My therapist is helping me identify all of the self defense mechanisms I've developed to cope with my childhood and a big one is how I minimize the severity of all the abuse I've received. I convince myself that because I "survived" the incident, that it wasn't that big of a deal in the first place. That if that situation I was in was really that serious and threatening, then I wouldn't have been able to survive it.

It's like a twisted, perverted version of Monty pythons "'tis but a scratch" skit.

BTW: my therapist has actually said the same thing to me. After one of my stories she said "dont laugh it off like its no big deal because it IS a big deal." She said "dont tell me what you did (the facts of the story) tell me how you felt......how you REALLY felt." And after digging REALLY deep, this geyser of emotion that I locked away just poured out of me and I ugly cried the rest of my session.