Minimisation

[Meadowsweet]

I suffer quite badly because I minimise trauma, PTSD symptoms and emotions to the point of denial. It's my main way of coping.

I hear people say that they don't understand how people function, or how events that are shared can cause PTSD, and when I hear those things said, it triggers this minimisation mechanism. I start to think that I'm being ridiculous and lie PTSD is a silly emotional whim, and if I just think more logically, all its symptoms would stop.

In therapy I will talk about something that has happened, but often without the full emotion present. And my therapist will refer to it as being 'raped' or whatever, and I will dissociate with quite a sudden whoosh, like my mind is going, 'no, no, no, this is not happening, we are not accepting that. 'And in between sessions I work on those feelings and I try to use words like raped in my head, to get more used to it.

It's something I don't see discussed very often. I figure that's because when minimising is working, there is nothing to discuss (because we are just fine thank you very much).

So I thought I would bring it up, as much for myself (to stop me minimising right now), but would be very interested to hear other peoples stories and how they may have stopped minimising.

 

[Britt.f7]

I have a tendency to downplay traumatic events or troubling times. I treat things very matter of fact, little emotion. Despite the horror or sadness I may have initially felt. I think it makes it all safer for me to process things that way.

Also, one of my dad's things when we were growing up is telling us about someone who always had it worse off then you. I think that has definitely played a part in the minimizing of things.

I'm trying to really feel things. To realize that it may not be as bad as someone else's trauma or ordeal, but it is still bad. Bad for me.

It took me years to realize how devastating losing my close friends at the age of 7. It was a very traumatic event. I was the last to see them alive, and, afterwards, I had the responsibility of carrying their things home from school. I carried the pain, devastation, guilt, I felt with me throughout my life, especially on the anniversary of their death. But, if you were to hear me talk about it you would not have realized the amount of difficulty it caused me. It took a therapist and the recent anniversary of their death, 30 years, for me to grieve and accept the damage their deaths caused. I finally wrote it out, to the best of my memory, to the best of what I was allowing myself to feel. To feel for that little girl, to not play it off as if it was nothing. I'm not sure what this anniversary of their death will bring. I might pull out what I wrote to remind myself of that little girl that lost so much. What I need to remind myself, even as I am writing this, is that I went through a terrible experience and a lot was expected from me despite being 7. It may not be worse then another person's trauma, and it isn't my only one, but it did effect me and it was mine. I am going to own it and not apologize for it.

Which causes me to want to apologize.

Honor yourself, that is what I have to remind myself and other's who have a habit of minimizing or trivializing their pain or memories.

 

[Abstract]

I am literally tortured by this and it is constant problem. It only varies in intensity. I am never free of it. It is also out of proportion with my trauma.

I hear people say t

Oh, me too. This daemon in my head uses anything it can get its hands on.

I have started wondering if coping mechanisms that have been there for a long time unchallenged or acknowledged become very hard to budge. I can peer over the top of all this sometimes and see a way to recovery but am trapped behind denial and co.

This is so extreme for me that when I discuss any symptoms or anything from the past I think I have just lied and am overwhelmed with self abuse and self hatred. I guess I have still come a long way from where I was a few years back - in therapy and furious at the suggestion that even one thing had affected me. There is zero way I would have ever posted on somewhere like here.

I am making very slow progress but am so tired of myself with this stuff. Tired.

 

[stuff]

I can definitely relate to this. Minimization was a big thing in my family too. "There's always someone who has it worse off than you, so suck it up." My dad even said this to me the other day. It made me want to throw something, because he doesn't even know the half of the traumas I have experienced. That being said, I really do minimize things in a huge way, like somehow thinking my sexual assault experiences weren't as bad a someone who got attacked by a stranger, so somehow it shouldn't effect me as much. How I'm smart, and I can think my way around why things happened, so it shouldn't effect me as much. How the abuse I suffered at the hands of my mom stemmed from her own abuse, so I shouldn't feel as bad about it. It's awful and I hate that I do it.

If I write down my traumas in a list without attempting to minimize them, it's a freaking horror show to the point that one day my therapist stopped me in the middle of a session and asked me how I managed to keep going in life based on all of the things I have experienced. All I could say is "What else am I going to do? Lie down and die?" I would have unbelievable compassion for anyone else who had experienced those things, but yet I can't feel the same compassion for myself, and I definitely don't get that kind of compassion from my family. It seems like the only thing they will accept is the abuse I suffered at the hands of my former partner, and even that is taken with a grain of salt.

 

[ajmbt]

I can absolutely relate. I even said to my T that I wonder with all the problems in the world, how is this so important. Just a different way of saying what I heard as a child. You're too sensitive, be grateful you have what you do, stop complaining.

 

[Nebulustrix]

I think I find myself minimizing entirely sub-consciously. I never even quite understood that this was what I've been doing until reading this post. I don't really consciously think "it wasn't that bad"... but I find myself thinking of the experiences I went through as if what happened was normal or expected. And when I've shared with others, especially when the trauma was fresh in my mind, I've managed to maintain a sort of calm that these people I've shared with have found unnerving.

They react to what I share as if it is this horrid, unbelievable, unpermittable, atrocity, and I find myself uncomfortable with their reactions. Part of my discomfort is an instinctive reaction to their emotions- anger, rage, "righteous justice", etc - are all still very closely connected in my mind to the pain I suffered when my ex would become angry. I do not like it when others make comments like "How DARE he!", "What a DICK!", or when they tense up as if they are filled with this desire to hit my past attacker in defense of my honor, or make comments about how he deserves to be incarcerated, etc.

After reading this, I believe another part of my discomfort is a discomfort with myself, because I am not having the emotional response they are having, even though this was my trauma. I have felt little to no anger toward my ex. My only angry outburst came when he stopped attempting to contact me, because that was what helped it dawn on me that he never really did love me. Even though his attempts had been accusations of kidnapping, filing a missing persons report, and threatening to have me institutionalized, I saw those attempts as signs that he still cared and still wanted to win me back. But then his attempts stopped, because I wasn't coming back, he wasn't getting what he wanted, and his last contact was an angry outburst email basically telling me I could go suck it and that my treatment of him had been worse than anything he'd ever done to me.

I let out a good vent after that, responding to his outburst with a written message I never sent him, basically chewing him out for minimizing what he'd done to me, but after that I think I've started minimizing it myself.

 

[Padfoot]

I've downplayed everything to those around me except a couple of very close people. It's more to save them from seeing it.

 

[Venusian]

I had always felt like this even before I could remember what had happened. I would think it couldn't have been that bad, no one ever noticed me, no one noticed I was missing, no one noticed I was in pain or sick. If no one noticed then it couldn't have been bad. No one wanted to listen so it couldn't have been that bad. My ex turned away when I tried to tell him so it couldn't have been that bad. My teachers were only upset that I was late so it couldn't have been that bad. My parents didn't ask me where the bruises and blood came from so it couldn't have been that bad. I could not remember it so it could not have been that bad.

Now I tell people what happened and I see them start to cry or get angry, an anger I still can not feel. I see doctors try to stay detached when they ask what caused the scars they find that aren't visible because they are all inside. The ones I did not know about until 40 years later and now are causing so much pain. It is hard to tell myself that it was bad, it was something that should not have been ignored or hidden. It was something that should have been seen and taken seriously. Someone should have noticed because it was that bad. I blocked it from my memory because it was that bad. It is still hard to not minimize it because if I don't I would not be able to function every day.

 

[Abstract]

I was thinking about this more and I think I can now tell a certain feeling that comes along with this mindset for me. There is an intensity and distancing and often self hatred too . It's a very different place to a normal comparative mindset. The fact that others maybe had worse experiences is a separate issue in sense. Not sure how to express that any better than that.

 

[bell]

You're too sensitive, be grateful you have what you do, stop complaining.

Yep! This sounds familiar!

Another minimizer here! It didn't help when everyone around me minimized things, too, and then several people didn't even believe me. I also think that since I was shut down emotionally and physically for a lot of it, my body minimized it, too. I.e., since I couldn't really feel it, it didn't really count.

For other types of trauma, I was told, "I didn't beat you! I didn't hurt you!" As if the old adage was really true, "sticks and stones..."

I do this constantly and am reminded every session with my P doc that trauma is trauma is trauma. While I know there are different flavors per se, it's all still the same thing.

 

[Philippa]

Yes, I do this a lot. It's hard not to when you hear stories of people being raped by their fathers and locked in closets, and made to eat out of dog bowls their entire childhood. I had a relatively great childhood...I did. I was not molested, or raped by anyone in my family, or any of that stuff which is so horrific.

And yet, the pain of being treated like I wasn't there when my mother would decide to ignore me for days on end, and being told one story, only to be told later by the person who told me that he doesn't know where I got such crazy ideas from, or just general sweeping of problems under the carpet, and blatantly being given the message that my parents just don't care about me at all, as they are too caught up in their own stupid little lives, and too busy trying to make the other look bad in my eyes, while they each use me to get their own needs met, reversing the roles of parent and child, and then turn around and do not reciprocate when I need them...it has all accumulated over the years, as well as the actual events that were traumatic.

And whilst I know the truth is that my reality is just as important as everybody else, and it's hard to be me sometimes, I still revert to minimizing things and talking myself out of things...just out of an internalized habit of doing what they all did whenever I tried to speak up about how their behavior made me feel. I don't even need them to mess with my head anymore...I do it to myself. I just want the second guessing to stop forever.

 

[Meadowsweet]

somehow thinking my sexual assault experiences weren't as bad a someone who got attacked by a stranger, so somehow it shouldn't effect me as much. How I'm smart, and I can think my way around why things happened, so it shouldn't effect me as much. How the abuse I suffered at the hands of my mom stemmed from her own abuse, so I shouldn't feel as bad about it.

I don't really consciously think "it wasn't that bad"... but I find myself thinking of the experiences I went through as if what happened was normal or expected.

If no one noticed then it couldn't have been bad. No one wanted to listen so it couldn't have been that bad. My ex turned away when I tried to tell him so it couldn't have been that bad. My teachers were only upset that I was late so it couldn't have been that bad. My parents didn't ask me where the bruises and blood came from so it couldn't have been that bad. I could not remember it so it could not have been that bad.

It is hard to tell myself that it was bad, it was something that should not have been ignored or hidden. It was something that should have been seen and taken seriously. Someone should have noticed because it was that bad. I blocked it from my memory because it was that bad. It is still hard to not minimize it because if I don't I would not be able to function every day.

It didn't help when everyone around me minimized things, too, and then several people didn't even believe me. I also think that since I was shut down emotionally and physically for a lot of it, my body minimized it, too. I.e., since I couldn't really feel it, it didn't really count.

What a lot of responses, thank you for all of them. I relate especially to those I've quoted above.

Reading over what I wrote, something I don't think I explained well was the effect that minimising has on me. It would be logical that minimising would make everything feel better. But when I go into denial for too long, I find that I suffer a lot more with intrusions of traumatic images in my mind, body memories and anxiety about anything. I don't care about my health and my inner critic effects what i do.

So I'm starting to see that minimising doesn't help, it causes more problems. When I've talked about it with my therapist, I explain that I feel a need to stay in control, and a fear of being seen to lose control - because of the way I've been brought up, I relate showing any emotion to 'losing control'. Minimisation and detaching emotion from events, is my way of feeling in control. But my therapist challenges that and asks me if I think I am really in control, and of course the answer is no.

This is because when I deny, detach or minimise, my mind brings up those feelings and memories in other ways that I have no control over.