When Safety is a Foreign Feeling: Healing for Children of War, Violence, and Political Instability
Growing Up in Survival Mode
Some people grow up with bedtime stories.
Others grow up to the sound of gunfire, protests, or whispered arguments about fleeing.
When we talk about trauma, we often default to the individual — the car crash, the assault, the one-time event. But for many, trauma isn’t just something that happened once. It was the entire backdrop of childhood. It was war. It was poverty. It was hiding who you were to survive. It was intergenerational silence passed down like an heirloom.
And for those of us raised in households shaped by war, civil unrest, or political violence, safety wasn’t just missing. It never existed to begin with.
If you’ve lived this, you already know:
Trauma doesn’t start when the war begins.
It starts when the world teaches you that you’re disposable.
The Psychological Fallout of Political Violence and War
Whether you were born into war, fled as a refugee, or were raised by survivors who never unpacked what they lived through — this kind of trauma doesn’t just disappear when the borders change or the news cycle moves on.
This kind of trauma embeds itself.
Into the nervous system.
Into the way we parent.
Into the way we trust or don’t.
Some carry visible wounds. Others carry hypervigilance, numbness, emotional disconnection, or a near-constant fear of being found out or punished, even when there’s nothing “dangerous” happening.
CPTSD: The Unseen Scars
When people talk about PTSD, they picture a flashback, a nightmare, a panic attack. But for many survivors of long-term or repeated trauma, especially trauma that happened in childhood, what we’re really talking about is Complex PTSD (CPTSD).
Unlike single-event trauma, CPTSD isn’t about one moment. It’s about many moments where there was no safety, no escape, and no validation. Symptoms can include:
Chronic emotional dysregulation
Dissociation or disconnection from your body
Intense feelings of guilt, shame, or worthlessness
Trust issues in relationships, including difficulty with intimacy or authority
Deep fear of abandonment — even in safe relationships
Always feeling like you’re “on alert,” even in peaceful environments
These aren’t signs of being broken. They’re signs of adaptation. Your body learned how to survive in chaos. And now it doesn’t know how to relax in calm.
The Immigrant and Refugee Experience: A Double Layer of Trauma
Let’s be honest, trauma doesn’t always stop at the border. Many who flee war or violence arrive in a new country only to face racism, poverty, language barriers, cultural erasure, or lack of mental health resources.
You start over, but you don’t get to just leave the past behind.
You’re in a new place, but still carrying the old pain.
In many immigrant households, survival was the only goal. There wasn’t space for feelings, therapy, or processing. You were told to move on. Get over it. Be grateful you made it out.
But trauma that isn’t spoken still gets passed on.
It shows up in how we raise our kids.
It shows up in how we deal with stress, how we connect, how we shut down.
It shows up in silence, in rage, in perfectionism, in emotional numbness.
Racialized Trauma and Political Oppression
Let’s not sugarcoat it — some people experience war in their homeland, then systemic oppression in the country they flee to. Racialized trauma is real. Especially for those who’ve been both victims of political instability and targets of racism, xenophobia, or Islamophobia in Canada.
Being followed in stores.
Being stopped by police.
Being told to “go back where you came from.”
These aren’t small things. They are reminders that “safe” spaces might not be so safe after all.
The result? A layered trauma that’s both individual and collective. Personal and inherited. Acute and chronic.
How This Affects Relationships, Emotions, and Identity
Children raised in survival environments don’t always learn how to feel — they learn how to assess danger. They learn to shrink, appease, stay ready. So as adults, they might:
Struggle to identify emotions beyond “fine” or “angry”
Over-function in relationships (always taking care of others)
Experience guilt when resting, saying no, or feeling joy
Stay in unhealthy dynamics because chaos feels “normal”
Fear intimacy because vulnerability never felt safe
This isn’t just about dysfunction. This is about safety. If your nervous system equates stillness with danger, then calm will feel threatening. Love will feel risky. Self-expression will feel unsafe.
Why Therapy Can Feel Foreign — And Why It Helps Anyway
For many, therapy is seen as indulgent, unnecessary, or even shameful. Especially if you were raised to believe that emotions were a weakness or that survival was the only priority.
But here’s the truth:
You’re not soft for needing help. You’re finally safe enough to feel.
That’s where healing begins.
Therapy helps you:
Recognize how trauma shows up in your body and behavior
Reconnect with emotions that were buried for survival
Build tools to regulate your nervous system
Develop relationships rooted in safety, not hypervigilance
Break cycles of silence and generational trauma
You don’t have to explain the politics. You don’t have to justify your pain. You don’t need perfect words. A trauma-informed therapist meets you where you are — especially when the journey to safety has been long.
Accessing Trauma Therapy in Ontario
At NuHu Therapy, we provide trauma-informed, identity-sensitive therapy to clients across Ontario. Our services are 100% online, which means you can access care from anywhere in the province — no commute, no pressure, no judgment.
Whether you’re in Toronto, Hamilton, Brampton, or a remote part of Northern Ontario, we make sure therapy is accessible, confidential, and rooted in cultural humility.
Our team understands the nuances of CPTSD, immigration trauma, intergenerational trauma, and racialized experiences. If you’ve felt invisible, misunderstood, or dismissed — this space is for you.
Book your free 20-minute consultation here:
Learn more about our therapy approaches for trauma here:
For general service info, insurance coverage, and FAQs:
Your trauma does not make you broken. It makes you a survivor with a story worth honoring.
The Inheritance of Survival – Breaking Generational Trauma
You don’t have to grow up in a warzone to be shaped by one.
Sometimes, the war lives inside the people who raised you.
If your parents or caregivers lived through political violence, genocide, forced migration, or racialized oppression — chances are, their nervous system never fully returned to baseline. They were surviving, not living. That survival instinct becomes the blueprint for how love, protection, and discipline are handed down.
And this is how intergenerational trauma works.
Not as a conscious story — but as a silent inheritance.
How Trauma Gets Passed Down Without Words
We inherit trauma not just in what’s said, but in what’s avoided.
A father who never talks about “back home,” but explodes when doors slam too loudly.
A mother who never speaks of what she endured, but lives in constant fear of something going wrong.
Grandparents who survived war but never told the full story, just passed down anxiety like family jewelry.
Even in families with the best intentions, the trauma shows up:
In rules that feel more like fear than love
In silence around emotional topics
In unspoken pressure to be the “strong one”
In cultural expectations to sacrifice your wellbeing to prove you’re grateful
When you’re raised by people who never felt safe, you learn that love comes wrapped in anxiety. That success comes through self-erasure. That rest is laziness. That vulnerability gets you hurt.
Cultural Silence Around Mental Health
Let’s talk about the cultural piece. In many communities — particularly those with colonial histories, migration stories, or histories of religious trauma — mental health isn’t something you talk about.
You’re told to be strong. You’re told others have it worse. You’re told therapy is for the weak, or for “white people,” or that prayer should be enough.
And look, spiritual grounding can be powerful. But it’s not a substitute for working through trauma stored in the body, passed down through behaviour, or inherited through unspoken stories.
This kind of cultural silence doesn’t just invalidate pain.
It can prolong it.
Trauma Lives in the Body, Not Just the Mind
Trauma doesn’t disappear when we “move on.” It stays lodged in the nervous system. In muscle memory. In breathing patterns. In how easily we’re startled. In how deeply we dissociate. In how tightly we control things so we don’t unravel.
It lives in our bodies even when our minds have forgotten the details.
You might experience:
Chronic fatigue or tension
Gastrointestinal issues (often tied to stress)
Migraines or unexplained aches
Panic attacks that seem to come out of nowhere
A sense of being numb, foggy, or disconnected from your surroundings
This isn’t weakness. It’s your body telling the story your mouth couldn’t.
Healing Is Possible — But It Won’t Look Like a Straight Line
Here’s what most self-help content won’t tell you:
It’s not linear. It’s not always peaceful. And it doesn’t always feel good.
You might feel worse before you feel better. Why? Because you’re finally feeling what your body and mind have spent years trying to protect you from.
But healing isn’t about getting over it — it’s about moving through it.
It’s about returning to yourself. Slowly. Gently. In your own time.
Safety isn’t something you wait for. It’s something you build — one breath, one boundary at a time.
Reclaiming Safety, Redefining Home
What happens when “safety” is a word you’ve never been able to trust?
Not just physically — but emotionally.
For many survivors of war, political violence, or intergenerational trauma, the concept of “feeling safe” sounds like fiction. You might be alive. You might even be functioning. But deep down, your body still flinches at closeness. Your mind still braces for the worst. And peace feels… unfamiliar.
That’s not failure. That’s trauma doing its job — protecting you long after the threat is gone.
But the truth is: you deserve to feel safe even when nothing’s falling apart.
And you don’t have to wait for the world to change to start healing.
Emotional Safety Isn’t Given — It’s Built
When we talk about emotional safety, we’re talking about the internal signals that let us breathe deeply, express freely, and be fully present.
But if you were raised in chaos, fear, or repression — safety wasn’t something you were taught. It’s something you now have to teach yourself.
That might mean:
Saying no without guilt for the first time
Not flinching when someone gets close
Allowing softness, play, or joy to exist without fear of punishment
Asking for help without feeling like a burden
Believing that you’re allowed to take up space — not just survive it
Emotional safety isn’t a luxury. It’s a human need.
And you’re not too “damaged” to learn it.
What Healing Looks Like When You Never Knew Safety
Healing doesn’t mean erasing your past.
It means integrating it — so it no longer controls your present.
And that’s where therapy can help.
Not with quick fixes or 10-step plans. But with real, slow, embodied work.
At NuHu Therapy, we guide clients through healing by helping them:
Recognize when they’re in fight, flight, freeze, or fawn responses
Learn to self-regulate through breath, movement, or mindfulness
Rewrite internal narratives rooted in fear, shame, or hypervigilance
Reconnect with parts of themselves they had to shut down to survive
Build new models of connection — starting with the therapeutic relationship
If you’ve never known safety, the first time you feel it can be disorienting.
You might mistrust it. Push it away. Freeze.
That’s okay.
We go at your pace. And we’re not going anywhere.
You Don’t Need to Earn Rest
Let’s say this clearly: You do not need to earn rest.
You do not need to be “healed enough” to be kind to yourself.
You don’t need to reach some invisible finish line before joy is allowed.
Trauma taught you that you have to hustle for peace.
But healing teaches you that peace is already your birthright.
Even if you grew up in chaos, you can choose calm now.
Even if love was always conditional, you can learn how to receive it unconditionally.
For Survivors, “Home” Is Often an Internal Place
If your homeland is gone, if your childhood was marked by violence, if your body never felt like a safe place — the idea of “home” can feel distant.
But healing invites you to build an internal home — one made of:
Boundaries that keep you safe
Routines that soothe your nervous system
Relationships that mirror back your worth
Moments of quiet that don’t feel like punishment
A sense of dignity that no one can take away
This isn’t abstract. It’s real, somatic, day-by-day work.
And it’s possible — even if you’ve never seen it modeled before.
How to Get Started With Trauma Therapy in Ontario
If this resonates with you — if you’ve carried survival in your bones for too long — we’re here.
At NuHu Therapy, our trauma-informed therapists specialize in supporting:
Survivors of war, violence, or displacement
Children of political refugees or immigrants
Individuals dealing with anxiety, dissociation, or PTSD/CTSD
Those experiencing intergenerational trauma tied to racial, religious, or cultural histories
We offer secure online therapy across Ontario, covered by most insurance plans. No doctor referral needed. Book your free 20-minute consultation today — and let’s see if we’re the right fit for your journey.
