Belief Can Be A Lifeline

Believing People Is the First Step Toward Healing

So often, when people share their experiences of trauma, whether it's from childhood, the workplace, racial injustice, or navigating the healthcare system, they are met with skepticism instead of compassion.

As a mental health practitioner, I’ve witnessed firsthand how invalidation compounds harm. When someone opens up about their pain or their past, and they’re questioned, dismissed, or told it “wasn’t that bad,” the message they receive is: your reality doesn’t matter. YOU don't matter. This happens far too often, especially to those who are already marginalized and not in positions of power.

Bias and the Burden of Proof

For people of the global majority, women, children, gender-expansive individuals, people without financial or social power, and other systemically excluded groups, being believed is not a guarantee, it’s a fight. We’re expected to explain our pain in ways that are digestible. We’re told to “be strong,” “push through,” or “just move on,” as if naming harm or showing emotion is a liability rather than a valid and human response.

Worse still, our credibility is often assessed through biased lenses:

A person reporting discrimination at work is targeted as being the problem.
A young person seeking health care is told they are too young for XYZ illness and their symptoms are dismissed until it is too late.
A survivor who shares their story of trauma “must be exaggerating” or “invited it.”

This culture of doubt doesn’t protect people, it protects systems of power.

Unconditional Belief

We must do better.

We must commit to unconditional belief and acceptance, and not as naivety, but as a conscious and compassionate stance. We must practice trusting that when someone tells us who they are and what they’ve been through, the most courageous and healing thing we can do is listen.

Believing people doesn’t mean we have all the answers or that we never have doubts. It doesn’t mean we become their therapist or solve their pain. It means we create the kind of world where people are allowed to be heard, to be human, and to heal.

This isn’t just about personal relationships, it’s about how we build community and culture.

Whether in our workplaces, our families, or our movements for justice, the question isn’t “Do I agree with every detail of their story?” The question is: “What kind of person do I want to be when someone trusts me with their truth?”

Dismissing someone's experience deepens their trauma. Belief can be a lifeline.

Let’s be the kind of people who listen, who affirm, and who believe.