Yes. Something can still be abusive even if others had more extreme experiences. Comparing your experiences to others can make it harder to recognize harm, but it does not change the impact on you.
Abuse is not defined by being the “worst” case. It is defined by whether your safety, autonomy, or well-being were undermined. Harm does not need to reach a certain level to be valid.
Comparisons often shift attention away from your own experience and toward minimizing it. This can make it harder to recognize what you went through and how it affected you.
What matters is not how your experience compares to others, but how it impacted you.
This page is part of the What Counts as Abuse? section of the CommuniDID site, which helps readers evaluate past experiences and understand why confusion about abuse is common.
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