How is trauma passed down through generations?
Generational trauma has become a buzzword of sorts in the last decade, but what does it look like? How does something your grandparents experienced 50 years ago shape your mental health today? Let’s walk through a scenario:
Suppose one or both of your grandparents experienced poverty while growing up. Experiencing poverty is a trauma and can lead to various mental health disorders like depression and anxiety. Even a small period of financial insecurity can forever change someone’s relationship with money and sense of security. If these feelings of instability and mental health disorders aren’t addressed, they affect your grandparents’ children (i.e. your parents). Your grandparents’ experience of poverty may lead them to raise your parents with a scarcity mindset where the whole family feels like whatever they currently have may be taken away from them at any minute. Your grandparents’ unprocessed trauma may cause them to be distant with their children, which may lead to insecure attachments and mental health struggles in your parents. If your parents, like your grandparents, don’t try to address their trauma, then this cycle may repeat with you. Your parents’ fear that money may be stripped away from them at any time may cause you to follow in their footsteps or rebel because you feel like you may have been denied as a child leading to impulsive financial decisions. Your parents may raise you in a way similar to their distant parents, or they may cling on too tightly to you because they are trying to create a parent-child relationship they never had. This may lead to you feeling overly controlled, smothered, and scrutinized which may lead to anxiety and feelings of inadequacy.
Although this scenario only explored the effect of financial hardship on intergenerational trauma, families are rarely that simple. Most families have experienced multiple unprocessed traumatic events or hardships that all interact horizontally and vertically down the family tree. Most people, especially people of color and minoritized communities that have experienced oppression, genocide, colonization, and prejudice, are affected by generational trauma.
How do you start to overcome generational trauma?
Unfortunately there is no easy answer. Generational trauma is older than you and is literally encoded in your DNA. Be patient and gentle with yourself as you start your journey. The first step is to acknowledge that generational trauma may be present in the first place. Rarely do we take a moment to pause and reflect how the direct experiences of our ancestors may be physically and mentally affecting us. A great place to start is by making a family tree. For so many people of color, our history is lost to us or even hidden due to unresolved trauma and shame. Start to uncover the stories of your grandparents, your great-grandparents, and so on. Was your grandmother the first woman in your family to go to school? Was your great-grandmother under the age of 18 when she was married to your great-grandfather? Did the generations before you experience displacement or genocide? These questions about history and family lore are vital to developing your knowledge of your ancestral heritage and the ways that their stories are impacting your own.
Want more support processing your family history and trauma? Schedule a free 15 min phone consultation to get with a therapist today!
Written by: Jasmine Aggarwal, MA