An effect of trauma
Secondary trauma
Your nervous system does not always distinguish between being the person something happened to and being the person who watched it happen to someone else. Secondary traumatic stress is what forms when witnessing harm leaves you with symptoms that look and feel like your own. Intrusive images, hypervigilance, numbness, difficulty sleeping, not wanting to talk about it. The wound came from being there, not from being the direct target. That is still a real wound. It counts. You are allowed to be affected by it.
Symptoms from witnessing are the nervous system's honest response to what it was exposed to, and they need no permission slip from a hierarchy of suffering. You do not have to have been the target for it to count. It counts. Treat it with the same seriousness you would urge on anyone else, and let this be a place where that is easy.
It can sound like
If any of those sentences live in your head too, you are in good company here.
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.