When We Minimise What We’ve Been Through (And Why Your Pain Still Counts)

There are so many ways we learn to say “it’s fine” when it isn’t.

We brush things off. We make jokes. We tell ourselves others have it worse. We keep going, stay busy, stay productive, stay together. From the outside, it can look like resilience. From the inside, it often feels like holding your breath. Or the age old metaphor of a swan, looking composed but frantically paddling beneath the surface.

If you recognise yourself here, I want to say this first: there is nothing wrong with you for minimising your pain. In fact, from a psychotherapy perspective, it’s often a very intelligent adaptation, if a maladaptive coping mechanism.

Minimising as a survival strategy

Many of us learned early on that certain feelings were… inconvenient. Too much. Not welcome. Maybe there wasn’t space for sadness, or anger felt dangerous, or needing comfort led to disappointment.

So we adapted.

In psychotherapy, we about discounting. The quiet way we minimise or overlook aspects of our internal or external experience so that life feels more manageable.

It might sound like:

• “It wasn’t that bad.”

• “I’m probably overreacting.”

• “I should be grateful.”

• “Other people cope with much worse.”

These aren’t lies we consciously tell. They’re often old, well‑worn ways of staying safe and connected.

The roles we slip into

It is important to identify and understand our driver behaviours. ADD LINE ABOUT DRIVERS. Something we delve into in therapy.

Drivers like Be Strong, Try Hard, Please Others, Be Perfect, Hurry Up can quietly encourage us to minimise pain and keep us anxious.

• Be Strong might say: don’t feel, don’t need, don’t fall apart.

• Please Others might say: don’t rock the boat, don’t burden anyone.

• Be Perfect might say: you should be able to handle this better.

Over time, these messages can turn into a habit of overriding our own experience — even when the original threat is long gone.

The feelings underneath

Sometimes minimising pain doesn’t mean feeling nothing at all. Instead, we might feel racket feelings, emotions that are more acceptable, familiar, or safer than what’s underneath. They tend to mask the real emotions we are experiencing.

You might notice:

• Irritation instead of sadness

• Numbness instead of fear

• Self‑criticism instead of grief

These feelings aren’t wrong, they are more familiar. They’re signposts. Often, they’re protecting something more tender that once didn’t have enough support.

Minimising pain works — until it doesn’t.

There is a phrase I love: “what we resist, persists”.

What often brings people to therapy isn’t the original pain, but the exhaustion of carrying it alone. The sense of being disconnected from yourself. The feeling that something is wrong, even when you can’t quite justify it.

When pain is consistently discounted, it doesn’t disappear. It tends to show up in anxiety, low mood, relationship struggles, burnout, or a persistent sense of emptiness.

Noticing without forcing

Healing doesn’t require ripping off the armour or suddenly feeling everything. From a therapeutically informed, compassionate lens, change begins with permission.

Permission to notice:

• Something in me hurts.

• This matters, even if I can’t explain why.

• I don’t need to justify my pain for it to be real.

This is not about dwelling or wallowing. It’s about restoring contact with your own experience, at your pace, in your way.

In therapy

It is not weakness to seek support, in fact I believe it shows inner strength, bravery and hope. At the Psychotherapy Place, you don’t need to prove that your pain is “bad enough.” You don’t need to compare it, justify it, or explain it away. Together, we get curious about the parts of you that learned to minimise. And slowly, safely, we explore a way forwards. Out of a state of constant overwhelm, anxiety or depression. It allows space for understanding, not judgment; for compassion, not correction.

If something in you is asking to be heard, that’s reason enough.

If this resonates, you’re not alone. Many people arrive in therapy having spent years minimising what they carry. There is space here to slow down, to feel safely, and to reconnect with yourself, without pressure to be different before you’re ready.