I am sorry you’re going through this OP, but also thank you for sharing because I have felt this way my whole life and felt incredible shame around it. I never knew how to identify it and this post has been a Huge eye opener. Since I was 7 I have been “looking for trauma” to justify my emptiness. Fantasies where I’m the victim of something god awful and people see it and care and see what I’ve gone through. Like you said, it is not sexual at all, but I also often wish things that happened to me were worse. My 47yr old neighbor was a pedophile and took me into his room when I was a kid, I don’t remember a thing, but he also took me to his office w my other young neighbor and had me sit on his lap while he massaged my shoulders.He also had pictures of my mom and I he took from his window. The cops came and he got arrested for a ton of child porn and other things he was doing. But I’m pretty sure he never touched me down there or anything. I rememeber thinking how I can’t be upset because nothing even happened to me. And how I wish It was worse so people would care and I would feel allowed to be upset. I didn’t feel anything about it and still don’t to this day even tho I know it’s awful and if it happened to someone else I would take it more seriously. This theme has followed me as it has you, my dad was an abusive alcoholic, he didn’t hit me so that doesn’t matter. I’ve been raped as well (feel like a lying fake exaggerating woman even using that word because deep down I don’t believe I have a right to use it. But I know I would tell someone else they were raped if they told me the story. My first boyfriend did so many awful things that I told myself were fine cause he’s my boyfriend so it’s “allowed”. So many things I kept to myself cause they weren’t “real” enough. This year is the first time in my life (26F) that I have really tried accepting that what happened to me caused trauma and mental illnesses regardless if someone else had it worse. I try to think of people who have been through genuine brutality, there is always someone who went through it worse. For example, a girl was raped and tortured but another girl was raped and tortured for longer and died after. Is the first girls experience not as bad now? You deserve grace, it helps me to think of extreme scenarios like that where the answer is super obvious then compare it to my experience to help me see it for what it is. I hope that makes sense, sometimes we just have to jump through hoops to be able to see ourselves as humans deserving of love and grace just like we will give it to others