Healing from Systemic and Institutional Betrayal: Rebuilding Trust After the Systems Meant to Protect You Didn’t

By Sybil Cummin, MA, LPC, ACS

Sometimes the deepest wounds aren’t just from what happened to you. They come from what happened when you tried to explain it…and no one seemed to understand, or even care.

You expected protection. You expected someone to see what you were seeing. You expected the truth to matter. And when that didn’t happen, something shifts. Not just externally, but internally.
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You may have walked away feeling more guarded, more exhausted, or questioning yourself in ways you didn’t before. And that part can be confusing, because it doesn’t always look like what we typically think of as trauma. But it is. And it often leaves people not just hurt, but deeply mistrustful of the systems that were supposed to help.

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