How is Intergenerational Trauma Showing Up In Your Life, And How Can You Heal It?

Generational trauma, also known as intergenerational trauma, also known as transgenerational trauma, is just as you would guess: trauma that is experienced by multiple generations within a family system.

In other words, this is what happens when trauma is passed down. This extends beyond one person to each subsequent generation, and the symptoms or side effects of that trauma present themselves or are perpetuated in one way or another. 

How Trauma is Passed Down

Here’s an example: 

Let’s say a grandfather fought in and survived a war. He witnessed violence and atrocities and experienced incredible symptoms of (possible undiagnosed) post traumatic stress afterwards. 

He raised his daughter under these conditions, who learned lessons from him that he learned as a result of that trauma. The daughter grows, also experiencing symptoms of trauma that she experienced as a result of her father’s sometimes abusive or traumatized behavior. 

As she raises her own child, her child witnesses and experiences her mood swings and sometimes abusive behavior as a result of her trauma. 

This is how trauma is “passed down” from generation to generation. And to take it a step further, research has provided evidence that this goes even further than parenting in that trauma appears to impact brain development and cause depression, anxiety, and dementia, and even genetic changes. Subsequent generations inherit these genes that are impacted, and actually physically changed, by trauma. 

What a powerful concept! Each generation before us experienced joys and tragedies. Their experiences influenced not only how they were parented but are coded into their genes that they then passed on to us. 

These genes (and lessons we learned) are designed to help us better survive in the world. But what if some of these lessons are unfiltered, raw, and unnecessarily harsh? What if we are carrying these burdens from tragedies that are not necessarily ours to carry any longer, or at least not quite in the way our ancestors needed to carry them? 

Oof. That gets heavy! 

Can Intergenerational Trauma Be Healed?

This trauma can be healed, which can benefit everyone in your family as well as generations that come after you.

An understanding, well-trained therapist can walk this healing path with you by helping you construct the narrative of your past, present, and future. They can help you identify those generational trauma wounds you carry and slowly, cautiously sift through and honor these stories, these symptoms, these trauma memories, until we determine what you would like to carry forward into the world with you.

Sorting through those stories has a tremendous impact on our ability to see the present. From this standpoint, we can see life with wisdom and clarity we need to move through the world confidently and peacefully instead of through the filter of ancestral wounds. When we heal, we can not only survive, but heal and grow. 

Our family members, our friends, our elders see these changes and changes begin to occur within them. Maybe they even ask what is happening with us, maybe they notice the internal shifts or maybe we talk to them about it. However it happens: the peace and clarity spreads.

Our therapists are trauma informed and many specialize in intergenerational trauma because many of us have experienced this ourselves and found our own healing.

We’re ready to walk this path with you. Let’s get started.