What Is Intergenerational Trauma? Signs, Causes & How to Break the Cycle
Intergenerational trauma, sometimes known as transgenerational trauma, generational trauma, multigenerational trauma, or historical trauma refers to how trauma symptoms move from one generation to the next. This transmission can profoundly affect family dynamics. You may be carrying the adversities of your ancestors without even realizing this heaviness.
Many clients find that seeking therapy for intergenerational trauma allows them to better understand how inherited patterns affect their present-day emotions and sense of self. Building this awareness allows you to change unwanted cycles, and it can promote a deeper sense of internal healing.
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Understanding Intergenerational Trauma
Some traumatic events are obvious and explicit. You know exactly what happened to you, and you can recognize exactly how it affected you.
Intergenerational trauma, on the other hand, can be hard to define and truly understand. It's important to recognize that trauma symptoms come in many forms, some of which feel apparent, and others that feel more covert or suppressed. Symptoms may emerge both somatically and emotionally, affecting your mental health. However, these symptoms may also be so normalized within your culture or family that you haven't even registered them as potentially problematic.
common signs of intergenerational trauma
1. Feeling Perpetually Anxious
Maybe you feel like you're constantly hypervigilant to your surroundings. It's hard to relax, and you may feel distrust toward others. This perpetual worry may occur even if there are no imminent threats or you don't resonate with having any current mental health challenges.
If this is the case, you may be holding this anxiety due to:
Parental modeling: If one or more of your caregivers presented as anxious, you may have internalized their fear, causing you to experience anxiety-based symptoms.
Genetic predisposition to stress: Research shows that stress may be associated with epigenetic changes that can affect individual stress responses. Such changes may be passed on to future generations without even truly recognizing them.
Attachment difficulties: Trauma can impact parenting, leading to insecure attachment between parent and child. For example, if you had a caregiver who struggled with their own emotional regulation or unresolved grief, they may have been unprepared to cope with your emotions. Therefore, you may have learned not to trust others- or you may feel overly dependent on people for validation.
Hypervigilance: Families that endure trauma via systemic oppression or other collective traumatic experiences often need to become hypervigilant to secure their survival. This becomes a protective safety mechanism that triggers your fight-or-flight response when your nervous system detects a threat.
2. Desire to BE Emotionally Numb
People with intergenerational trauma may rely on escape-based coping mechanisms to manage their intense emotions. Substance abuse, working too much overeating, compulsive shopping, or even doom-scrolling on social media can all provide a much-needed sense of self-soothing.
The desire to suppress your emotions may also be a form of intentional dissociation. This can also be seen in cases of childhood trauma or when multiple family members undergo collective trauma.
Furthermore, if you grew up observing others compartmentalizing or suppressing their emotions, this may have felt like the ordinary status quo. Therefore, even healthy emotions may, at times, feel dysregulating, triggering you to want to check out of them entirely.
3. A Pervasive Sense of Guilt
Intergenerational trauma often comes with intense themes of guilt. For instance, there may be a strong loyalty attached to your family or community, even if that loyalty has a steep cost. You might also experience survivor's guilt, which refers to the guilt of having good things or having a better life than past generations.
Such guilt may be affecting you in the following ways:
Pressure to maintain a sense of legacy: When families experience trauma, there is often implicit pressure to honor the struggle and be resilient. You may feel like you must "make up for" what the rest of the family lost. With that, you might feel shame if you don't agree with all parts of your family or community's status quo.
Identify conflicts: If you exist with multiple cultural identities, you may feel guilty for not 'fully adapting' to one way of being. This can coincide with themes of shame, inadequacy, and loneliness.
Difficulty with autonomy and differentiation: Many people with intergenerational trauma feel guilty about wanting to honor their own values, relationships, or desires, particularly if they clash with their family's values.
Physical Trauma Symptoms
The body holds onto traumatic events and emotional wounds even if the mind isn't fully conscious of what happened. Many people with intergenerational trauma experience physical symptoms, including chronic pain, muscle tension, fatigue, and more.
If your symptoms have worsened as you've gotten older, this could be a sign of you holding onto deep emotional distress. Being in a state of perpetual trauma activates stress hormones, and this can affect your physical well-being.
FAQs
What Causes Intergenerational Trauma?
Intergenerational trauma is complex and likely entails a combination of historical events, genetic factors, individual temperament, and other social variables. But when collective trauma affects a community, it leaves lasting effects that change the underpinnings of that group. The same is true for family dynamics. An individual traumatic event can become inherited throughout the generations.
How Do I Know If I Have Intergenerational Trauma?
Many people don't recognize the impact of intergenerational trauma until adulthood. They may not even realize it until seeking therapy for other mental health concerns, including depression or anxiety. Intergenerational trauma is more of this felt sense of inherited guilt, fear, discomfort, and identity confusion. This sense seems to present no matter what else is happening in life. If you have intergenerational trauma, you may relate to some or all of the following statements:
I often feel disconnected from my intense emotions without really knowing why.
I feel an intense guilt toward my family and toward upholding certain values.
I feel unworthy or ashamed of who I am, even if I don't know the exact origin of this.
I find myself repeating generational patterns even though I want to act differently.
I feel like I can't just "be myself" because I don't really know who that is.
Can Intergenerational Trauma Cause PTSD?
Intergenerational trauma can coincide with many trauma responses associated with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). However, you may not necessarily have a direct, concrete traumatic experience to draw upon. Instead, the trauma feels more chronic and pervasive- it seemingly exists within your family dynamics and moves through generations.
How Can I Prevent Passing on Trauma to Subsequent Generations?
Awareness is the first step to addressing intergenerational trauma. Whether you have your own children or are considering becoming a parent, it's important to give yourself space to work through your trauma symptoms. Trauma therapy can help you release and process traumatic events, empowering you to develop adaptive coping skills, build secure relationships, and tend to your emotional needs.
How Does Therapy Help Resolve Intergenerational Trauma?
Trauma-focused therapy starts by understanding your current symptoms and feelings. Even if you don't remember much of the past- or can't articulate specific traumatic experiences- your mind and body hold onto adversity. Together, we'll unpack the emotional pain you carry, and we'll discuss strategies for coping with your feelings and making important changes in your life.
What Modalities Best Treat Trauma?
Trauma treatment methods vary, and there isn't a single most effective intervention that works for everyone. As an integrative therapist, I engage in a blend of therapeutic interventions from cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), dialectical behavior therapy (DBT), internal family systems (IFS), eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR), and somatic experiencing (SE).
Healing Intergenerational Trauma in New York and Connecticut
Intergenerational trauma refers to how generations transmit various problematic behaviors, thoughts, and values throughout generations. The impact of this trauma shows up in many ways, including mental health problems, maladaptive coping mechanisms, confusing or painful family functioning, or deeply ingrained values that don't quite mirror your current values.
Fortunately, you can take steps to change your thought patterns and behavioral responses. In therapy, we'll spend time processing your story and exploring what happened to you and your family in the past. But we'll also focus on how you can feel more empowered in the present, through heightening your internal sense of control and letting go of beliefs or values that no longer serve you.
All trauma is valid and deserves to be witnessed, and emotional healing can take time. But if you're ready to begin your healing journey, I would be honored to support you. I offer both in-person and online therapy options for teenagers and adults in New York and Connecticut. Please contact me today to schedule an initial consultation.
If this sounds like you, I’d like to help you get started.
