Date of publishing: 23.12.25
Author: Anastasia Kaminskaia
This topic has been boiling within me for more than a decade now.
For the past few years, I have been actively thinking about it and writing about it - mostly privately, not publicly yet. Today is the day to finally talk about this type of trauma, to open up this topic for discussion, and to see how many tall women are affected by this phenomenon. Well, I know that many tall women will resonate with what I have to say here.
What allows me to talk about this topic? First of all, my personal experience with this type of trauma. Second of all, I’m an Integrative Trauma-Trained Holistic Health Coach with a background in Practical Psychology who is specialised in working with childhood cPTSD and narcissistic abuse survivors. I’m also actively working as an Integrative Psychologist in non-English-speaking countries where my qualifications allow me to legally do that.
So, what is the trauma of being a tall woman? Before I go into details, I want you to know that this is a very deep topic for discussion, with many layers to it, and today we will only be able to scratch the surface. Please do not expect a comprehensive post answering all of your questions around this type of trauma.
As Judith L. Herman says "Trauma is any event that overwhelms the ordinary human adaptations to life".
Trauma related to body type is quite common, yet it has not been widely discussed. I first came across this phenomenon while taking a course where Pat Ogden spoke about trauma and her Sensorimotor Psychotherapy approach. I experienced this powerful aha moment while listening to her speak about trauma, where everything just clicked and I came to some important realisations.
I'm wondering if I'm the first practitioner ever to address this topic. So, bear with me as I continue my research and share my findings here. Every person who engages with this article will definitely contribute to more understanding of the topic, and this will allow me to create different types of support specifically for tall women experiencing trauma around their tallness.
To begin defining this type of trauma, I will start with sharing a list of indicators that would typically signal that you have been experiencing the trauma of being a tall woman. This is not an official list in any way because no one has ever talked about this type of trauma before in a professional capacity. This is the list I came up with as a result of many conversations with other tall women and my in-depth study of trauma.
You do not need to resonate with every single statement below to have the trauma of being a tall woman. You might resonate with a few statements and then see that the way you perceive your height has been negatively impacting your life choices and making your life more difficult. That would indicate that there is a wound or trauma around your height. Please note that this list is not a diagnostic tool because it simply does not yet exist. Tall women's pain has not been acknowledged at any scale.
Here is the list of indicators for this type of trauma or ways the trauma of being a tall woman can show up:
You have a very difficult relationship with your body height-wise, to the extent that you might feel absolutely terrified or anxious about going out of your house because your body is expecting people’s stares and inappropriate comments about how tall you are. As a result, you try to avoid social interactions as much as possible. Tall women often report experiencing BDD (Body Dysmorphic Disorder).
You are constantly triggered by the size of your limbs. How long/big your arms or feet are, or by how “manly” you look because your wrist is slightly larger than your boyfriend's, for example. As a side note, you are not 'manly' just because you are tall. Being tall is not a gender-specific trait, even though men tend to be taller on average. Men DO NOT OWN tallness, ok?
Shopping can be very triggering for you, especially when you want to buy pants or shoes. It can even cause a panic attack.
You are constantly and automatically measuring your height against other people’s heights when they are in close physical proximity, and it feels impossible for you to feel safe around shorter people. As a result, you slouch a lot and work really hard on shrinking yourself in public.
Dating life can cause extreme anxiety, and you may feel triggered by shorter men, with your priority being to find a taller man.
When you have to attend social events, you prefer sitting rather than standing because it feels safer. You always anticipate a negative reaction from others toward your height if you have to stand up.
A comment like “you are so tall” can cause a panic attack and/or a negative thought loop/shame cycle for days or even months after the incident.
Sometimes, you question whether you should exist at all in this world as a tall woman. You feel as if the entire world hates you just for being tall.
What might have caused you to develop this type of trauma:
The unfriendly environment you grew up in
A history of bullying by peers, parents or other adults
A history of ongoing ambiguous or sarcastic comments about your height throughout your life and/or verbal abuse around your tallness.
Patriarchy and toxic masculine
The fact that the percentage of tall women is generally smaller in comparison to shorter women. Hence, we are prone to feeling isolated and wrong. There could be no one to relate to and no one who could relate to your pain throughout your life.
Unrealistic societal beauty standards and/or expectations. For example, models are admired but often in videos and pictures only, or by rich men who do not have issues with masculinity. Also, women are expected to be shorter than their male partners.
History of cPTSD/PTSD
Lack of parental support around you being/looking different from others while growing up.
The fact that the system is not build for tall women, so it might be harder to find clothes and operate within the system in other ways.
Negative societal programming around taller women.
This post has only scratched the surface of this type of trauma. I will continue sharing more about the trauma of being a tall woman and ways we can heal from it.
Let me know if you can relate to any of the indicators above and whether there is anything you would add to that list.