Physical violence

Having your physical safety threatened repeatedly without the harm always being carried out

Someone who held physical violence over you as a threat. Who did not always hit you but made sure you knew they could. Who used the threat of physical harm to control you. Living in that anticipation is its own kind of injury.

A threat that hangs in the air can control you as thoroughly as a blow that lands. Living braced for violence that came sometimes, or never, or only almost, trains the body to never stand down. People who have not lived it may say nothing really happened to you. Something did. Fear that constant is an event in itself.

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.

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. Startle response The nervous system calibrated to danger will flinch at sounds, movements, or surprises that others barely notice. Anxiety The background hum of dread that is always there. 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. 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. 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.

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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