Sexual violence

Witnessing a sexual assault against someone else

Being present when a sexual assault happened to another person. Whether you knew them or not, whether you understood fully what was happening, whether you did something or froze. What you witnessed is part of what you carry, and the weight of having been there does not require that it happened to you.

Being present while someone was sexually assaulted leaves a witness wound that rarely gets acknowledged, including by the witness. You may carry guilt about freezing, or feel you have no right to be affected. You were there, and your nervous system was there, and what it recorded is real. It does not need permission to hurt, and neither do you.

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. Survivor's guilt A persistent sense that you should not have survived, or should have done more, or that your survival came at someone else's expense. Bystander guilt The specific guilt that comes from having witnessed something and not stopped it. Emotional numbing Not depression exactly. Trust issues Trust that was broken, repeatedly, by people who were supposed to be safe. Freeze response When the nervous system learned that neither fighting nor fleeing was possible, some people learned to go still.

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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