157 What If My Story Isn’t That Bad? Why We All Tend to Minimize Our Wounds

The Place We Find Ourselves

Adam Young

Hope, Christian, Christianity, Healing, Story, Trauma, Psychotherapy, Mental Health, Restoration, Heart, Sexualabuse, Health & Fitness, Adamyoung, Therapy, Attachment, Interpersonalneurobiology, Religion & Spirituality, Limbicsystem, Neuroscience

4.8 • 2.5K Ratings

🗓️ 17 June 2024

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This episode is for people who experience emotional pain but feel like “nothing that bad happened to me growing up. I had a pretty good childhood.” As it says in Jeremiah 6, it is very common to dress our wounds as though they are not serious. One way we tend to minimize our wounds is by comparing our story to someone else who “had it worse.” Another way we minimize our wounds is by spiritualizing away the harmful experiences we endured with sentences like, “God used that terrible experience to shape my character.” What is keeping you from having compassion for the harm you experienced as a boy or a girl? If the podcast has been helpful to you, please consider supporting it financially here.

Transcript

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0:00.0	You are listening to the place we find ourselves podcast. I'm Adam Young and today I want to talk to those of you out there who can relate to the following quote.
0:11.4	A woman came up to me after a talk I gave and she said this. She said,
0:15.6	Adam, I'm intrigued by what you're saying about exploring my story, but I didn't experience
0:22.2	anything traumatic growing up.
0:25.0	She said, I know people have experienced real trauma
0:28.0	and those things didn't happen to me.
0:30.0	I was raised in a good home with loving parents.
0:33.0	However, something is not right inside of me, she said.
0:38.0	And to make matters worse, I don't think I should feel this much pain since nothing that bad ever happened to me.
0:47.1	And then she ended with this sentence, I don't feel like I have a right to be as messed up as I am. Now, who, wow, I just want to pause after reading that because it is so common and so important.
1:03.4	Let me repeat her last three sentences.
1:07.2	Something is not right inside of me and to make matters worse, I don't think I should feel this much pain since nothing that bad ever happened to me.
1:19.0	I don't feel like I have a right to be as messed up as I am.
1:24.1	Now this sentiment is not uncommon, but it is crazy making for you.
1:31.4	It's bad enough to feel emotional pain inside however
1:35.8	emotional pain becomes agonizing
1:39.4	when you don't feel like you should be feeling the pain in the first place. So are you someone
1:47.0	who feels emotional pain inside, but you have this sense of, I don't think I should feel this, nothing that bad ever
1:56.4	happened to me. I don't know what to attribute this pain to. Trauma is pervasive in this world and sin is a real thing. Nevertheless, many people have
2:10.6	this sense that my story isn't that bad.
2:15.0	And that's what I really want to address today.
2:18.0	In Jeremiah 6 and 8th, this is a passage I come back too often. God indicts the leadership of Israel for deceit.
	...

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