was a good thing. It certainly served me well, growing up in a house where uncomfortable feelings weren’t supposed to exist, and if they did, you were expected to deal with them swiftly and privately.
