Exploitation

Being exploited because of your age, disability, or vulnerability

Being taken advantage of because of age, cognitive disability, illness, or any other vulnerability that made you a target. People who identified your vulnerability and used it as an opportunity.

Being targeted precisely because you were vulnerable adds insult to the injury, because the thing that most needed protecting was the thing they used. Survivors of this often blame their own trust, their age, their condition. Predators choose their moments carefully. The choosing was theirs, and so is all of the blame.

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.

Trust issues Trust that was broken, repeatedly, by people who were supposed to be safe. Depression Not just sadness. Shame Not guilt about something you did. Learned helplessness When nothing you did made a difference, when effort did not produce safety, when asking for help did not bring help, the nervous system eventually stops asking. Self-abandonment When you grew up learning that your needs were inconvenient, dangerous, or simply irrelevant, you stopped tracking them. Hypervigilance The nervous system that learned to scan for danger all the time. People-pleasing Anticipating what others need before they ask. 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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