☆ an enby and their thoughts ☆

iii. "had it worse."

when i was younger and first moved here after something happened, i was often told to stop dwelling on my trauma because "others have gone through the same." and "others have had it worse."

when my ptsd symptoms first started causing problems, when my psychologist said i might have ptsd, when my ptsd symptoms started worsening, when i was trying to figure out if what i went through was really trauma, it would all boil down to "i can't because..." or "it wasn't that bad because..." "others had it worse."

when i've seen my friends going through hardships, sometimes similar to stuff i've gone through, and when they've told me about them, they'll say "but you've had it worse."

and as time has gone on, i see everything who goes through something traumatic will often say "others/(name)/people/etc have had it worse." even if they went through something fucking horrific, no matter who, just about every trauma survivor will say that.

it seems like a general societal thing that we're not suppose to acknowledge when we're suffering, even if that means avoiding your problems instead of sorting them out. that somehow we're "selfish" for trying to help ourselves. we're products of it and sometimes will pass it onto others, like our children and grandchildren.

so, here's something. it doesn't matter if someone had it worse, because people go through horrible, horrible things and sometimes it doesn't affect them at all, sometimes it does. 

it doesn't matter what you went through, if it was traumatic and often affects you in sometimes debilitating ways, you deserve help. you deserve to talk about it with people you trust, you deserve to heal. 

trauma isn't a race, suffering isn't a race, don't undermine your suffering and your problems because you might not have suffered the most. you don't have to qualify to be get help when you're suffering.