What To Know About Anxiety Due To Generational Trauma

Generational trauma starts before you are in the womb. It is the messaging that began at the conception of your lineage, culture, and community.

You can receive information while in utero about the stress levels of your birthing parent, and this can be the first step of passing on generational trauma to you.

Examples of generational trauma, historical trauma, transgenerational trauma, and intergenerational trauma can include enslavement, poverty, addiction, chronic stress and systemic racism.

Generational trauma may feel inevitable in families and cultures, and there are ways to help yourself, and ultimately, stop the traumatic stress from reaching another generation. Though it can feel tireless, it is worth it.

Because of the fear-based reactions that are attached to generational trauma or childhood trauma, anxiety or an anxiety disorder can show up as a symptom in your life.

Normal levels of anxiety brought on by a big presentation, public speaking, a new environment, and an interview are not necessarily linked to generational trauma.

However, a consistent feeling of anxiety due to enslavement, poverty, addiction, and/or systemic racism and chronic stress can be linked to inherited trauma and negatively impact your life.

You may begin to operate solely from your amygdala with reactions like freeze, flight, fight, and fawn.

Though fawn is lesser known, it means that you have a sense of over responsibility and helpfulness to fix a situation that is beyond your control.

It often presents itself when you have parents who are narcissists or emotionally or physically abusive.

Generational trauma can cause you to get stuck in your amygdala and to be unable to tap into coping skills that are within you already.

Due to being in a constant state of fight, flight, freeze, and fawn; your nervous system doesn’t have the chance to calm down. It may be in overdrive. Thus, anxiety begins to feel normal.

It is similar to always pressing the gas even when there are stop signs, red lights, and obstacles in your way.

When anxiety is your baseline, it may feel like you are going 90 mph with no way to stop. This can be brought on through a specific traumatic event or a culmination of historical trauma and lead to post traumatic stress.

In Bruce Perry and Oprah Winfrey’s latest book, What Happened To You?, Generational trauma is explored and understandings about how anxiety is produced due to increased fear and decreased coping skills are discovered.

“If we want to understand the oak, it is back to the acorn we must go,” said Oprah Winfrey.

Generational trauma is entrenched, and often it takes the help of a therapist or other guide who understands trauma to heal the anxiety that it causes in your life.

When you live in fear, it is difficult not to respond in fear to every situation even when it is not scary. You may live in a scarcity mindset when you have anxiety due to generational trauma.

You are not making that up.

Scarcity can be a result of anxiety due to trauma related or unrelated to scarcity. Whether it is self-sabotage or a societal norm, living in a deficit is prevalent.

Trauma exposure as a young child can be damaging, especially in the earliest stages of a life. A traumatic experience for one person may not be as traumatic to someone else.

This doesn’t make the event any less severe for the person who indicates that it was harmful to them.

Generational trauma often requires mental health care. Otherwise, mental health disorders, substance abuse, continued emotional trauma, unhealthy attachments and relationships as well as complex PTSD can become overwhelming.

Even though generational trauma is passed down, you don’t have to continue it within your own family, even if your family only consists of you. There are options and tools available.

Getting help with your anxiety related to generational trauma may include:

Read More: “How Mindfulness Helps With Anxiety”

1. Therapy: Often, generational trauma requires guidance in tapping into the tools within you.

You may be so acclimated to the feeling of anxiety that you no longer know that there are possibilities available to you.

2. Meditation/Mindfulness: One of the most effective ways to help anxiety is to engage in mindful activities whether you are cooking, walking, or taking a breath; meditation and mindfulness can help you to recenter yourself and find peace.

3. Recovery: If you are struggling with substance abuse as a means of coping or experience codependency or other relational struggles that may stem from growing up with addiction or substance abuse, recovery meetings can be helpful. T

here are thousands of meetings available internationally, and you can find a meeting that is right for you whether one of your symptoms is addiction or not.

There are several groups for those who struggle with substance use and those who suffer from others’ use.

Generational trauma is common, and you don’t have to continue the cycle in your lifetime or pass it on to future generations. There are ways to help yourself, and whether some habits have been passed along already or not, you can choose a new direction at any time.

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Written by: Randi Thackeray, MA
Clinically Reviewed and Edited by: Julie Reichenberger, MA, LPC, ACS, ACC