Physical violence

Watching a family member be taken, abducted, or kidnapped

Seeing someone in your family taken. The moment it happened, what you could not do to stop it, and everything that has lived in you since. Whether they came back or did not, the watching itself is its own injury, separate from theirs, and it belongs here.

If some version of this is part of your story, you already know that the hardest part is rarely the memory itself. It is carrying it in a world that mostly does not want to hear about it. This fellowship exists so you do not have to carry it alone, and so you never have to explain it to someone who has no idea what it means.

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.

Clinging or shutting down in relationships Attachment is the system that governs how we connect with other people, how close we let them get, how we respond when they pull away, how we handle being needed. Complex or ongoing trauma and its effects 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. Not knowing who to trust Trust that was broken, repeatedly, by people who were supposed to be safe. Depression Not just sadness. Freezing up or going blank when things get intense When the nervous system learned that neither fighting nor fleeing was possible, some people learned to go still. Grief that is stuck and will not let you move Grief that did not follow the expected path. Struggling to make sense of what happened to you The questions that will not resolve. Flashbacks and reliving what happened 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.

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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