When You’re Treated as “Less Than
Discrimination isn’t just an event
Discrimination isn’t always shouted. Sometimes it’s a raised eyebrow, a joke that lands wrong, or an opportunity that never comes. Other times it’s outright rejection, hostility, or a system built to keep you out. Whatever the form, the message it sends is the same: you don’t belong here.
Therapy can’t erase that reality — but it can help you make sense of its weight, its echoes, and its effects on your mind and body.
At a glance
- Discrimination can be direct, indirect, structural, or subtle.
- It affects both mind and body — increasing stress, anxiety, hypervigilance, and shame.
- Therapy can’t erase discrimination, but it can help you process, name, and recover from its effects.
- A safe therapeutic relationship restores dignity and space to breathe.
- You don’t have to face it alone.
Understanding What Discrimination Really Means
In UK law, the Equality Act 2010 protects people from unfair treatment based on what are called protected characteristics: things like age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage or civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex, and sexual orientation.
That legislation sets the floor, not the ceiling. It tells society what must not happen — but it can’t legislate for the everyday human experience of being treated as less than. Discrimination often happens in the grey spaces between law and lived life — through tone, exclusion, stereotypes, or assumptions that slip under the radar of “intent.”
It’s important to name that clearly: discrimination isn’t only what you can prove; it’s also what you feel.
The Many Faces of Inequality
Some discrimination is direct — being refused a service, a job, or fair treatment because of who you are. Some is indirect — policies or systems that disadvantage certain groups without ever saying so. There are also the subtle layers that build up over time: being talked over, having your name mispronounced repeatedly, or feeling like you have to censor yourself just to fit in.
Those small things aren’t small when they happen every day. They accumulate, like static in the body. You start to scan for threat, brace for dismissal, or question whether you imagined it. That’s how discrimination does its deeper work — not just through harm, but through doubt.
Ultimately, whenever we talk about discrimination, we’re talking about a lack of respect.
If respect is shown, we value the person and their differences. When we talk about equality, diversity, and inclusion, what we’re really talking about is respect — the willingness to recognise another person’s humanity.
The Psychological Weight
Living with discrimination creates a constant state of alert. The body learns to prepare for impact — heart racing, breath shallow, shoulders tense. Over time, that hypervigilance becomes a kind of background noise you stop noticing but never escape.
It can lead to exhaustion, irritability, anxiety, low mood, or burnout. Many people describe feeling detached or numb, like they’re running on autopilot. Others turn the pain inward — self-blame, people-pleasing, or silence that keeps the peace but costs a piece of self-worth each time.
There’s also a quieter form of trauma that comes from being repeatedly unseen. When you’ve had to fight to be believed, the nervous system doesn’t easily relax. You learn to expect disbelief, to self-edit, to shrink. It’s not weakness — it’s survival.
The Link Between Situation and Sensation
Discrimination isn’t “just in your head.” It’s embodied. The constant release of stress hormones and adrenaline changes how the body functions. Sleep becomes lighter, digestion suffers, focus narrows. You’re not imagining the fatigue; it’s physiological.
That’s why therapy matters. It works on the bridge between experience and biology — helping you name what’s happened, notice its effects, and slowly bring the nervous system back into balance.
When people say, “I can’t relax,” or “I don’t feel safe anywhere,” therapy doesn’t interpret that as oversensitivity. It’s the body’s honest report that something in the world hasn’t been safe for too long.
The Role of Therapy
Therapy can’t change how others behave, but it can help you reconnect with yourself after being shaped by others’ prejudice. It offers space to:
- name experiences that have been minimised or denied,
- explore anger or grief that’s been buried for the sake of survival,
- find words for things you were told not to mention,
- and rebuild self-trust after years of gaslighting or dismissal.
The therapist’s role isn’t to neutralise your anger or turn pain into positivity; it’s to hold it with respect until you can hold it for yourself.
Therapy also helps separate what belongs to you from what belongs to them. Internalised discrimination — the quiet belief that you’re less capable, less deserving, or somehow to blame — is one of prejudice’s most corrosive legacies. Unlearning that takes time, patience, and compassion.
Therapy can’t dismantle systems, but it can help you dismantle the shame those systems leave behind.
An important lesson i learnt was, nobody but me controls how i feel – allowing someone elses thoughts/attitudes to make myself feel smaller is a choice; and if i don’t value them, why give their thoughts power.
When the Situation Itself Needs Change
Sometimes, what people bring to therapy isn’t a mental health problem — it’s a reflection of unsafe circumstances. If you’re facing harassment at work, housing discrimination, or financial precarity, practical help may need to come first. Stabilising the situation helps stabilise the mind.
Getting advice or advocacy doesn’t sit in opposition to therapy — it’s part of recovery. Once safety and stability return, therapy can help your body and mind process what happened and rebuild confidence in the world.
Stress, insecurity, and exclusion all have psychobiological effects. You can’t breathe easily if you’re under threat, and you can’t heal fully while still fighting for basic safety.
What to Expect from a Therapist
If discrimination has shaped your life, you deserve a therapist who recognises that without minimising it. That means someone who:
- takes your experiences seriously, even if they don’t share them,
- doesn’t expect you to educate them about your identity,
- and remains open if you name discomfort or bias in the room.
Cultural humility isn’t about being “woke” — it’s about being teachable, accountable, and aware that our experiences of the world are not all the same.
If you ever feel unseen, unsafe, or patronised in therapy, you’re allowed to say so — or to leave. The space belongs to you.
Where to Turn for Practical Help
While therapy focuses on the emotional impact, you can seek parallel support for the practical and legal side. The Equality Advisory Support Service (EASS) offers free guidance on discrimination and equality law. Citizens Advice can help you understand your rights and routes to redress. ACAS provides workplace advice, and organisations like Stonewall, Scope, Galop, the Race Equality Foundation, and Disability Rights UK advocate for specific communities.
If the experience has affected your wellbeing or safety, services like Mind, Rethink, or the Hub of Hope directory can connect you with both emotional and community support.
You don’t have to choose between justice and healing — both matter, and both can happen in tandem.
Reclaiming Space and Safety
Discrimination takes from you — time, energy, peace, sometimes belief in your own worth. Therapy helps you reclaim that ground slowly, without pressure to forgive or forget. It helps you breathe where you used to brace, speak where you used to swallow, and find meaning beyond survival.
You can’t always control who sees you clearly, but you can learn to hold your own reflection steady again. That’s the work — not rewriting what happened, but refusing to let it define how you see yourself now.
You can’t control how others treat you, but you can choose how much space their behaviour takes in your mind and body. Therapy helps you reclaim that space — one breath, one truth, one boundary at a time.
