Tiny Traumas: Why You Still Struggle Even If 'Nothing Really Bad' Happened"
“I don’t think I’ve had any trauma.”
It’s one of the most common things new clients say in our first session. There’s often a pause, a quiet searching of memory. They may even add, “I mean, nothing that bad happened to me,” as if they need to justify why they’ve come to therapy in the first place.
The instinct to downplay our pain, even in the very space that we are supposed to be exploring it is a common protective mechanism. It’s part of the reason so many people feel stuck. They feel disconnected, overwhelmed, emotionally flat, or easily triggered, yet they’re convinced their story doesn’t “qualify” as trauma. They feel like on paper they have it all - a happy relationship, a safe home, good kids, friends, and hobbies - but are frustrated at the negative feelings that keep creeping up on them.
In her book Tiny Traumas: When You Don’t Know What’s Wrong, but Nothing Feels Quite Right, psychologist Dr. Meg Arroll gives a name to these quiet, chronic hurts that add up. Tiny trauma, small t trauma, little t trauma. The accumulation of small, painful, unresolved experiences, perhaps individually insignificant, can have a profound effect on our mental health and wellbeing.
The Myth of the Big-T Trauma
I’ve written before about this myth, and how the small hurts, particularly in relationships add up. It’s worth repeating.
When we think of trauma, we imagine war, natural disasters, abuse, or catastrophic events. Some therapists would call these ‘big T traumas’ - they are often life-threatening or deeply disturbing events and overwhelm a person’s ability to cope in the moment.
But small t traumas are different and also important. They are the unacknowledged emotional wounds that accumulate over time: childhood invalidation, chronic criticism, feeling emotionally invisible, bullying, microaggressions, structural racism, relational neglect, or repeated rejection. They are the small things with a big impact, that stick with you even if you can’t figure out why. These experiences may not be big, but they shape us.
They can lead to chronic stress, relationship problems, anxiety, perfectionism, sadness, disordered eating, people-pleasing, and difficulty maintaining healthy boundaries. Yet still, because they are not BIG, people dismiss them, and their reaction to them.
Trauma Isn’t Just What Happened—It’s What Happened Inside You
This is one of the most important things to understand about trauma. It’s not just about what happened to you. It’s about how you responded to it.
Two people can go through the same experience and end up with very different emotional scars. It doesn’t mean that the one person is stronger than the other. What we are capable of handling and what overwhelms our system is not simple - it’s a complicated equation based on our mood, our environment, our background, our genetics.
The event itself isn’t the trauma, it’s our reaction to the event. That is based not just on the severity of the traumatic event, but how alone, unsafe, or powerless you felt at the time - and how much support you had afterward.
That’s why in an intake session I am not looking just to list out all the bad things that happened to you. I want to help you to pick out the patterns, connect the dots, and uncovering how all your meaningful experiences shaped the way you view yourself and the world.
Healing begins when we can ask:
What happened to me?
How did it affect me the way it did?
And what can I do about it now?
Resilience Is a Response to Hurt
Resilience is often praised as a virtue, but it’s important to remember that resilience only develops through struggle. To be resilient is to have been hurt and to have adapted, often in ways that helped us survive - but not always in ways that help us thrive.
As Dr. Arroll says:
“The concept of resilience isn’t merely bouncing back unaffected – rather, building a strong, resilient psychological immune system is about having developed personalised coping skills that help you deal with future difficulties in life.”
Clients often come to therapy because their coping mechanisms - emotional numbing, overthinking, detachment, hyper-independence - have begun to be more of a problem than what they are experiencing. Even if nothing bad is happening in your life, you are still reacting ot teh environment around you. And sometimes these reactions are causing the pain.
True resilience comes not from ignoring or suppressing our emotions, but from feeling them, learning from them, and growing stronger because of it.
“Emotions Are Just Messages”
So many of us were raised to believe that emotions like anger, sadness, or jealousy were shameful or immature. We were told to stop crying. To calm down. Or to attend to others emotions first. But emotions are neither good nor bad, they are just signals.
As Dr. Arroll writes:
“Anger, envy, sadness – these have all been vilified but they are normal and essential emotional reactions... emotions are just messages – if we pause to listen, we may be given a roadmap for a future, more grounded self.”
Part of healing from tiny traumas is learning to listen to those messages. Why do I shut down when someone criticizes me? Why do I feel panicked when I have to say no? Why do I always put others first? Why do I self-sabotage? Why do I tolerate poor treatment? These reactions are clues that point to unmet needs, unresolved hurts, and long-ingrained patterns.
In therapy, we explore these patterns using a compassionate lens. In some ways, it’s harder to work with the small t traumas. The cause and effect is less obvious. Being in a car crash and feeling stressed while driving makes sense, it’s logical in a way, even if it does deeply effect your life. Small t traumas work in a more delicate and subtle way. And compassion can help identify the patterns - rather than asking “What’s wrong with me?” we ask, “Why do I react like this? How does this serve me? And how does it not?”
Trauma, Identity, and the Search for Self
One of the most disorienting effects of tiny traumas is how they fracture our sense of identity. We walk through life with what we were born with, impacted by the way we were raised, and shifting and moving in small ways based on our experiences. But when we can’t figure out the ‘why’ to a feeling, emotion, action, pattern, that is hurting us, we are left feeling lost and disconnected.
You might wonder:
Why do I feel disconnected from myself?
Why do I shape-shift in different relationships?
Why does everyone think I’m doing fine when I feel lost inside?
When we grow up in environments that didn’t nurture our authentic selves, we learn to adapt—to be who others want or need us to be. Over time, this can leave us feeling like we don’t know who we really are. When we experience things that change us, without fully recognizing or appreciating the change, we can feel disconnected.
This is why identity exploration is a key part of healing work. We dive deep into how your experiences have shaped your self-concept, how you see yourself and how that impacts relationships with others.
You Don’t Need a Big Trauma to Deserve Help
If something doesn’t feel right, if you are struggling with some areas of your life, or feeling just ‘off’ it very well may be a reaction to the small t traumas in your life. Emotional wounds don’t need to be catastrophic to be valid. And healing isn’t reserved for people with a clear trauma history.
Therapy can help you name what’s been unnamed. It can help you listen to the messages behind your emotions, reconnect with your sense of self, and build a future rooted in self-compassion.
To read more about how relationship trauma can impact people you can read my blog here.
Ready to explore how your past experiences have shaped you - and how to heal?