I’ve been seeing my current therapist (whose praises I could sing for ages) since the summer of 2016. Externally, everything with my now husband was fine, but internally, I was a wreck, and it was starting to affect our relationship. I’d been diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and misdiagnosed with Bipolar II Disorder (I have no such condition – I’ll spare you the soapbox details on that for now), and I was not coping well. Somehow in the haze of a prolonged anxiety attack that had me literally hiding under the covers from my partner (I have a uniquely visceral memory of this moment), I realized that if I didn’t get some help to work through what was “wrong” with me, I would lose this man – the first man who’d ever made me feel loved, and respected, and safe. More than that, while I had been raised to basically “shut up and deal” with my feelings, suffer in silence, power through it, I found the clarity that while it was one thing to do that by myself when I was single, it was a whole other ballgame to expect someone else to do that along with you. I know that people say therapy is something you should do for yourself, and I stuck with therapy for myself, but the truth is, I sought it out for my partner’s sake far more than mine at the time.

Finding the right therapist is often challenging, but I got lucky – I Googled “PTSD therapist” in my area, found a listing of a therapist who seemed promising and met my basic requirements (female, young, experience with my presenting needs), made sure it would be covered (at least partially) by my health insurance, and made an initial appointment, which has since turned into what is going on six years of appointments. My therapist confirmed what I’d suspected for years – that I unequivocally did not have Bipolar II Disorder – rather, I had not just PTSD, but C-PTSD. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is understood to stem from one particular, intense traumatic event; Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is a condition caused by prolonged, extended traumatic experiences. My whole life has been a series of prolonged, extended traumatic experiences – which sounds really dramatic when I say it like that, perhaps, but, it’s an accurate statement. (Apparently I can’t even get through this blog post without trying to discount my own pain – it’s funny to prove yourself right before you even get to your point! But I digress.) Ironically, the initial cause for my PTSD diagnosis – a physically and sexually abusive relationship in college – has been a rare subject of my therapy sessions, compared to the vast majority where my childhood and family relationships, and their subsequent impact on my adult life, have been the focus. The mind is an iceberg, and pain lives deep down inside it; my understanding of my pain and need for support were at first only at the tip of it that I could see above the surface. It has taken years – years – to work through decades of stratified abuse, so many layers of harm that I had long ago accepted as, if not normal, then unchangeable at least, things I figured I would always have to live with.

I’ve gotten better about this over the years, but while I’ve always been really good at validating other people’s experiences and feelings, generally I have really sucked at doing this for myself. I have a bachelor’s degree in Psychology and a master’s degree in Educational Psychology; I know how important therapeutic intervention is, and I know what pain and trauma does to the mind. I know how crucial proper mental health support can be. And yet, the assumption that I myself was irredeemable was a pervasive problem for me, so difficult to overturn in fact that even in writing about not being self-dismissive, the habit of doing just that still rears its familiar ugly head. At any rate, my point is this – when I first started going to therapy, I would get very comparative. I would talk for a while about various painful experiences from my childhood, or young adulthood, and I would do so haltingly, hesitantly, and I would always make a point of emphasizing that while what I went through may have sucked, it’s nothing compared to what others go through. “Someone has had it worse somewhere,” I would insist, almost pleadingly, as if I wanted my therapist to agree with me. Thank goodness she didn’t – because I know now that surely this would not have made me feel better. It was a tip of the iceberg, reflexive response in order to numb the pain, a way to minimize it so I could carry on day to day (a learned behavior, if ever there was one), but it’s not healing. What my therapist told me – a lot, until I eventually grew past this – was that yes, sure, others have had horribly traumatic things happen to them. But, that does not mean I didn’t. Other people’s pain does not invalidate what I’ve gone through, and what I’ve gone through doesn’t invalidate other’s pain. There are some people who may try to treat it this way, but, trauma is not a contest. Everyone has their own set of experiences that have shaped their perspective of themselves and the world around them, and that includes you. It’s not, “yes, but–“; it’s “yes, and–“. Yes, these things were painful for you, and those other things were painful for them.

Again – trauma is not a contest. And nothing compares to you.