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“Trauma is not what happens to you, but what happens inside you as a result of what happens to you.” ~Dr. gabor matey
Most people think that trauma comes from something that has frightened us.
But fear is not the cause of all trauma. Some wounds come from betrayal – when something violates our sense of right and wrong, and we are left alone to bear the brunt of it.
This type of injury doesn’t just happen because something bad happened. This happens because a moral line was crossed by a person, an authority, or a system that we believed would protect us. What happens next is not just pain but a lasting psychological and relational consequence.
When it first happened I didn’t have the language for it. I was a child.
When telling the truth didn’t protect me
I was sitting in class looking at a pile of worksheets I hadn’t turned in. My body was there, but I was not.
My teacher came to me and asked if I was okay.
He hadn’t asked in a whole year. I often came to school dirty and tired. But that day she kept applying pressure. He told me that if I told the truth I would not be in trouble.
What complicated that promise was that she had a paddle in her orbit. He used it on other children. I knew that eventually my turn would come.
Still, she was an adult. And at that time, she felt like the last person I could trust.
I told her that because she had knowledge and power – such that she looked enormous from where I stood. She knew things I didn’t know. She could do things I couldn’t do. I believed that if anyone could stop what was happening, it would be someone like him.
So I told him.
I told him about the beating. About being afraid to go home. About my stepmother. About my stepsister.
She promised that she would make sure it stopped.
It did not happen.
Child Protective Services came to the home that week. He knocked. no one answered. they left.
And then I got into trouble.
After that she was the last adult I trusted.
hurt under fear
The deepest wound was not just what was happening at home.
The same thing happened after this.
Moral harm occurs when a person witnesses, fails to prevent, or betrays actions that violate deeply held moral beliefs. Sometimes it comes from someone’s actions. Sometimes even by what they don’t do. And sometimes by betrayal – when those in power fail to follow through.
This was the line that was crossed.
I told the truth. An adult promised protection. Systems designed to intervene did not work. The crime wasn’t just the abuse – it was the abandonment that followed.
What formed inside me was not panic, but something calm. Use shame instead of fear. Guilt instead of anger. The belief that speaking out was dangerous.
How the past followed me into adulthood
As I grew up, I gravitated towards supporting roles. I became a teacher and later a school counselor.
That was not accidental.
Some part of me needed to believe that the world was fundamentally good – that if loss was clearly named, goodness and safety would come.
So I became the person to say it.
I reported the abuse. I advocated against children being harmed by people with more power. I documented, pushed through, followed the process. I fought hard as I watched others retreat because the fight was too complicated, too much work, too political, or too expensive.
For a long time, I believed that only perseverance could liberate the system.
But over time, reality answered differently.
I did everything I was supposed to do—and still watched the system fail. Children kept getting harmed. Responsibility was divided. The truth was accepted and then neutralized.
To give up the belief that goodness would prevail on its own required a sadness I did not expect.
When helping became reparations
After all, I had to face some hard things to accept.
Much of my tireless efforts to protect others were not simply altruism. It was also trauma reevaluation.
Every vulnerable child I come across holds the outline of the little girl I once was – the one who spoke and wasn’t protected. Each situation activated the same urgency: This time, it will be different.
Now I see more clearly that most of my battles were about wanting to know that what I do matters. Somewhere along the way, that truth became dependent on whether the outside world accepted it or not.
What I’m solving now is more specific. When a child came to me in need of help, some part of me believed that if I could protect them, they would know that they mattered. And in some quiet, unconscious way, the little girl inside me will finally know that she matters, too.
I didn’t know I was doing this. This was not a strategy or option. It was the nervous system trying to complete some unfinished business – trying to repair the moment when care did not occur and power did not protect.
The problem was not compassion. The problem was scope.
I was trying to use personal sacrifice to ameliorate systemic failure, taking responsibility for outcomes I had no power to control. And each time those efforts failed, the old wound reopened.
the sadness that came with clarity
And now, I’m tired.
After years of fighting – naming the losses, holding back, insisting on accountability – I have reached a point where my body and mind can no longer bear the cost. Not because I’ve stopped caring, and not because the world has become safe or fair.
But because continuing to remain in resistance has a price I can no longer pay.
Fighting back I claimed agency in a world that once taught me I didn’t matter. I needed to do this until I couldn’t anymore.
I let the anger burn completely.
Now, all that is left are embers.
They also flicker when I see damage that looks familiar or the system repeats the same failures. But I am no longer living inside the fire. I am now more interested in protecting my peace, my space, and the life I am building.
Trauma Reevaluation vs. Trauma Repair
This has raised different questions in my mind.
As we watch the world burn – politically, socially, relationally – how do we know when we are responding with present agency and when the past is silently repeating itself?
Trauma reevaluation often feels urgent and inevitable. Trauma repair seems to be chosen.
Both may seem caring. Both can look like action. The difference is not always visible from the outside.
The difference remains within.
a different kind of alignment
So the question becomes: where are you leaning as it comes from your current values – and where is an old moral wound telling you to repeat what you once lived?
This doesn’t mean you should stop helping. This does not mean that you should be separated from the world.
It just means you notice.
And sometimes, that attention is the change.
I have discovered that my worth is not dependent on being believed or justified. My safety is not dependent on whether the systems respond the way they should. What matters now is staying aligned with my inner compass, keeping my boundaries intact, and being careful about what and who I let close to me.
It feels like pausing before moving forward and asking: “Am I doing this because it’s right or because I still need to be right?”
It seems sleep or peace is no longer being sacrificed for institutions that rely on exhaustion to win.
It seems to have chosen to care, but not collapse.
It feels like we need to let others come forward, especially those who have been silent. Because holding back is not the same as moving away. And relaxing when you’re carrying more than your share isn’t collusion – it’s clarity.
There are many people who have remained silent, waiting for someone else to do the hard work. That silence is a kind of complicity. But continuing to work too much when others work less only reinforces the imbalance.
And sometimes, other people won’t step up. The loss will remain. And you will have to suffer the pain of knowing that justice has not yet come and may not come.
That’s when sorrow enters. Neither panic, nor hysteria. But a steady mourning for what is broken.
And with that sadness comes a deeper truth: You are one person in a world of eight billion. You are not the perfect solution. You never were.
It’s not about agility or brute force. It’s about stability. Patience. To remain intact.
So now, I do things differently.
I walk with the adult survivors who come to me. Not in the front row but in the second row. Now they have an agency. They have a choice. And we work together, not so that I can fight their battles, but so that they can reconnect with the child within them that was not safe and learn how to protect that part of themselves now.
Because when they do that—when they fight for themselves—they are also fighting for others. For every child who has never been protected. Everyone is still finding their voice.
We all have our own way of pretending. And there should be no need for one’s path to obliterate another’s path.
It feels like you’re saying no even when you could say yes. It seems that when your voice has already spoken, let silence suffice.
It sounds like you’re respecting your boundaries as sacred—because they are.
I would never allow people or systems access to my inner life if it required me to fight for my emotional integrity.
Perhaps this kind of understanding cannot save the world.
But perhaps it allows us to live in the world in its entirety. Maybe it allows us to keep caring—without destroying ourselves. Perhaps it also calls others forward.
And maybe that’s how the real repair begins.
About Allison Briggs
Alison Janet Briggs is a therapist, author, and speaker who specializes in helping women recover from codependency, childhood trauma, and emotional neglect. She blends psychological insight with spiritual depth to guide clients and readers toward self-confidence, boundaries, and authentic connection. Allison is the author of the upcoming memoir On Being Real: Healing the Codependent Heart of a Woman and shares thoughts on healing, resilience, and inner freedom. on-being-real.com.
