One of the things that I hear all the time from clients I work with is that they should not be feeling so bad or having a hard time with what they are going through because “other people had it worse” or they “didn’t have it that bad.” This is a very common reaction, but it is not helpful when people are looking to find healing and growth.

There can be many reasons why people tend to minimize their own experiences and suffering. Often, minimizing what we have experienced by saying “It wasn’t that bad” or “Other people have had it way worse than I did” can help us to feel like our reactions and emotions are more manageable in size. It can keep us from feeling too overwhelmed before we are ready to be able to process our experiences and emotions. However, while it can be an effective coping mechanism, it is not one that is healthy in the long term. At some point, we have to process our experiences and feel our emotions, or it will start to come out in other ways—more anxiety or stress, a bigger reaction to a new difficult life experience, shutting down from other emotions (even the positive emotions we want to feel), or in behaviors like emotional eating or drinking more.

In addition to being a coping strategy, we often minimize our experience because the impact of the experience is not accepted by society at large. The........

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