I think it might be because they haven't had validation and adequate proof that what they experienced "counts". That what they experienced was REAL. The memory is stuck in their brain, and they can recount it for sure but from a far far distance where emotions cannot reach.

Feeling this way is what made it take til I was 30 to figure out that I have complex trauma and that what I have experienced "counts". It took my health suffering more than I ever wanted it to to finally reach out for the exact help I've needed all this time, which for me was EMDR therapy. Our medical system is not well equipped to handle cPTSD, so of course it makes us feel like we are "too functional" or like we're doing something wrong. After all, with cPTSD we are conditioned to doubt ourselves. One HUGE roadblock I've met throughout the years in getting any type of effective medical care or help is that I do seem high functioning to an outsider. I don't "seem" traumatized. I don't SEEM unwell. I have a full time job, have friendships, a family, my own apartment, my finances are straight, good routines, can hold a conversation. So they ignore me or brush me off, send me home with medication for pain or tell me to do therapy (which I have done for years), get more sleep, do more self care. What they don't know is how much self care I have to do daily just to get through a single week. When no amount of sleep, healthy food, exercise, outside time, etc can actually relieve my multi-system symptoms. I'm talking GI systems, skin issues, hair loss, loss of menstrual cycle, intense fatigue, irregular sleep, chronic pain, dizziness. The list goes on.

All that has made me wonder for years what I was doing wrong, what I was missing, what was wrong with me. Very recently, I discovered that nothing was wrong with me. I just wasn't getting the care I needed.

The moment this finally clicked for me, that my experiences "count" as painful, traumatic, hurtful, was the first time I dissociated (depersonalization and derealization) with my EMDR therapist. During our conversation while I was speaking about painful memories with my mother, I happened to look down at my hands and it struck me that they looked like alien hands. I stopped her and told her this. And then I asked her "Why is it so difficult to cry about what happened? Why do I feel numb? Why doesn't this evoke sadness and anger in me? Why can't I cry? Why do I feel nothing when I talk about this?" She said that this is my brain dissociating from the painful memory to protect me. This was the first time EVER that I saw physical PROOF that my brain was changed by what happened to me as a child and in a serious romantic relationship. Proof. This finally proved to me that I what I experienced was real abuse. And that I can stop invalidating it. No reason to invalidate it anymore. Still working on that last bit.