When Harm Is About Who You Are - Why It Hurts So Deeply — and Why It’s Not Your Fault

What Is Identity-Based Harm?

Identity-based harm refers to violence, discrimination, microaggressions, and systemic barriers that target who someone is — their gender identity, sexual orientation, race, ability, immigration status, religion, or neurodivergence. This harm can be overt, like hate crimes or discriminatory laws, or subtle, like being misgendered, overlooked, or expected to “tone yourself down” to belong.

For LGBTQ+ people and others with marginalized identities, identity-based harm is rarely a one-time event. It’s cumulative. And that matters.

Reflection:
When was the first time you realized part of who you are made the world less safe or less welcoming?

How Identity-Based Harm Lives in the Body

One of the most common things I hear in therapy is: “I don’t know why this affects me so much.” The answer is that your nervous system is doing exactly what it’s designed to do.

Chronic exposure to identity-based harm keeps the body in a state of vigilance. Anxiety, shutdown, dissociation, irritability, numbness, or people-pleasing aren’t personality flaws — they’re adaptive responses to ongoing threat. When safety isn’t guaranteed, the body prioritizes survival over ease.

This is why identity-based harm is also hate-based trauma. Even when harm isn’t physical, the body responds as if danger is present — because, historically and systemically, it often has been.

Reflection:
What signals does your body give you when you don’t feel safe or seen? Do you listen to them — or push through?

The Role of Systems in Mental Health

Identity-based harm doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Systems like capitalism, white supremacy, cisheteropatriarchy, and ableism shape who is valued and who is disposable. When your identity is politicized or debated — whether through trans healthcare bans, ICE raids, or workplace discrimination — your mental health is impacted whether or not you’re consciously thinking about it.

Many clients internalize this harm as shame: I’m too much. I’m not enough. I should be more resilient. But these narratives are learned. They’re reinforced by systems that benefit from our exhaustion and disconnection.

Reflection:
Whose voice do you hear when you’re hardest on yourself — and where did you learn it?

Healing From Identity-Based Harm

Healing doesn’t mean becoming unaffected by harm. It means understanding it in context. When we name identity-based harm as systemic rather than personal, shame begins to loosen its grip.

Therapy can be one place where this happens — not by “fixing” you, but by helping you reconnect to your body, your values, and your sense of self. Healing also involves reclaiming joy, rest, and pleasure in a world that often withholds them from marginalized people.

You are not broken. You are responding to real conditions. And that matters.