Institutional and systemic failure

Being harmed within a residential program, treatment center, or institutional placement

Being sent to a residential program, boot camp, wilderness therapy, or treatment center that caused harm. Programs that used isolation, physical restraint, humiliation, or abuse under the guise of treatment. Being placed somewhere by adults who believed it would help and finding that it hurt instead.

Being sent away to a program that hurt you carries a double bind. The harm itself, and the fact that people who loved you chose it believing it would help. Survivors of these places often spent years unable to convince anyone what happened inside. The accounts are believed here, in full, the first time they are told.

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. Trust issues Trust that was broken, repeatedly, by people who were supposed to be safe. 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. Depression Not just sadness. Shame Not guilt about something you did. 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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