We will generally hear about more life-experiences then we will actually experience in person, for better or worse. So most of us tend to have at least a basic idea of what most occurrences will look like. However, the human brain has a way of “protecting” itself, so topics like “traumatic events” are often hard to discuss and explain.

Someone asked “What is something that is actually more traumatizing than most people realize?” and people shared some poignant examples. So get comfortable as you scroll through, upvote the ones that you agree with and add your own thoughts to the comments section below.

#1

Losing a pet. People acknowledge it’s sad, but unless you’ve been through it, you don’t realize just how deeply it can break you. It’s losing a best friend, a daily companion, and a source of unconditional love all at once.

Image credits: AlaricVass

#2

Being raised by parents with undiagnosed mental illness.

Image credits: saltyt00th

#3

Job searching! The fatigue of getting multiple rejections, being ghosted, while trying to pay bills can be crushing.

Image credits: lobstersareforever

#4

Being poor/debt/financial instability.

Image credits: casuallycruel420

#5

Being cheated on can ruin your life.

Image credits: BasedChristopher

#6

Being ghosted for no reason by friends.

Made me lose all respect I had for myself and made my anxiety 10× worse.

Image credits: Thecrowfan

#7

Not all, but a good amount of childbirth experiences. I regularly tell people it was the worst day of my life and they’re shocked. Of course I was happy to meet my baby but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a massively traumatic day getting there.

Image credits: chocolate_turtles

#8

Working under a toxic manager. I have work related ptsd.

Image credits: RoamingGnome74

#9

Feeling like no one loves you or understands you.

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#10

Choking on food. It’s literally life or death and it can stick with you if you survive that scenario.

Image credits: DEFALTJ2C

#11

Feeling emotionally invisible. It’s a slow, quiet kind of trauma that builds over time. I think people often underestimate how much it affects your mental health when you constantly feel like no one truly sees or hears you.

Image credits: nova_8

#12

Someone you trusted taking your deepest traumas and insecurities to ‘win’ an argument.

Image credits: Flimsy_Tomatillo_334

#13

Becoming disabled. Nobody treats it as the truly traumatic experience it really is. There is no psychological support for us, as it happens. We are left to figure it out on our own.

Image credits: Luna7789

#14

Going through a divorce. Even though divorcing my ex was one of the best decisions I ever made , at the time it was so much more painful and stressful than I could have imagined.

Image credits: akmhykes

#15

Being the black sheep of the family.

Image credits: Sweet_Principle_2359

#16

A book I read on trauma listed immigration as one of the top 5.

Image credits: MeteoricColdAndTall

#17

Growing up as the “gifted” child, only to wind up the Family Disappointment.

Image credits: MisterScrod1964

#18

Growing up the child of a self employed father. I was an employee to him, not a son.

Image credits: anon

#19

Growing up non diagnosed nurodivergence and never really fitting in and not knowing why while also not getting any support from the adults who should have noticed something.

Image credits: Economy_Bathroom_156

#20

Being raised in Evangelical Christianity or other high-control religious environments.

Image credits: Suspicious_Program99

#21

Having a boss who criticizes every little thing you do, for literally hours at a time, until finally you start to wonder whether you actually ARE that stupid and incompetent. .

Image credits: strawberry2801

#22

Having a verbally or physically a***ive sibling.

Image credits: Pure_Wrongdoer_4714

#23

Being adopted. Not the adoption necessarily because loads of people love their adoptive parents and feel complete in their new family, but the act of being abandoned. Especially if the child spends time in an orphanage where they don’t necessarily always get the care they need.

Image credits: theredsongstress

#24

Being bullied. On TV, people act like it’s funny. But it can provide life long trauma.

Image credits: Humble-Midnight4067

#25

Infestations. Bed bugs, roaches, fleas, mice, you name it. Absolutely corrodes your psyche.

Image credits: SpecificAttempt9057

#26

Close friend break ups. Just as bad if not worse than relationship breakups.

Image credits: IdkJustMe123

#27

Getting an IUD. Most painful thing I have ever experienced, and I managed to break and dislocate my ankle at the same time.

Image credits: WeirdLight9452

#28

Having your car stolen, even if you get it back a couple days later. I felt personally violated and ended up selling the car a couple months later.

Image credits: Super_Newspaper_5534

#29

Growing up with parents who simply do not love each other, who scream at each other all the time, and never get divorced.

Growing up in a household where you learn to be responsible for your parents’ feelings from a very young age.

Edit to add: I didn’t think this would resonate with so many people. Thank you to everyone for sharing if this hit home for you. Just knowing that there are other hearts out there who know what it felt like, and feels like to carry into adulthood no matter how old you are, feels supportive. 🤎.

Image credits: CheesecakeQuackery

#30

Legitimate near death experiences. People will say “I thought I was going to die” but if you actually have a moment when you deeply and truly believe that, it can really mess you up. If you’ve had one of those moments then you understand what I mean.

Image credits: WingZombie

#31

Taking care of a parent with dementia. It is soul draining. It’s a full time job. It’s dirty and embarrassing for all involved. It’s heartbreaking watching your once competent, intelligent, funny parent regress until they are a husk of a person. You struggle with keeping them in their home and “honoring their wishes”. Dealing with insurance, Medicaid, hospital stays, and affording any kind of respite care is mine-boggling complex and expensive. Cleaning up grown man pee and poop from every corner of the house is maddening. The tedium of repeating yourself a hundred times a day, listening to the same questions, the same complaints and stories. The list is neverending.

I wish there was assisted s****de in America that you could put into an advanced directive for circumstances like this. He wouldn’t want to live like this and it is ruining lives.

#32

Getting paid late, bills don’t stop just because a company can’t plan ahead financially. .

#33

Growing up with a parent who goes silent when angry. I never knew if it was me she was mad at, and if so, what I did. I’m 70 years old, and while I consciously fight the feeling, if someone is quiet I assume they’re angry with me, even if there’s no reason they should be.

#34

Chronic illness.

#35

Early internet access

For me atleast. I stumbled upon so many things I should’ve never seen at that age, that I feel I will never unsee.

I had social media at a young age and I made..some pretty immature decisions and I got cyber bullied, and sometimes publicly scrutinized by people much older then me, many times who KNEW I was a kid. A lot of those accounts I have to accept I’ll never be able to delete and just hope and pray they get banned.

I’m worried for these “iPad kids” it’s ok to let your kid watch YouTube a bit or play games but kids don’t understand “once you put something on the internet it’s there forever” and most of the time they don’t care. Monitor your kids phone, block social media websites and put content restrictions on it and if you find they stumbled upon something weird, or are doing something weird don’t make them feel bad for it. That’s one mistake my parents made.

#36

Growing up w a disabled sibling.

#37

Being laid off through no fault of your own.

#38

Working from home and not having much of a social life outside of it, which I’ve been doing for 12 years now.

The loneliness from it is a long term downer.

I work 50 hour work weeks at home and once I’m done I don’t even feel like going anywhere.

There are so many weeks out of my last decade+ of working from home where my only human in-person interaction is just buying something from a store clerk.

I have a wonderful dog who I take out regularly at least, but unfortunately my schedule doesn’t sync well with the few friends I do have and unfortunately they don’t like going out much.

Working in my pajamas and saving money on gas and time getting ready for work isn’t worth the immense loneliness working remote long term can bring.

#39

Neglect a**se. Whether it’s children, partners, pets, neglect a**se is at least as damaging as more obvious forms of a**se, but it’s a lot more difficult to spot. Like neglecting to provide your child discipline and structure. You see a lot of kids raised that way now that end up at least as badly screwed up as if they’d been physically a**sed. At least then they wouldn’t have to feel guilty about blaming their c***py parents.

#40

Allowing bad friends to stay in your life for too long.

Do not waste your life , energy and time on people who only take.

Seperate from them and watch how much better your life gets.

#41

Alienation. It starts in adolescence and can continue through adulthood. Bullies exist in the real world too, and feeling isolated or picked can do a number to your self esteem.

#42

When people talk over you (esp as a shy person) and project weird things about themselves onto you without letting you speak, label you “crazy” things and do not let up on you.

#43

Having to get older and watch your parent become more and more debilitated. Experiencing the fear and exhaustion. Wanting them to get better and more active, but also a part of you wishing them to pass away so you can have peace. And feeling like s**t and scum for even wishing that. I feel like a horrible person.

#44

Being “the peacemaker” sibling. I was often praised for being the calmest, most rational, able to smooth over situations child, even arguments between my parents. I developed an ability to calm down most people.

Now as an adult, I am easily triggered by arguments, being blamed for things, being shouted at etc,. and if I am not sure where I stand with people then it messes with me quite badly.

#45

Having a confrontation with neighbors. Having anger/fear/discord invade your living space is really upsetting on a basic subconscious level.

#46

For me, it was a cross-country move while I was in high school. Moving is difficult when you’re a child, particularly an older child who already has established peer networks. It is true that I didn’t leave the country, but I live in a large country with distinct subcultural regions. High School is already an awkward experience but add in a cross country move and I didn’t have a chance. It took me years to recover from this and in some ways I never did.

#47

Pain. Real pain. Humans can experience pain that is completely illogical so much that there is nothing you can do but roll around in agony wanting to die (can last days or longer). For example, acute appendicitis is f*****g horrific is not treated quickly and can cause death. To anyone who has not experienced it I hope you never do for those who have I’m sorry for your illogical pain.

#48

A toxic work environment.

I’ve worked in corporate America for 22 years now and the office politics. The nepotism, the toxicity level in a corporate work environment could do irreparable damage to your ability to be creative, to communicate in a comprehensive way to build healthy and professional and Cohesive relationships in the office. It could also stifle your ability to network. It could cause you to have cortisol levels that are so high you actually may need to retire early because of an autoimmune disease.
It’s just so traumatizing to work in an environment where somebody could potentially demean you, manipulate and use you, and there is nothing that you can do about it. There’s nowhere to go to file a complaint. It could ruin your trajectory to go get a job at another company. It is incredibly traumatizing.

#49

Functioning depression. People don’t realize how exhausting it is to put on a “happy” face every day when you’re out in the world when all you want to do is curl up in a ball and cry for a week straight.

#50

Contracting an STI. There’s this huge stigma behind it that you are a disgusting person and that’s the reason you contracted it when in reality everyone is a victim.

#51

Volunteering with animals. it’s not just playing with puppies and kitties. i work in animal welfare now and i have years of trauma and guilt from the terrible s**t people have done to these animals.

#52

Death. My favorite uncle died at age 32 suddenly when I was 11. He and my dad were very close. Although he had his own family he would stop over every evening on his way home from work to visit us. After the funeral no one ever uttered his name again. I would lay awake every night for six months thinking that you just die and the world goes on forever and ever and no one cares 😢💔.

#53

Jury duty. People think it’s annoying, boring, and inconvenient. It is all of those things. But you’re also being dragged into somebody’s tragedy, hearing details you never wanted to know. I’ve been on a r**e case, and I just wrapped up jury duty on a manslaughter case. It’s a jarring experience, and since most people (that I know) have never had it *at all*, I can’t really talk about with anybody, other than to say “yeah it sucked”.

#54

Living on the welfare system. I’m a disabled single mother who has no other choice than to be on welfare but I can’t begin to describe how traumatizing this poverty stricken life has been. The amount of crime that I’ve had to raise my children around in the ghetto (government housing assistance), raising them on next to nothing in disability benefits and barely any food stamps. We’ve witnessed so much crime and been the victim of criminal acts while having to live in low income neighborhoods, there’s never enough food (I skip meals so the kids can eat), and only a few hundred dollars a month in disability to pay all of our bills and the basic needs for the kids. I will say that Medicaid has been great though. 

Living on welfare has been a nightmare and I wish I had another option but I’m disabled. I strive to instill in my childhood the importance of education and a career so they will hopefully one day escape the system and make something of themselves so they don’t have to suffer or struggle anymore. I wish I could have given them better. .

#55

Emotional Betrayal

My ex intentionally slept with somebody else to hurt me in the deepest way possible then gaslit and manipulated me. When I finally decided I deserved more that trauma lives on and is hard to get past to trust new people.

#56

Having an addict sibling. Raising other people’s kids that they traumatized.
Not being good enough in a parents eyes.
Being born female when dad demanded a boy.

#57

Caregiving. I loved my husband and wouldn’t change having cared for him for all the money in the world but it was traumatizing.

#58

A parent that constantly yells at their children. Corporal punishment style parenting.

#59

Being bullied at work by charismatic persons who outrank you. A ready excuse for every situation, immunization attempts to keep their perspective more believable, it can quickly get utterly demoralizing.

#60

False accusations. Someone accuses you of doing something heinous and you lose your family, friends, job, future employability, financial security, if you were married with kids then you lose half of everything and all of your wife and kids, you’re now homeless. You probably become an alcoholic, possibly s*****al. All because someone thought nothing would happen when suggesting you’re a r**ist.

#61

Being the “weird one” in the workplace. showing up to just work while being left out of all of the camaraderie is so lonely. it makes work drag. it makes life harder for no reason.

#62

Being dumped out of the blue. He was coming over for dinner one day, broke up with me 15 minutes after arriving saying he “couldn’t give me what I needed” and left. He never told me what it was he thought he couldn’t give me. Never responded to another text ever again. It was like he died. I haven’t dated anyone in just over 1.5 years. Hard to trust when this man told me 4-5 days prior that I was the love of his life, showed me his wedding guest list. That one really broke me.

#63

The silent treatment. It’s cruel and a***ive. Not to be confused with setting clear boundaries with someone.

#64

Being called hypersensitive your entire life by your family.

Sounds rightful, but I put up with a lot of disrespect in my adult life now and have gotten myself into some sticky situations for not being able to express my feelings in fear of being “hypersensitive” or dramatic.

These people turn into chronic people-pleasers, and often struggle to express themselves in relationships and will resort to shutting away emotionally.

#65

Having a manipulating partner who ends up slowly but steadily removing any signs of your own original identity from yourself and the relationship.

#66

Being tickled without permission. Laughing does not equal consent.

#67

Our friends/family commenting on our insecurities.

My friend from elementary school (we’re in our thirties now and still good friends) once made an off-hand comment about my looks.

I was kind of chubby in what would be middle school years, and she once made a comment that “my body is not great, but my face is alright”.

I don’t think I will ever forget that comment.

Of course I knew I wasn’t skinny or the prettiest girl, but that s**t hurt so, so much. And it’s not like she was the prettiest girl in our class either, but she was skinnier than me.

Like I said, we’re still good friends and she never made any further comment on my looks, and I don’t hold it against her (we were in our early teens), but still.

I don’t think I am particularly ugly or pretty, I’d say I’m fairly average and normal, and I’m not skinny but not chubby either, but I don’t think I will ever really feel confident about my looks because “my body is not great, but my face is alright.”.

#68

Recently, fire trauma. Not being ON fire but losing your home to fire. We lost our home to a fire and people have been so helpful and generous and lovely. Then LA caught on fire and all of that kindness was out the window.

“They deserved it!” “They have so much money!”

Like yeah but there are a lot of people who lost their home. Who lost sentimental items. Who lost pets. Who lost the places they’ve built their families. Who lost their safe place.

It’s amazing how people don’t realize how traumatic that is.

Sore spot for me. “At least you’re all safe!”

Yeah but my home isn’t. My animals are traumatized and can barely sleep. I’m traumatized and can barely sleep. Every noise is an alarm suddenly. But yeah. We’re all safe. Cool cool cool.

#69

Being raised by parents who treat you like a little adult instead of a child. Examples include having your parents treat you as a therapist, having access to the whole internet and films/TV of any rating and subject matter, being told “you’re so mature for your age” but in reality you’re just being given way too much responsibility and are tasked with managing your parents emotions. Also being belittled for liking childish things like cartoons.

#70

Being alone most of your childhood. I was an only child, mom worked 12 hours a day and stepdad drove a truck all week.

#71

Everyone thinks that moving between so many countries as a child/teenager is super fun. It was most definitely not and as an adult now makes me grasp at anything that can give me some sense of stability.

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