Identity-based harm

Being harmed or targeted because of your social class or economic status

Being treated as lesser, excluded, or targeted because of your economic situation. The shame that poverty carries in a culture that treats it as a personal failure. Being denied opportunities, dismissed, or harmed because of what you had or did not have.

Being treated as less because of what you had, or did not have, leaves shame that a culture of bootstraps stories works hard to make you own. Poverty was never a verdict on your worth. The doors that closed, the assumptions that followed you, the contempt dressed as advice, those were harms done to you, not evidence about you.

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.

Depression Not just sadness. Shame Not guilt about something you did. Housing instability Homelessness and housing instability are often what trauma produces. Financial ruin Financial ruin is often what trauma leaves behind. 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. Hypervigilance The nervous system that learned to scan for danger all the time. Trust issues Trust that was broken, repeatedly, by people who were supposed to be safe. Anxiety The background hum of dread that is always there.

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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