Most people understand what it means to directly experience trauma.
Many also know that going through trauma can leave a lasting impact, affecting everything from the way you see yourself and the world to how you handle relationships.
However, fewer people recognize that trauma doesn’t have to be directly experienced to take a toll on your life. It could be something passed down from person to person over generations of your family.
Generational trauma refers to the impact of painful experiences passed down through the years within a family or community.
Over time, the impact of this trauma can create psychological, emotional, and even physical changes within a family unit.
Understanding the timeline of generational trauma can help you understand what caused it in your family.
More importantly, it will start you on the journey to finally break the cycle.
What Causes Generational Trauma?
The origin of generational trauma is different for everyone. In some families, it’s a huge cultural event.
That includes things like war, genocide, slavery, or other types of oppression.
Generational trauma can also be something very personal to your family and the people in it, including a history of abuse or neglect.
Even if one family member was abused generations ago, it can leave a lasting impact on you, your children, and beyond.
How Is Trauma Transferred?
If you don’t directly experience a traumatic event yourself, how can it possibly be passed down through your family?
Generational trauma mostly gets handed down through learned behaviors and different ways of coping. People who experience trauma tend to have certain behaviors they carry with them.
That often includes unhealthy ways of coping with what happened to them. Those behaviors are learned by the children in their lives and passed down from generation to generation.
Even without the direct exposure to trauma, children are likely to adopt behavioral patterns from their parents. They can also inherit emotional responses.
Research has found that this can also happen on a cellular level known as epigenetic mechanisms.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), epigenetics (or the study of epigenetic mechanisms) refers to how your behaviors and environment impact and can change the way your genes work. are expressed and this shift is passed down.
Dr Brian Dias, PhD a neuroscientist who studies epigenetics shares “descendants of Holocaust survivors have lowers levels of a stress hormone compared to descendants of individuals who did not experience the Holocaust”.
When tracing back family histories of abuse, neglect, racism, violence and other forms of trauma, we see the impacts of this in the nervous systems of our clients.
This may look like struggling to regulate emotions, have difficulty in relationships, high levels of anxiety, difficulty slowing down.
What Are the Signs?
It’s not uncommon for generational trauma to go undiagnosed until you recognize some of the common signs.
While they can be different for everyone, some of the common issues people with this type of lingering trauma face include:
- Difficulty managing emotions
- Feeling numb
- Trouble with relationships
- Self-destructive behavioral patterns
- Intrusive thoughts
- Anxiety or depression that feel like they’ve been around forever
Generational trauma can also manifest itself physically. You may experience symptoms such as chronic pain or fatigue.
The weight of stress typically causes physical symptoms as you hold onto unresolved trauma.
How Can You Break the Cycle?
Once you recognize that you’re dealing with generational trauma, you can take steps forward to heal yourself, your family, and future generations.
You can’t change what happened in your family, no matter how long ago it was. However, you can acknowledge it and the impact it had on your history. That’s the first step toward putting it behind you.
Thankfully, you don’t have to go through this healing journey alone. Going through trauma therapy can help you reframe patterns and beliefs that were passed down from previous generations.
Therapy can provide a space for you to find new ways of interacting with yourself and others in your life.
While changing patterns within families can take a lot of work and willing participants; individual therapy can help you begin to do that healing work from within, regardless of family involvement.
Learning new ways to communicate with family often comes with the need to learn new ways of understanding you. Sometimes that means communicating less with our family members.
Family therapy can help families learn to have more understanding of their own patterns and the family’s patterns.
With self-reflection and openness to others’ experience within the family empathy, understanding, and shifts may be possible.
Regardless of whether you engage in therapy or not, make sure you’re taking care of yourself.
It’s not always easy for trauma survivors to prioritize their needs. Feelings of guilt and shame are common, but as you show yourself more kindness and compassion, you’ll realize that you deserve to be cared for.
If you’re ready to shift the effects of generational trauma, we’re here to help. Reach out to learn more about therapy for generational trauma.
Our trauma therapists are available to help.
