War, conflict, and organized violence

Being a child soldier or being recruited into armed conflict as a minor

Being recruited, coerced, or forced into armed conflict as a child or adolescent. Being made to participate in violence before you had the capacity to understand what was being asked of you. The particular complexity of having been both victim and participant.

Being made a participant in violence as a child put you in a category the world barely knows how to think about. Both harmed and made to harm, before you could consent to either. Whatever happened, the adults who put a child in that position own the moral weight of it. You were a child. That sentence carries more of the truth than any other.

What can follow an experience like this

No two people carry the same experience the same way. These are some of the effects that people with this experience often describe. Having some of them, all of them, or none of them says nothing about how real what happened to you was.

PTSD After certain experiences, the brain can get stuck, replaying what happened through flashbacks, nightmares, or sudden intense reactions to things that remind you of it. Hypervigilance The nervous system that learned to scan for danger all the time. Insomnia Difficulty falling asleep. C-PTSD When trauma happened repeatedly, over a long time, or at the hands of people who were supposed to care for you, the effects go deeper than a single event. Emotional numbing Not depression exactly. Shame Not guilt about something you did. Depression Not just sadness. Identity disturbance Not being able to answer simple questions about yourself.

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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