Things We Pretend Don’t Bother Us (But Definitely Do)

Nadia Renata
2 days ago
3 min read

Woman with short curly hair in white shirt stands near sunlit window, calm expression, soft beige background.

There are certain things we learn to minimise quickly.

Not because they don’t affect us but because acknowledging them feels inconvenient, dramatic or unsafe. So we shrug them off. Laugh them away. Tell ourselves, “It’s not that serious.”

Until they show up somewhere else…

The Body Keeps Score of What the Mouth Dismisses

When something genuinely doesn’t bother you, it passes through cleanly. No residue. No replay. No tension left behind. But when something does bother you and you pretend it doesn’t, the body notices.

You feel it as:

Tightness you can’t explain
Irritation that shows up sideways
Fatigue that doesn’t match your workload
A short fuse over small things

That’s not weakness. That’s unprocessed impact.

Why We Pretend We’re Fine

Most people don’t dismiss their feelings because they’re out of touch. They do it because they’ve been trained to. Sometimes it’s about survival:

“Don’t be so sensitive.”
“Other people have it worse.”
“That’s just how they are.”
“It’s not worth the argument.”

Sometimes it’s about identity:

You’re the easy one.
The strong one.
The low-maintenance one.
The one who doesn’t make things heavy.

So you swallow discomfort to protect the version of you that feels acceptable.

The Cost of Constant Minimising

Pretending something doesn’t bother you doesn’t make it disappear. It just delays the reckoning. Over time, minimising becomes accumulation:

Small dismissals pile up
Patterns get normalised
Your tolerance stretches past what’s healthy
Resentment builds quietly, then leaks unpredictably

You don’t explode because of one thing. You explode because of everything you kept saying was “fine.”

Especially in Our Culture

In Caribbean spaces, there’s often an unspoken rule: don’t make things awkward. We’re taught to:

Keep the peace
Laugh it off
Don’t embarrass anyone
Don’t bring “feelings” where they don’t belong

So we become experts at pretending. At smoothing over. At moving on without processing. But emotional suppression doesn’t create resilience. It creates delay. And delayed feelings don’t disappear; they harden.

How It Shows Up Later

What you pretend doesn’t bother you often shows up as:

Emotional distance
Passive irritation
Sarcasm masked as humour
Withdrawing instead of addressing
Feeling unseen but not knowing how to say it

The issue was never that you were “too sensitive.” It’s that you were too practiced at minimising.

Honesty Is Not Drama

Saying something bothers you doesn’t make you difficult. It makes you honest.

There’s a difference between overreacting and acknowledging impact. Impact doesn’t need permission to exist. It just needs space to be named. And no, naming something doesn’t mean turning it into a fight. It means refusing to gaslight yourself.

What Telling the Truth Might Sound Like

Not everything needs a confrontation. But some things need a sentence.

“That didn’t sit well with me.”
“I laughed, but it actually bothered me.”
“I’m noticing this keeps happening.”
“I thought I was okay with it, but I’m not.”

No speeches.

No accusations.

Just honesty.

What Actually Changes When You Stop Pretending

When you stop minimising, a few things happen:

You start trusting your internal signals again
Your reactions make more sense
Resentment loses its grip
You stop carrying emotional weight that isn’t yours

Most importantly, you stop abandoning yourself for the sake of being “easy to deal with.”

Whisper From the Heart

If something keeps returning to your body or your thoughts, it’s asking to be acknowledged. You don’t need to make it bigger than it is. You just need to stop pretending it isn’t there. Honesty doesn’t require harshness. It simply asks that you stop disappearing in places that matter. – Nadia Renata | Audacious Evolution

Affirmation

I trust my internal signals.

I allow myself to name what impacts me.

I choose honesty without abandoning my kindness.

(If you’d like a quiet moment to sit with this affirmation visually, it’s included in my YouTube affirmation playlist — a calming space filled with grounding reminders for your day. Affirmation of the Day)