Trauma Led Me to Aid Work, Healing Has Led Me Out

Here’s how my priorities changed from then to now

Photo of the author, taken by Evie Hutt

It’s funny how life goes sometimes. I spent over a decade shaping myself into an aid worker. Then just as it was all coming to fruition, I completely changed my mind.

Despite working in fundraising for humanitarian agencies throughout my twenties, I faced many obstacles to securing a position on the front line of a response. Internal politics, team restructures and flare ups of back pain all got in the way. But I was celebrated for my perseverance. Eventually I completed a training programme in humanitarian operations and secured a short deployment in Nairobi. A couple of years later, with a potential position in Yemen in the works, it seemed like it was all about to happen.

Then 2020 arrived and with it the pandemic, suddenly giving me space to reflect in a way I’d never done before. As the Black Lives Matter uprisings unfolded, I opened my eyes to the structural racism baked into the western aid system. For the first time I questioned if I should be in the sector at all. That question was answered once and for all by the surfacing of my repressed trauma just a year later.

Overwhelmed by PTSD symptoms, I was signed off by my doctor and forced to begin the hard work of healing. I questioned everything about my life and began to see that many elements of my personality were in fact deeply embedded trauma responses. The people pleasing. The constant need to achieve. The work-hard party-hard lifestyle, never leaving space for my feelings. Looking at the world through this new lens, I realised the remnants of my passion for the aid sector were gone. My motivations for being an aid worker no longer made any sense to me:

As a lifelong people pleaser, it seemed natural to choose a job that involved helping others. To me, humanitarian aid work was the pinnacle. I wanted to help people in poor or war torn countries who (in my mind at the time) needed it most. On reflection, this attitude reveals two things about me: my ignorance of widespread suffering right on my doorstep and my subconscious racism. I confess, I was a white saviour through and through.

WHITE SAVIOURISM: The vain assumption that struggling black and brown people need a white person (like me) to come and save them

I see now the arrogance I embodied. I thought my good intentions and western education were enough to make a difference, even in distant cultural contexts I had no experience of. And the system is set up to reinforce this arrogance. Whilst there have been small improvements, positions of power are still primarily awarded to white or western educated people. As a young white woman with minimal experience of front-line work, I was on track to manage a field office in my next deployment. This would have meant overseeing local staff, many of whom would have been in their roles for years. That prospect always felt uncomfortable, now it feels plain wrong.

This culture of white supremacy severely limits the impact of humanitarian aid. With no personal stakes in the crises they enter and priorities dictated by donor governments, western aid workers have little incentive to address the complex systemic problems at the root of every crisis.

Palestine is a particularly devastating case in point. The aid sector was failing there long before the latest genocidal assault. International aid agencies have maintained living standards at just bearable levels for decades, with over 80% of Gaza’s population long dependent on aid. Meanwhile Israel has continued to hold a devastating blockade on Gaza, and to expand illegal settlements whilst entrenching an apartheid system in the West Bank. In the organisation I worked for, advocacy on such issues was deemed too politically sensitive and hard to win to ever be considered a priority.

My aid worker dream ticked all the boxes for what the world had told me to be: smart, driven, selfless, strong. But I’ve come to realise that dream was misguided. The truth is I am not best placed to help people fleeing their homes in Yemen or starving to death in Somalia. There’s little I can contribute that local people, who understand the cultural nuances, couldn’t deliver better. In accepting that, I realised the same applied to me.

I too can make more of a difference here at home, in a culture I know intimately. And the bonus gift of getting involved with local struggles is that I gain community and support in my healing too. I didn’t have to look far to work out where to start. State violence, rape culture, welfare cuts, attacks on queer people…the list could go on. These issues destroy lives and kill people too. And crucially, they affect me personally. That gives me credibility in my calls for change that I never would have had speaking on Yemen.

The opportunity to travel was always an obvious driver in my desire to be an aid worker. Inspired by childhood visits to Nepal, I had an adventurous spirit and a love of exploring different cultures. Being brutally honest with myself though, I wasn’t driven by purely innocent interests. There were colonial undertones to my wanderlust. Stories from faraway places helped build my social capital, giving me a subtle ego boost when telling new people about my work. Looking back now these stories were also a cover up. A shiny mask to show the world how well I was doing, how good I was, hiding the deep worthlessness I felt.

Aid work might have worked as a mask, but in the long run it’s unlikely to have helped how I felt on the inside. My plan to work in Yemen would have meant compound living in an active war zone, potentially with bombs dropping nearby. And even the stable postings are emotionally tough, as I experienced briefly in Nairobi. Living with colleagues you’ve just met, far from home, uprooted from your support networks and daily routines. Aid workers are buffeted about by long hours, frustrating funding politics and unpredictable contexts. Distracting? Yes. But comfortable and healing? No.

When my trauma memories started bubbling up, I found myself living in a constant state of fear. Soothing my nervous system to help it out of fight or flight mode became (and remains) my number one priority. Whilst a lot of that work is done alone or with my therapist, I’ve also learnt that healing needs to happen through relationships.

My existing friends and family have been a huge support in that, but I also realised I needed new connections, to find people who share my passions and values. For a while I volunteered at a community garden just round the corner from my house. More recently I joined a local protest drumming group. The people I’ve met have already opened so many healing doors for me. I never would have put down these roots if I’d continued on the humanitarian path.

Set to travel to Iraq for a week in 2015, I remember friends asking me if I was scared. Despite heading to an area less than 80km from the front line with ISIS, I didn’t feel all that nervous. I felt excited. This trip would give me vital experience to help me secure a front-line role — in my mind, the more insecure the context the better. I’d seen the stats on ever-increasing violence against aid workers and heard the concern in the voices of my parents. But I told myself the fact I wasn’t hugely scared meant I had a moral duty to go. Maybe this was my purpose, even if it meant taking risks others seemed to question.

The sad truth is since acknowledging my trauma I’ve realised I never valued my life all that much. I haven’t been actively suicidal since I was a teenager, but I spent many years wishing for cancer, or a terrible accident, or a violent attack. Anything that would legitimise how awful I felt inside and bring me the love and attention I couldn’t ask for following my abuse. That part of me got quieter as I got older, but it’s always been there one way or the other. I’m certain it played a role in my lack of fear around working in high-risk locations.

“Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.” Rumi

Now in my fourth year of therapy, I’ve come a long way on that front. I’m learning to give space to my emotions and to receive them with compassion. I’m listening to the wisdom of my body and am grateful for all the ways it has protected me — including locking away the memories I wasn’t ready to face. I am treating myself with respect and care, which means taking my safety and wellbeing seriously. With that I no longer want to risk my life for people who haven’t even asked me to.

I still believe strongly in the need for international solidarity

Without a doubt the UK and other western countries should be contributing financially to resolving crises around the world. We sure as hell contributed to creating many of them. But there are better ways to do that than through the current international aid structures. Organisations from the Global South have long been pushing for an overhaul of the humanitarian system, speaking of localisation and ‘shifting the power’ to community-based organisations. There is also much to be learnt from co-ordination and solidarity between countries in the Global South. Whilst the UN talks merely of bolstering such efforts, much greater benefits could flow from transforming western aid systems into similar forms of mutual support.

Equally, international solidarity doesn’t sit solely in the hands of governments and aid agencies. We as individuals have more power than we know.

Back to the example of Palestine, people all over the UK are standing up and saying no to the genocide and our government’s enabling role in it. This solidarity comes in many forms. Participating in boycott and divestment campaigns by refusing to give money to complicit firms, including banks like Barclays. Attending protests and rallies to make continued support for Palestine visible on our streets and to our leaders. Putting bodies on the line through direct action obstructing the arms trade and supporting those who face prison sentences as a result. Even liking, commenting on and sharing Palestinian voices on social media is a powerful act. It’s a way of saying ‘you are not forgotten’, giving people much needed strength as they struggle to survive.

These are the levers of power that need to be pulled to secure freedom and safety for the Palestinians. And by coming together as neighbours and friends to stand up for the rights of people far away, we also strengthen the bonds of community right here. We’ve truly never needed it more, with the rising tide of fascism lapping at our shores and climate catastrophe just around the corner.

It might sound strange to say, but I’m grateful that PTSD stopped me in my tracks four years ago. With all that repressed trauma in my body, diving into front-line humanitarian work could have been catastrophic for me. I left the aid sector for good in 2023, thankfully able to take voluntary redundancy due to my mental health. Despite all those years of ambition and longing, I haven’t regretted the move once.

Now I’m writing again — hello dear reader! — which is a passion I neglected whilst in the aid sector. I’m studying for a Masters in Criminology, taking a critical look at our so-called justice system. I also work a few hours a month for a grass roots group run for and by survivors of abuse. Evidently, I’ve still chosen challenging work but everything I do now is intentional and informed by my lived experience. Just as importantly, the pace at which I do things is intentional now too. Slowly, slowly, allowing space for my healing.

My journey with my mental health is an ever-winding one, but I do feel lighter since I stopped trying to save the world. Instead, I’m tugging on the threads I’m best placed to untangle and in doing so, I’m saving myself.