While you may not have heard of the term “intergenerational trauma”, you may have heard the coined phrase “generational curse.” Intergenerational trauma, or a generational curse in simpler terms, refers to trauma that is passed from a trauma survivor onto the family’s descendants. If you are experiencing intergenerational trauma, you may be living through symptoms, reactions, patterns, and the emotional and physical effects of a loved one’s trauma, such as a parent or grandparent.
This concept of trauma throughout multiple lifespans was developed to explain years of generational challenges within a given family unit. Essentially, it is the transmission of trauma, being sent down to younger generations. If you and your family are struggling with generational trauma, continue to read this blog for much-needed support and guidance.
Anchor Therapy is a counseling center in Hoboken, NJ with mental health therapists specialized in helping children, teens, adults, couples, and families with anxiety, depression, relationship issues, trauma, life transitions, and more. Anchor Therapy is accepting new clients and is now providing in-person sessions and teletherapy sessions to residents of New Jersey, New York, Florida, North Carolina, and Utah.
Understanding Different Trauma Terms
A simple trauma refers to a single traumatic event, like an assault for instance. The fact that this event happened one time does not decrease the traumatic severity a survivor would face.
Complex trauma occurs when a person experiences a series of repeated traumatic events. Or, unique traumatic incidents have occurred. Complex trauma can involve entire families in situations centered around violence, addiction, poverty, and so on. When complex trauma occurs early in life, it can severely damage a child’s or teen’s emotional and mental health. If you are struggling with childhood trauma, read our top blog “How To Heal Childhood Trauma As An Adult.”
Historical trauma are traumatic experiences or events that are shared by a specific group of people in society. This can extend to an entire community, ethnic, or national group.
For trauma to be considered historical, three criteria must be met:
Widespread effects
Collective suffering
Malicious intent
An Example of Historical Trauma
For example, let us say that your great-grandmother is a Holocaust survivor. In order to survive in the concentration camp, she had to learn how to cut her emotions off. Due to this, you may find that your great-grandmother is emotionally distant from the family. This can cause a tumultuous relationship and general family dynamic.
The spreading of this intergenerational trauma can negatively affect her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. Without the cycle being stopped or inspected, there can be generations of emotional distance and defensive behaviors around emotional expression.
Intergenerational problems can be found in families who have experienced severe forms of trauma, like the Holocaust, sexual abuse, rape, murder, and so on.
Multigenerational trauma was first identified in the children of Holocaust survivors. However, as the research in this field progresses, mental health professionals see that the issue of transgenerational trauma is more common than initially thought.
Some common responses to historical trauma include:
Suicidal thoughts (Feeling suicidal? Help is only a call away at the National Suicide and Crisis Lifeline: 988)
Low self-esteem (Read “Do You Understand Your Self-Esteem?” for more information)
Anger (Check out our blog “The Most Important Things You Need To Know About Anger Management”)
Violence
Problems expressing and/or regulating emotions
Finally, intergenerational trauma, also known as transgenerational trauma and multigenerational trauma, is trauma that gets passed down from those who directly experienced it to later generations.
Transgenerational trauma may begin with…
How Does Multigenerational Trauma Impact The Family Unit?
As mentioned previously, there is now more research available on transgenerational trauma than ever before. The existence of multigenerational trauma is being well-documented.
If you grew up with a parent who experienced trauma and spread that trauma to you, you may suffer from emotional disturbances and, if you decide to become a parent, there is an increased likelihood that you will experience parenting challenges. Some challenges you can expect to face may be difficulty bonding or creating healthy emotional attachments to your children. To learn more about attachment styles, check out our past blow “How Do The Four Attachment Styles Impact Romantic Relationships?”.
When it comes to transgenerational trauma, there are typically four adaptation styles amongst the families of survivors. These four categories include:
Numb - Tendency to self-isolate, have a low tolerance for stimulation, are not really involved with raising their children
Victim - Distrust the world, remain discreet, frequently depressed
Fighters - Focus on succeeding at all costs, intolerant of weakness
Those Who Made It - Emotionally distance themselves from the trauma, pursuit of socio-economic success
For the child who grew up in an environment of transgenerational trauma, they understand and experience the world through the eyes of their caregivers. Therefore, they often model the behavior and actions of their parents. Children may mimic their parents’ behaviors when it comes to navigating relationships and regulating their emotions.
What Are The Consequences Of Transgenerational Trauma?
The consequences of intergenerational trauma have become so normalized that it is so easy to overlook them. In fact, multigenerational trauma may never even be mentioned in your family unless it is brought up for a licensed trauma therapist.
At Anchor Therapy, our trauma therapists are determined to study trauma on every level, from simple to complex and historical to transgenerational. Our trauma counselors understand how trauma can negatively impact multiple generations of the same family unit.
For instance, let us take a mother who is having a hard time coping with her daughter’s sexual abuse by a family member. This mother was abused by her father, and her father was abused by his father. When you view the trauma from this multigenerational perspective, you will see that the impact is noteworthy.
The truth is that if a parent never healed from their trauma or even tried to explore their trauma, it will be very hard for them to emotionally support a family member going through the same thing.
Unfortunately, many families cope with their trauma in one of two ways:
Denial - Refusing the acknowledge that the trauma occurred
Minimization - Ignoring the effects of the trauma and making the traumatic experience seem smaller than it really is
The way that a family member copes with trauma will inform how the trauma will lead subsequent generations. In the above example, if the mother does not consider the impact of her trauma, she may be inadvertently showing her daughter that she should avoid her trauma instead of addressing it.
If you choose to ignore your intergenerational trauma, please understand that it will come back up at some point in time. It is likely that it will be triggered by something. No matter how hard you try, trauma, especially in a case as complex as intergenerational trauma, is not something that can be ignored or swept under the rug.
Results of Intergenerational Trauma
The main way that intergenerational trauma impacts the family unit is that it causes all family members to suffer with emotional management. Older generations often paint the picture when it comes to how emotions are dealt with (or totally ignored) in the family.
If you suspect that your family suffers with emotional issues due to intergenerational trauma, ask yourself and your loved ones the following questions:
Do you hide your emotions? If something painful or uncomfortable occurs, do you pretend like it did not happen?
Do you internalize your emotions until something triggering occurs and causes you to ‘blow up’?
Do you use drugs and alcohol to cope with your feelings?
Older generations can dictate how to deal with emotions which can be a good or bad thing depending on your unique situation. The trauma pattern easily continues in transgenerational trauma cases because the person who experienced the trauma and needs help, never received it. Additionally, the family member who experienced the trauma may transfer their negative emotions onto other people in the family, such as their children.
What Intergenerational Trauma Looks Like
While there is no poster child for the manifestation of intergenerational trauma, many of the symptoms of transgenerational trauma mirror that of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, often referred to simply as PTSD. If you struggle with PTSD, check out our blog “Everything You Need to Know About CBT for PTSD.”
Some symptoms shared my intergenerational trauma and PTSD include:
Hypervigilance
Mood dysregulation
Since the younger generations have not directly experienced the trauma, they will not experience flashbacks or intrusive memories. In other words, their trauma response is inherited where they experience certain trauma symptoms and responses from events that did not occur to them.
Another important thing to note is that stress responses are typically linked to physical health issues. Therefore, intergenerational trauma issues can even come up medically, like heart disease or a stroke.
What Is A Trauma Response?
Humans have been able to develop and adapt due to our automatic bodily responses. For example, if you live with a chronic illness or endured a traumatic event, certain responses are ‘turned on’ so you can survive. These automatic responses are referred to as your trauma response.
In the short-term, these responses are extremely helpful; however, they can cause issues long-term. Being in “survival mode” for too long is never a good thing as it can seriously harm both your mental and physical health. Your brain may have even learned these adaptive behaviors by viewing your caregivers’ behaviors and actions. In other words, you learned what to do to keep yourself and your family alive and safe, so you think replaying the same response, or staying in survival mode, is the best thing to do. When future generations learn these tendencies, they can be hard to unlearn.
When you stay in survival mode, you are lessening your ability to thrive since you are living in an environment focused on fear, trauma, and scarcity. When you thrive, you are living in a space of safety and security. If you are living with multigenerational trauma, you may not have a foundation for this.
In fact, if you suffer with transgenerational trauma, spaces that are calm may seem scary to you. It can be hard to feel peaceful in a serene setting due to anxiety that another traumatic occurrence will happen to you or a loved one. When this occurs, you know that your trauma response is hurting you rather than helping you.
Healing Intergenerational Trauma
If you are experiencing intergenerational trauma, trauma-informed counseling and additional trauma therapy treatments can help.
Trauma therapy can help you:
Cope with your trauma symptoms
Comprehend the effects of intergenerational trauma
Provide you with the tools to change deep-seated familial patterns
Heal yourself and future generations
If you do not have memories of a specific trauma, trauma-informed therapeutic approaches can still help you. By attending trauma counseling, you will learn to manage your body’s physical, mental, and emotional responses to transgenerational trauma.
There are many resources available if you are struggling with intergenerational trauma, including working with an intergenerational trauma therapist here at Anchor Therapy. When you recognize trauma symptoms, you are taking the first step towards coping and seeking the mental health support you need and deserve.
Since transgenerational trauma occurs through multiple generations, it can be healed in a setting where additional trauma does not happen. Even if you have additional stressors going on in your life, such as work or school, transgenerational trauma can be healed with the right tools and resources. Support and resources are needed for trauma survivors since it will help prevent future traumas not only for the individual, but for their family as well.
To fully heal, you and your family can learn about trauma, trauma responses, and multigenerational trauma from a transgenerational trauma therapist near you. This type of education can be done in trauma therapy sessions with your licensed mental health counselor specializing in intergenerational trauma.
This means that you will acknowledge how intergenerational trauma can impact family members who did not experience the trauma directly. This comprehension is a great step in the direction of healing both the individual and the family unit so further trauma does not occur.
Victoria Scala
is the Social Media Manager, Intake Coordinator, and Office Manager at Anchor Therapy in Hoboken, New Jersey. She is a graduate of the Honors College of Rutgers University-Newark. In her roles, Victoria is committed to managing the office’s social media presence and prioritizing clients' needs.
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