What We Carry and How It Shapes Us
Discrimination isn’t just about hate. It can whisper through a joke, hide behind politeness, or appear as absence — the job you never got, the room you never entered, the conversation that went quiet when you walked in. Most of us know what it feels like to be on the outside of something, even if the reason changes shape over time.
XSome carry it in obvious ways: colour, accent, disability, gender. Others through identities that can be hidden until they can’t. What discrimination does — no matter its form — is teach you where power sits and what safety costs.
The Everyday Weight of Difference
I’ve lived long enough to know discrimination rarely arrives with a signpost. Sometimes it’s a look that lasts a little too long. Sometimes it’s the word “brave” used as a compliment that really means “other.”
You learn to measure tone before intent. You scan a room before you speak. You edit.
When I was younger, the messages were loud — what I could be, what I shouldn’t. Later, they became quieter but sharper, disguised as “banter” or “good intentions.” By then, the damage was done: a body conditioned to expect exclusion. Discrimination doesn’t just teach you how others see you; it teaches you how to survive their seeing.
For many, it becomes a form of chronic vigilance — the nervous system forever scanning for threat, even when it’s not there. The body remembers these moments as data: heart quickens, shoulders tighten, mind prepares its defence.
That’s why discrimination isn’t only social — it’s somatic. You feel it before you can name it.
Not One Story, But Many
There isn’t one version of discrimination. There’s racism, sexism, homophobia, ableism, transphobia, fatphobia, ageism, classism, and faith-based prejudice — and then there’s what happens when several overlap.
Each carries its own rhythm, yet the pattern is familiar: a small difference becomes a fault line, and people project their discomfort onto it. Society often reacts to what it fears, not what it understands. And the result? Entire groups expected to shrink themselves to keep the peace.
Hate crime is the extreme end of that spectrum — where fear hardens into violence. But long before that, the groundwork is laid through thousands of smaller exclusions. The joke unchallenged. The silence after disclosure. The assumption of “normal” that never quite fits you.
When It’s Internalised
The most insidious part of discrimination is what happens when you start believing it. Internalised bias makes you the carrier of someone else’s story.
It might sound like:
- “I shouldn’t take up space.”
- “I’ll wait to be asked.”
- “I’m too much.”
That’s how discrimination migrates inward. You start editing yourself before anyone else can. It’s not self-hatred — it’s self-protection turned habitual.
Therapy often becomes the first place where those edits can stop. A space to say, “This happened,” without needing to prove it. The moment someone believes you, something inside exhales.
When someone finally believes you, something inside exhales — that’s what safety feels like.
Sometimes you can feel in a world – where you don’t fit in – it’s very grey and lonely- and people are often shouting and pointing it out – but there are times when you meet people who see you, and the colour comes back into your life.
Inside the Therapy Room
Therapy can’t undo structural inequality, but it can help a person reclaim their sense of self within it. It’s where you learn that your reactions — the flinch, the doubt, the withdrawal — aren’t personal failings; they’re the body’s record of lived threat.
Sometimes the work isn’t about resilience but rest. Sometimes it’s not about forgiveness but boundaries.
In a world that keeps asking marginalised people to educate others, therapy offers a pause — a space where understanding isn’t earned, it’s assumed.
I’ve seen how discrimination leaves people split: the version of self that performs safety and the one that carries truth. Therapy, at its best, is about reunion. You don’t have to leave parts of yourself in the waiting room.
Beyond Awareness
We talk a lot about awareness, but awareness without accountability doesn’t change much. We can all hold bias. What matters is how we meet it — whether we defend it or get curious about where it came from.
Discrimination won’t disappear through slogans. It lessens through attention, through small acts of decency repeated until they’re habit. And in therapy, it begins with one simple principle: everyone deserves to be seen safely.
We can’t always change the world that wounded us, but we can stop editing ourselves to fit it.
I’ll not let anyone shrink who I am – it took a lot of work to gain self-acceptance – and when i did – all the small minded people’s power of me disappeared.
Every Identity has tension
Every identity has moments of tension — between who you are, who you’re told to be, and who you choose to become. Discrimination narrows that space; therapy helps widen it again.
We can’t control how the world responds to difference, but we can decide how much of ourselves we withhold because of it.
That’s the quiet revolution — not shouting for inclusion, but no longer apologising for existing.
