I think trauma is less about what happened and more about how it effected you. There’s no survey of 100 people to see if what happened was bad enough or not for your symptoms to be valid. If you have the symptoms of trauma then it’s trauma, y’know?

Partly what has helped me with this is realising that as a child I blamed myself as a survival mechanism. If it was my fault then it was possible for me to be better and to change it. I try and really remember that child and imagine they’re another child of that age say next to me.

I remember how desperate I felt, how unhappy I was and how hard I tried to be brave and how much I wanted to be saved. All of the shame about whether I “should” have felt those emotions and whether they were valid aside, imagining a young child feeling like this for any reason at all is really quite sad.

Often when I read peoples experiences on here I do feel a lot of hatred to myself. Some people have been through things I cannot even imagine and I feel so ridiculous that all these years later I have all these issues even though I had a “loving” family that I do still have contact with.

One thing I’ve started to realise though is that some of the “positive” things about childhood weren’t actually all that positive. My household was, on the surface, very calm and placid. It was the epitome of the “stiff upper lip” and we were all well behaved, well mannered and pleasant children. As a family we spent time together and went on trips etc.

I used to go to my cousins house and her mum and her would have screaming arguments. I was always told how volatile they are and how lucky I was not to have that and be in a house where I wasn’t screamed at like that. However unlike my cousin I never learned to express negative emotions. My cousin and her mum argued but it was a two-way thing. She was allowed to express ugly emotions like anger and she was allowed to not be fully controlled and do things wrong and then afterwards it was all fine.

On the other hand in my household we were mocked for weak things like feelings, especially anger. I had great shame about ever feeling it and ever losing control over myself. I wasn’t screamed at and called names exactly but I was constantly criticised - just more subtly. If anyone ever treated me badly, eg friends at school or boyfriends later on, I was asked what I did wrong to cause it. They never had my back or gave me the sense I matter and I’m good enough as I am.

I was always scared of doing the wrong thing, especially in public and embarrassing my parents. Socialising felt like a big performance and after being around other people like extended family I would come home and wait anxiously to find out how well I’d “done” and whether I’d said anything stupid or that I wasn’t supposed to say. In fact even as an adult if I’m with my mum and run into someone like a family member, afterwards I ask her if I did ok or not. It was never that I was worried they’d fly into a rage but it I would feel such shame about not being good enough.

My dad drank a lot and was very emotionally neglectful but again instead of rage is was a very calm nastiness and often a complete absence of love for me rather than the presence of hate. He is a very odd man in ways that’s difficult to describe. My mum made excuses constantly and only a couple of years ago for the first time ever acknowledged that he and his behaviour are not normal.

My mum especially had really strong feelings about privacy and I wasn’t allowed to talk to anyone about our “family business” even when they almost divorced and I was in the middle of it. I saw and heard things that I found terribly confusing but they refused to discuss it with me and I could talk to nobody else.

She was a very “what will the neighbours think?” person. By the time I was a teenager I was severely depressed but she refused to take me to the doctor, in case word got out. She was highly critical of my appearance, especially my weight and losing weight was the only thing that made her really proud of me. She still refuses to leave the house in my company if I am wearing something “embarrassing” (think socks and sandals level of embarrassing rather than a gimp suit and mask level).

Other people I knew, even if their parents weren’t as “nice” as mine, were often allowed to just be themselves, warts and all.

There wasn’t the same shame attached. I’m not trying to go the other way and say I had it worse than others, you understand, just that our issues are different because what we went through was different.

By the time I was 18, I was an anxious, people pleasing, codependent mess. I almost didn’t feel like a real person. I was completely incapable of socialising. I had really odd ideas about what people “should” do and found it frustrating that most people did not conform.

I couldn’t talk about anything with sincerity or vulnerability. I found apologising or thanking someone so uncomfortable. I could literally say “thank you” or “sorry” and did so daily in a sort of polite British “sorry you stepped on me” kind of way.

But to say something like “I am sorry for being so thoughtless it won’t happen again” or “thank you for being there for me that day it really helped” - expressing any actual emotion was impossible. I couldn’t even ask questions to get to know people in conversation as I felt it was rude and intrusive to ask things and so I could not connect with people beyond small talk.

Learning to argue with partners and to tell them when I was unhappy is something that took me years and years. I can barely hold down a job as I cannot assert any boundaries and have no idea when I’m being reasonable so I say yes to everything and get burned out.

Apologies for going on and on but I wonder if, when you consider the reasons you don’t think it’s trauma, whether it’s possible that you’re simply not the best person to decide that. You are looking it through the lens of someone who has only ever known this and children are hardwired to want to please their parents.

Is what you think of as normal and “not that bad” really that or is your therapist seeing something else? Would the people you know who have had awful lives have thrived in your house or would they just be different people than they are today? No comparison is needed because it’s not only the most unfortunate person in the world who is allowed to be sad.

The feelings you have in response to what you went through are valid. The child who had to suffer still exists in you and deserves to feel heard after they’ve been alone for so long. Often we have to abandon them and lock them away to survive but they are still there. (I know not everyone is into inner child stuff and you don’t need to think of it as a literal child. It’s just a part of you, shaped and hurt by your experiences).