What we cover.

Neglect

The harm that comes from absence rather than action. Not being fed, held, protected, or emotionally seen. Growing up without what you needed to develop safely, physically, emotionally, or both. The people who were supposed to show up did not.

• Not having enough food, or never knowing if there would be food
• Not having clothing, shelter, or basic physical care
• Being left alone when you were too young to be alone
• Not receiving medical or dental care you needed
• Nobody being emotionally present for you as a child
• Not being taught the things a child needs to know to function
• Being cared for by someone whose addiction meant they could not really care for you
• Being cared for by someone whose untreated mental illness meant they could not really care for you
• Being parentified, taking care of your parent instead of them taking care of you
• Being raised by someone who was physically present but checked out, depressed, grieving, or just gone inside
• Being denied education or kept from learning

Physical violence

Being deliberately hurt in your body by another person. Hit, beaten, restrained, tortured, or physically harmed in any way that was intentional. This includes things that happened once and things that happened so often they felt normal.

• Being hit, beaten, or physically hurt by a parent or caregiver
• Being physically hurt by a sibling or other family member
• Being physically attacked by someone outside your family
• Being physically hurt by a partner or someone you were in a relationship with
• Being physically hurt by someone in a position of authority over you
• Being physically restrained, confined, or prevented from leaving
• Being tortured or subjected to deliberate, prolonged physical harm
• Experiencing physical violence as part of a hate crime
• Growing up in a home where physical violence between others was regular
• Being physically harmed by law enforcement or while in custody
• Being physically harmed in a medical or institutional setting
• Being physically harmed as part of a religious or cultural practice
• Being physically targeted, bullied, or assaulted by peers repeatedly
• Having your physical safety threatened repeatedly without the harm always being carried out
• Watching someone else be physically attacked or beaten
• Watching someone die through violence or sudden injury
• Watching a family member be taken, abducted, or kidnapped
• Witnessing someone being taken, abducted, or kidnapped
• Being abducted, kidnapped, or held against your will
• Having your home broken into or being robbed

Sexual violence

Any sexual experience that was unwanted, coerced, forced, or that happened to you as a child. Regardless of who did it, where it happened, or whether anyone believed you when you told them.

• Being sexually abused as a child by a parent or caregiver
• Being sexually abused as a child by another family member
• Being sexually abused as a child by someone outside your family
• Being raped or sexually assaulted as an adult
• Being sexually assaulted by a partner or someone you were in a relationship with
• Being coerced or pressured into sexual activity you did not want
• Being sexually exploited or trafficked
• Being exposed to sexual content or acts as a child
• Experiencing sexual harassment that was sustained and targeted
• Being sexually assaulted in a military or combat setting
• Having someone expose themselves to you or violate your sexual boundaries without contact
• Having sexual images of you shared without your consent
• Witnessing a sexual assault against someone else
• Having your choices about pregnancy or birth control taken away
• A parent or close family member telling you they had sexual feelings for you

Emotional and psychological harm

Being controlled, manipulated, humiliated, or systematically made to doubt your own reality. Someone who never laid a hand on you but damaged you deeply, through cruelty, control, gaslighting, or making you feel worthless. The wounds here are invisible but they are real.

• Being constantly criticized, belittled, or told you were worthless
• Being manipulated or controlled by someone who twisted reality
• Living with someone whose moods controlled the entire household
• Being emotionally controlled or isolated by a partner
• Being subjected to narcissistic abuse
• Being humiliated publicly or privately in a sustained way
• Being emotionally blackmailed or manipulated through guilt
• Having your emotions consistently dismissed, mocked, or punished
• Being subjected to sustained verbal abuse or screaming
• Being psychologically harmed by a cult, high control group, or manipulative belief system
• Having someone use your mental health against you
• Being emotionally bullied, excluded, or targeted by peers
• Growing up in a home where love was conditional on performance or compliance
• Being threatened, intimidated, or made to live in fear without physical violence
• Watching someone close to you be psychologically abused or controlled
• Being stalked, followed, or relentlessly pursued
• Being targeted by an organized campaign of online harassment
• Having a pet hurt or threatened to control or punish you
• Being falsely accused of something you did not do
• A parent turning you against your other parent

Exploitation

Being used for someone else's gain. Your body, your labor, your money, your loyalty, taken or manipulated for purposes that served them and cost you. Trafficking, financial abuse, being controlled through debt or dependency, having your work or resources taken without your genuine consent.

• Being trafficked for sex
• Being trafficked for labor
• Being financially abused or having your money or assets taken
• Being used for someone else's emotional needs without regard for your own
• Being exploited by an employer or in a work situation
• Being used or exploited within a religious or spiritual context
• Having your identity, image, or personal information used without your consent
• Being exploited because of your age, disability, or vulnerability
• Being manipulated into illegal activity for someone else's benefit
• Witnessing someone being trafficked, sold, or exploited
• Being forced or pressured into a marriage you did not choose

Abandonment

Being left by someone who was supposed to stay. A parent who walked out and never came back. A caregiver who gave you up. A partner who disappeared. A family that cut you off. Being left in an unsafe situation by someone responsible for your care. The wound here is not just that they are gone. It is that they chose to go, and you have spent time since then wondering what that says about you. It does not say anything about you. But we know that is not always easy to believe.

• Being left by a parent who chose not to stay
• Being given up for adoption or placed in foster care
• Being abandoned by a partner without warning or explanation
• Being cut off or rejected by your family
• Being abandoned by a parent who was physically present but emotionally gone
• Being left in an unsafe situation by someone responsible for your care
• Experiencing the abandonment of a parent through incarceration
• Being abandoned by friends, community, or support systems after a trauma or disclosure
• Experiencing repeated abandonment across multiple relationships
• Being cut off by your own adult child
• A parent keeping one sibling while giving another away
• Losing contact with a sibling for years, not knowing if you'd find them again
• Reconnecting with a birth parent who continued to mistreat you
• A parent keeping you from having a relationship with your other parent

Loss and grief

Losing someone or something that reorganized who you are. Death, miscarriage, estrangement, the end of a relationship, losing a home or a way of life. Grief that did not have space to be what it needed to be, or that nobody around you understood.

• Losing a child
• Losing a partner or spouse
• Losing a parent
• Losing a sibling
• Losing a close friend
• Losing someone to suicide
• Losing someone suddenly or violently
• Losing someone to a long illness and carrying that with you
• Losing a pregnancy or experiencing infertility
• Losing a relationship that mattered deeply
• Losing your home, community, or way of life
• Losing your sense of who you were before something happened
• Carrying grief that was never allowed to be grief
• Losing someone to addiction
• Losing a pet
• Grieving something you never had
• Losing custody of your child
• Losing who you thought someone was after learning what they did
• Being kept from a child or grandchild you love
• Losing a grandparent, grandchild, or other relative

Identity-based harm

Being targeted, excluded, erased, or harmed because of who you are. Race, gender, sexuality, disability, religion, immigration status, class, body size. Harm that was never really about anything you did. It was about who you are, or who they decided you were.

• Being harmed, targeted, or discriminated against because of your race or ethnicity
• Being harmed or targeted because of your gender
• Being harmed or targeted because of your sexual orientation
• Being harmed or targeted because of your gender identity
• Being harmed or targeted because of a disability
• Being harmed or targeted because of your religion or lack of religion
• Being harmed or targeted because of your immigration status or national origin
• Being harmed or targeted because of your social class or economic status
• Experiencing racism or discrimination within systems and institutions
• Carrying intergenerational or historical trauma
• Being targeted or harmed because of your body size or appearance
• Being subjected to conversion therapy or attempts to change who you are
• Being bullied or targeted because of your identity
• Experiencing microaggressions and chronic low level identity based harm
• Witnessing a hate crime or targeted attack against someone because of who they are
• Being outed without your consent

Institutional and systemic failure

Being harmed, failed, or re-traumatized by systems and institutions that were supposed to protect or help you. Hospitals that dismissed you, psychiatric facilities that harmed you, child welfare systems that failed you, religious institutions that covered things up, legal systems that did not believe you or actively made things worse.

• Being failed or harmed by the child welfare system
• Being harmed or failed by the medical system
• Being harmed or mistreated in a psychiatric facility or mental health setting
• Being failed or harmed by the legal or justice system
• Being harmed or exploited within a religious institution
• Being failed or harmed by the education system
• Being harmed or failed while in the military institution
• Being incarcerated in conditions that caused harm
• Being failed or harmed by a government or state agency
• Being re-traumatized by systems when you sought help
• Being subjected to forced or coerced medical procedures
• Being harmed within a residential program, treatment center, or institutional placement
• Being placed on a forced psychiatric hold
• Being convicted of or imprisoned for something you did not do
• Watching someone be harmed or brutalized by police or an institution
• Being harmed or dismissed during pregnancy, birth, or postpartum care

War, conflict, and organized violence

Experiences connected to military service, combat, genocide, ethnic cleansing, political violence, or living through armed conflict. What was done to you, what you witnessed, what you were part of, and what you carried home. This includes people who served, people who survived, and people who were civilians inside something they never chose.

• Serving in combat or a war zone
• Being a civilian who lived through war or armed conflict
• Surviving genocide or ethnic cleansing
• Being displaced or becoming a refugee because of conflict
• Experiencing or witnessing political violence or state sponsored violence
• Losing family members or community to organized violence
• Carrying moral injury from things you did or witnessed during service or conflict
• Being a child soldier or being recruited into armed conflict as a minor
• Surviving a terrorist attack or mass violence event
• Being held captive or as a prisoner of war
• Being a first responder who carried sustained exposure to mass violence or disaster
• Growing up in a community shaped by ongoing violence or conflict
• Being directly targeted, threatened, or harmed because of your political beliefs or public role
• Being directly targeted or harmed by gang violence
• Experiencing unjust deportation or harmful immigration enforcement

Catastrophic events

Something happened in the world around you that made life suddenly unsafe, not because of what a person did to you but because the world itself failed. Natural disasters, house fires, serious accidents, pandemics, mass casualty events you survived. Your life divided into before and after.

• Surviving a natural disaster
• Surviving a serious accident
• Surviving a house fire or home destruction
• Living through a pandemic or public health crisis
• Surviving a mass casualty event as a bystander
• Experiencing a sudden or catastrophic medical event
• Witnessing or being present at a traumatic death or accident
• Losing everything to financial collapse or economic catastrophe
• Being affected by an environmental disaster or toxic exposure
• Surviving something that should have killed you
• Experiencing homelessness or housing instability
• Living with a serious or long-term illness

The effects trauma can leave behind

What happened is one half of the story. What it left behind is the other. These are the effects members here describe, in their own language. Carrying some of them, all of them, or none of them says nothing about how real your experience was.