Oh yea, also the part you shared about your mom. Seems like the enmeshment trauma there. Her over reacting , impeding on your private life , just doing too much etc … her franticness.. though it wasn’t your fault . Has made it hard for you to open up later in life because maybe deep down you fear people will respond like how she did.

and you feeling like your problems aren’t so big so you don’t want to bother people with it .. I mean those things are relative to the individual . Your experiences and challenges matter.

I had to learn this the hard way. I remember one day I visited a friend . I was shooken up because I had just left the grocery store where a homeless guy started calling me out of my name , cussing me out. It was very triggering because I feel like as a woman we have to deal with this type of gendered ignorance way too often. So I was really hurt and upset. And I get to my friends place and she was really  upset too but about something else. She was upset because the turning knob had fallen off of her kitchen counter. I thought she was overreacting and thought “‘my situation is so much worse and she’s complaining about a broken knob ?” I classified it as her over reacting then. What I didn’t see then was, how she was a single parent , how she had just gotten out of a crappy relationship, how she was balancing school, finances , work and a child. How she was dealing with depression and just trying to make it day by day. And sure a broken knob is nowhere near as messed up as being chased in a store. But, we all are going through challenging things that are relative to our individual lives. And we all deserve to be heard because those things matter .