5 Things You Should Never Say To Someone Healing From Trauma
#1 “Don’t you think some people have it worse than you?”
Talking about trauma is necessary if we want to deepen our collective awareness and help each other in our healing journeys.
Fortunately, there have been improvements in our willingness to talk about our own trauma — and the more we talk about our personal, traumatic experiences, the more we help others recognize and heal their wounds.
Still, there are some comments we make and preconceived ideas we have that can be very invalidating, even if we don’t have bad intentions.
When we’re traumatized, we often struggle with acknowledging our feelings and emotions. We’re conditioned to believe that our anger is not valid and our resentment is not legitimate. As a consequence, we suppress these instincts and we feel guilty when they arise again.
This is why it’s so important to be mindful of every word that comes out of our mouths, both when talking to others and ourselves.
1. “Don’t you think some people have it worse than you?”
Trauma is not a competition. It’s a complex psychological imprint that is deeply ingrained in our mind and body, and it affects everyone differently.
Growing up within an enmeshed family may not be as traumatic as living in a war zone, yet it completely destroys your self-esteem as well as your inability to stand up for yourself and build healthy relationships. It’s unfair, and it’s traumatizing.
Thankfully, complex PTSD is becoming more widely recognized by doctors in recent years. It’s a condition that results from repeated trauma over months or years, rather than a single event — which means that subtle, not-so-bad experiences can also leave long-lasting marks on our brains.
2. “Well, at least it made you stronger”
Our trauma never makes us stronger — our resilience does. Without our ability to rebuild ourselves, our trauma serves no purpose.
Besides, not everyone feels like their trauma has made them stronger. Some feel powerless and hopeless and still struggle with navigating life and finding some closure. Asking them to “look on the bright side” is invalidating and, honestly, quite disrespectful.
Some people who’ve been in abusive relationships are now more secure and empowered than ever, while others still struggle with massive self-doubt and/or go back to the same old patterns. We’re all on different paths and we all react differently.
What makes us stronger is our courage to be honest about what hurts us inside and then do what it takes to heal. It’s our commitment to find new ways of being after what happened to us.
3. “Why didn’t you fight back?”
Freezing is a very common trauma response. It occurs when we feel utterly hopeless: when we don’t have the strength to fight, and flight is not really an option either.
This response is also known as dissociation. Essentially, we numb ourselves out so that we don’t have to stay fully present under such unnerving, distressing circumstances. We block out what’s too frightening to take in.
It’s important to have in mind that dissociation also applies to small, subtle traumas. As a child, I was always distant, distracted, absorbed in my own world. Now I realize I was simply responding to my environment: I didn’t know how to deal with my self-absorbed parents, so I dissociated.
“We learn to begin dissociating in childhood. When life around us feels to ‘big’ to cope. When we don’t have parent figures to guide, nurture, emotionally support us — when we do not have a secure attachment and cannot fully be our core self.”
4. “You should try yoga or meditation”
While I do believe these mindfulness practices can be incredibly healing — and I’ve personally benefited from them — they certainly don’t fix everything.
Some people have panic attacks when trying meditation because their nervous system is so dysregulated that being in silence accelerates their heart rate. Others freak out because closing their eyes triggers their trauma.
Besides, it takes time to get used to hearing our own voices and feeling our own bodies — and that can be terrifying if we’ve spent years completely disconnected from ourselves.
(If this is something you struggle with, I think my Self-Healing Workbook will help you!)
5. “If it was so bad, why didn’t you leave?”
If you’ve never experienced an abusive relationship, it can be difficult to understand why someone would stay in a situation that is detrimental to their well-being. But here’s the thing: abusive situations don’t always feel abusive when we’re in them.
In fact, if we were conditioned to ignore basic red flags and normalize unhealthy behavior, abuse feels like love.
As humans, we cling to what we’re familiar with. If our first relationships were based on insecurities and inconsistency, we inevitably believe these patterns are part of normal relationships. Or, if we grew up in a broken home where emotional abuse was present, then emotional abuse is something that our subconscious mind expects to find.
Asking someone “why didn’t you leave?” is re-traumatizing, and it blames the victim for the pain they’ve endured when, in reality, they didn’t know any better.
Most of us carry some form of trauma that affects our daily lives, and it takes a lot of courage and self-awareness to transform it and move on.
It’s very important to talk freely about our trauma, as it stimulates our collective awareness. In my case, the more I read and listened to people who were reflecting on their traumatic experiences and childhood conditioning, the more I became aware of my dysfunctional patterns and how they stemmed from my relationship with my parents.
However, we have to make sure we’re all supporting each other and helping each other heal — not making things worse.
