When we minimise our pain or seek others to define it, we silence our own truth, and delay the healing that begins with self-validation.
Have you ever caught yourself thinking, “It wasn’t that bad,” or telling yourself, “Others have had it worse”? While these thoughts may seem like a way to gain perspective, they often become a subtle form of emotional invalidation. It is a way of shutting down your own experience before it has a chance to be felt, acknowledged, and healed.
At Resplora, we often meet people who have carried silent pain for years, believing it wasn’t serious enough to matter. But healing doesn’t begin with comparison. It begins with permission.
The trap of emotional comparison
It’s human to compare. But when you compare your trauma or distress to someone else’s and conclude that yours is less valid, you begin to disconnect from your own emotional truth.
Phrases like “It wasn’t that bad” or “Others went through worse” send a clear message to your nervous system: “What I feel isn’t worth attention.” This can lead to cycles of shame, emotional withdrawal, and internal conflict.
Suffering is not a competition. Your feelings are not measured by how they stack up against someone else’s. They are measured by the impact they had, and still have, on you.
The effects of emotional invalidation on your wellbeing
Emotional invalidation occurs when your feelings are dismissed, minimised, or judged, whether by others or by yourself. Perhaps growing up, you were told you were “too sensitive” or encouraged to “move on quickly.” These messages don’t just affect the mind. They shape the body’s response to emotion and safety.
Over time, emotional invalidation can:
- Increase anxiety, self-doubt, and emotional numbness
- Damage trust in your own perception and intuition
- Make it harder to seek help or believe you deserve support
What hurt you matters, even if others don’t see it, even if it didn’t leave a scar. Your pain is real. It deserves care.
Seeking external validation
When we struggle to trust our own feelings, we may look to others to define our story. Questions like, “Do you think that was abuse?” or “Was that neglect?” come from a longing to be told, “Yes, what you felt was valid.”
While connection is essential, no one else can tell you how your body and emotions were impacted. Validation is powerful. When it comes from within, it transforms.
At Resplora, we help you rebuild trust in your own experience through trauma-informed practice and body-centred practices that gently reconnect you to your internal wisdom.
Every story matters
The severity of an event doesn’t define whether it’s traumatic. The impact does. Two people may go through the same event, and one feels safe while the other carries deep emotional pain. Neither reaction is wrong.
Your age, history, resilience, and environment all influence how experiences affect you. Integrated healing means honouring your unique story, not minimising it.
Giving your emotions space is not self-indulgent. It is self-respecting.
How to start validating your pain
- Practise self-compassion: Speak to yourself the way you would speak to someone you love. With softness, patience, and honesty.
- Challenge comparison thinking: If you hear yourself say, “It wasn’t that bad,” pause and ask: “What if it was?”
- Reclaim your emotional truth: Your feelings are real. They don’t need external approval to matter.
- Create safety to feel: Through body-centred practices, somatic therapy, and supportive spaces, you can begin to feel what once felt too hard to hold.
Conclusion
You don’t need anyone’s permission to feel what you feel. You don’t need to compare your pain to justify your healing.
At Resplora, our work is rooted in the belief that healing begins with gentle attention to what’s true for you. We invite you to meet our therapists, and explore what it means to reconnect with yourself. Not by fixing, but by listening.
Because your pain is valid. Your story is enough. Your healing matters.
