“This is part of why victims of abuse may go on to perpetuate that same abuse toward others, including their children,” Lurie says. If you’ve experienced trauma, you may not know what a healthy parent-child relationship looks like. It’s common for unresolved trauma to be passed along to children.
“Trauma can inform nearly everything about the way we exist and engage with our worlds, including the ways we parent and model behaviors for children,” says Lurie. In other cases, the family member who is traumatized may even transfer negative emotions on to others within the family such as children or other family members.The effects of intergenerational trauma can impact many parts of your life, from how you see yourself to how you communicate with others. Sadly, the trauma continues throughout generations because those who needed help, never received it. Do you hide your emotions and act as if nothing is happening? Do you internalize your emotions until something triggers them to come spilling out? Or does your family drink and/or use drugs to cope with the pain? Whatever way the trauma is dealt with, older generations within a family set the stage for how traumatic events should be (and often are) coped with. Generations may struggle with emotions: As noted above, older generations often set the stage (knowingly or unknowingly) for how emotions within the family are dealt with.Trauma is not something you can hide from, no matter how hard you try.Īs a result, I have learned over time, by treating multiple clients with trauma histories, that there are a few ways inter-generational trauma negatively impacts families: Sooner or later the trauma is likely to be triggered by something. For example, a grandparent who refused to examine the impact of her trauma may be teaching her grandchildren (intentionally or unintentionally) to ignore the impact of their trauma. The ways in which family members “cope” with inter-generational trauma can set the precedence for younger generations. Minimization – ignoring the impact of the trauma and making the traumatic experience appear smaller than it really is.Denial – refusing to acknowledge the trauma happened.Sadly, many families “cope” with inter-generational trauma by employing two unhealthy coping mechanisms: A parent or grandparent who never truly healed from or explored their own trauma may find it very difficult to provide emotional support to a family member suffering from his or her own trauma. The impact of generational trauma is significant. But for trauma therapists, it is important for us to explore how trauma may have negatively impacted generations of family members.įor example, a mother who is struggling with her daughter’s sexual abuse, might also have been sexually abused by her father, who, may have also been sexually abused by his father. While it is a very important topic, it’s a topic that many mental health professionals are either uninformed about or simply disinterested in.
#GENERATIONAL TRAUMA PROFESSIONAL#
The consequences of inter-generational trauma are rarely if ever discussed unless a therapist or other mental health professional mentions it. This article will highlight some of the ways inter-generational trauma can affect younger generations and families. Inter-generational problems including oppression can often be found in families that have been traumatized in severe forms (e.g., sexual abuse, rape, murder, etc).
The transmission of the historical trauma may begin to negatively affect her grandchildren and her grandchildren’s children, etc., leading to generations of emotional distance, defensive behaviors around expression of emotions, and denial. That relationship may be tumultuous to say the least.
Because of this, this grandmother may interact with her family in an emotionally distant fashion. For example, a great grandmother who was placed in a concentration camp in Germany may have learned to cope by “cutting off” her emotions. It is the transmission (or sending down to younger generations) of the oppressive or traumatic effects of a historical event. Inter-generational trauma is a concept developed to help explain years of generational challenges within families. Have you ever heard of the term inter-generational trauma? What about “generational curse?”
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