An effect of trauma

Harming your children

Having hurt, frightened, or neglected your own children. Hitting them the way you were hit. Screaming until they went quiet. Going missing on them, physically or emotionally, the way someone went missing on you. Swearing you would never become it and then hearing it come out of your own mouth. This is the pattern most people are most frightened of repeating, and repeating some of it does not mean the whole of it is now fixed and unstoppable.

If your children are at risk today, that is the first thing, and it is handled outside this site with someone who can act. After that: the cycle is broken by people who could see what they were doing and said so, which is a much less hopeless picture than it feels like from inside. Your children need you to change it more than they need you to hate yourself for it. Both are on offer here and only one of them helps.

It can sound like

“I did to my kids what was done to me.” “I hit my child.” “I scream at them and I hate myself after.” “My children are frightened of me.” “I have become my mother.”

If any of those sentences live in your head too, you are in good company here.

Experiences this often follows

Effects do not come from nowhere. These are some of the experiences that people who carry this one often describe. You do not need to have been through any of them for what you feel to be real.

Nothing on this page is a diagnosis, and nothing here decides what is wrong with you, because nothing is wrong with you. Something happened to you. This page exists so that when you are ready, you can find people who understand it from the inside.

You do not have to carry this alone.

Bridge of Hope Recovery is a free, anonymous, peer-led fellowship for trauma survivors. Meetings run throughout the week by phone, by video, and in person. No cost, no waitlist, no one asking for your real name.

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