Emotional and psychological harm

Having your emotions consistently dismissed, mocked, or punished

Being told you were too sensitive, too dramatic, too much. Having your feelings laughed at, ignored, or punished. Learning early that your emotional experience was not welcome, not valid, or not safe to express.

Being told you were too sensitive, over and over, teaches you to prosecute your own feelings before anyone else can. Many people with this history apologize for crying, preface every need with an apology, and doubt whether their reactions are allowed. Your feelings were never the problem. The response to them was.

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.

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. People-pleasing Anticipating what others need before they ask. Emotional dysregulation Reactions that feel disproportionate to the situation. Fawn response When the nervous system learned that the way to survive threat was to appease it, some people learned to become whatever the threatening person needed them to be. Loneliness This is different from pulling away. Self-abandonment When you grew up learning that your needs were inconvenient, dangerous, or simply irrelevant, you stopped tracking them.

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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