It doesn’t always matter if you’re right about how you were wronged
Many people come to me for therapy carrying resentment, emotional pain, and unresolved trauma.
In trauma-informed and integrative therapy, we often explore how early experiences, nervous system patterns, and inner child wounds shape the way we respond to hurt. This reflection invites a gentle but powerful shift, from being right, to being free.
This is a hard pill to swallow but:
It doesn’t always matter if you’re right about how you were wronged.
That can feel deeply uncomfortable, especially if you’ve experienced emotional pain, betrayal, neglect, or trauma. Because yes, sometimes people do treat us badly, you have absolutely every right to feel this way about being wronged. Sometimes boundaries are crossed. Sometimes trust is broken. Sometimes harm is done and that is really a crappy feeling to have to deal with.
This isn’t about denying that. It’s about noticing what happens when we continue to live inside the story of it.
When we replay the same narrative again and again, how wronged we were, how unfair it was, how justified our anger or hurt is, our nervous system keeps reliving the original experience.
From a trauma-informed perspective, this means we are re-triggering our own stress responses, even long after the event has passed.
And slowly, without realising it, we remain stuck in survival mode.
When Being Right Becomes a Form of Self-Protection in Trauma Healing
For many people, holding tightly to their story of being wronged isn’t just emotional, it’s protective.
Especially for those with childhood trauma, attachment wounds, or unresolved inner child pain, staying connected to the injustice can feel safer than letting go.
It provides certainty.
It validates the hurt.
It protects a younger part of us that once had no voice, no safety, and no power.
Your inner child may still be holding: “If I stay alert, if I stay angry, if I stay remembering - I won’t be hurt again.”
This isn’t weakness.
It’s survival intelligence.
I know, I lived this pattern for decades before slowly finding my way out of it. Even with years of therapy, I often noticed I was repeating the same stories with the therapist, rather than moving beyond them. These old survival strategies, which once kept us safe, can later become the very thing that keeps us emotionally stuck.
Trauma, Memory & the Nervous System: Why We Stay Stuck in Survival Mode
Trauma does not only live in memory, it lives in the body and nervous system.
This is why trauma-informed therapy focuses not just on thinking, but on nervous system regulation, somatic awareness, and emotional safety.
When unresolved trauma is present, the body can remain locked into:
Fight – anger, frustration, hyper-alertness
Flight – anxiety, overthinking, busyness, avoidance
Freeze – numbness, exhaustion, shutdown
Fawn – people-pleasing, self-abandonment
Each time we revisit painful emotional stories, we unintentionally reinforce these survival states.
This is where somatic therapy, mindfulness-based approaches, nervous system regulation, and inner child healing become so powerful, because they work beneath words, at the level where trauma actually lives.
When Letting Go Feels Unsafe
One of the hardest moments in trauma recovery comes when clients begin loosening their grip on resentment and emotional pain.
Common thoughts can include:
“If I stop being angry, does that mean it didn’t matter?”
“If I let go, am I letting them win?”
“If I stop talking about it, who am I?”
These are deeply human fears!
For many people, pain has become such a part of the identity that letting go can feel like betrayal of the self.
But healing is not about forgetting.
It is not about excusing.
It is not about minimising harm.
and most importantly (in the way I work) it is NOT about forgiving the person who treated you badly (I will expand on this in another article as it is a whole subject in its own right)
It is about choosing yourself.
Choosing emotional freedom over emotional vigilance.
Choosing safety over armour.
Choosing nervous system calm over constant activation.
A Vital Caveat: Healing Requires Emotional Safety
This work cannot fully happen while you remain surrounded by people or environments that continue to harm, invalidate, or retraumatise you.
If you are still living within emotionally unsafe dynamics, criticism, manipulation, control, emotional abuse, gaslighting, chronic invalidation your nervous system will struggle to settle, no matter how much inner work you do.
Healing requires safety, boundaries, and emotional space.
Sometimes, the most therapeutic step is environmental, not internal.
This may involve:
strengthening emotional boundaries
reducing or pausing contact
stepping away from harmful relationships
building safer emotional environments
You cannot fully heal in the same conditions that wounded you.
From Survival to Emotional Freedom
When people begin shifting out of trauma-based survival patterns, something profound unfolds.
The nervous system softens.
Thoughts become clearer.
Emotional responses feel less reactive.
The body holds less tension.
Gradually, life begins to feel:
lighter
safer
more spacious
more regulated
This is the heart of trauma-informed, integrative therapy.
Not fixing yourself.
But gently returning to safety, agency, and emotional steadiness.
A Gentle Reflection
If you feel like you identify with this, you might like to reflect on:
What story am I still carrying?
And:
What younger part of me first learned that staying alert, guarded, or angry was necessary for survival?
Often, when we meet that younger self with compassion and safety, the story no longer needs to keep repeating.
Want to explore further? I offer trauma-informed, integrative therapy in Cornwall and online across the UK, supporting adults with:
trauma recovery
nervous system regulation
emotional overwhelm
anxiety
inner child healing
chronic stress
burnout
My work is relational, and deeply respectful of your nervous system’s pace.
You do not need to relive your trauma to heal it.
You simply need safety, compassion, and the right support.
If this reflection resonates, you are very welcome to explore working together.
