War, conflict, and organized violence

Surviving genocide or ethnic cleansing

Surviving organized, systematic violence that was targeted at your ethnic, racial, or religious group with the intent to destroy or eliminate it. The particular horror of violence that was not random but deliberate, organized, and aimed at erasing people like you from existence.

Surviving violence aimed at erasing your people entirely is a weight that language mostly fails. The grief is personal and collective at once, and carrying it among people who have never heard of what happened to your community adds a loneliness on top. Your survival matters, your memory of them matters, and both have a place here.

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. 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. Insomnia Difficulty falling asleep. Emotional numbing Not depression exactly. 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. 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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