Over the history of mental health research, the topic of trauma has been explored to understand how a traumatic event, or a series of traumatic events, can have lasting impacts on an individual in many ways. Interestingly, research shows that the individual who experiences the trauma may not be the only one who carries the weight of this trauma. Experts have studied how trauma can actually have major effects on the descendants of trauma survivors. It can last for multiple generations after the trauma originally occurred. In this way, the impacts of trauma, whether they be emotional, biological, or psychological, become “intergenerational.” In this blog, you will learn more about the concept of Intergenerational Trauma. We explore the mechanisms in which it gets passed down. You will gain insights into how to notice, name, and break the cycle of family and community trauma patterns.
The Impacts of Trauma
First, let’s talk about trauma itself. The American Psychological Association defines trauma as, “any disturbing experience that results in significant fear, helplessness, dissociation, confusion, or other disruptive feelings intense enough to have a long-lasting negative effect on a person’s attitudes, behavior, and other aspects of functioning.” So when talking about trauma, you are not just referencing the actual event that occurred. It is also the impact of these experiences. For instance, when someone goes through something traumatic, like abuse, neglect, racism, poverty, war, loss, or even an intense amount of debilitating stress, it can change how they see the world and relate to others. Some of the common ways trauma can show up long-term include:
- Hypervigilance – Always feeling on edge, expecting danger, or being hyper-aware of one’s surroundings
- Emotional numbing – Not feeling much at all, even in happy moments, or feeling distant from one’s emotions
- Negative beliefs – Strong internal feelings that influence our perceptions of the world or ourselves, like “I’m not safe,” “I can’t trust people,” or “I’m not good enough”
- Biological changes in the brain and body – Effects in how the brain develops and how the nervous system responds to stress, like heightened triggers and stress responses
Function of Trauma Responses
These common effects, though distressing, make a lot of sense. When we go through trauma, our entire being (brain, body, spirit) does everything in its power to survive. Maybe you’ve heard of the concept of fight, flight, fawn, or freeze responses in the face of danger? These are stress responses that our bodies turn to for survival, often without our brains processing what is going on. For instance, if we are being attacked, instincts might kick in to fight back. Our nervous systems are extremely protective of us and want us to escape and survive the traumatic event. Because these responses helped us live through trauma once or many times, our bodies and brains adapt to this survival instinct. It reconfigures how we respond to similar stressors in the future.
As you can see, trauma is sticky. It rewires our beliefs, changes our biology, can lead to complicated symptoms. In its most debilitating form, it can develop into diagnoses such as PTSD and C-PTSD.
Can Trauma Be Passed Down?
The simple answer to this question is yes, trauma can be passed down! The mechanism in which this happens, though, is less simple.
There are a few ways this happens:
Learned Patterns
We often carry out what we’ve learned, even unconsciously. For instance, if a parent is emotionally distant because of their own trauma, a child may grow up believing closeness isn’t safe. When that child becomes an adult and has kids of their own, they may perpetuate this pattern of distance with their own children, and so on. Even if they are not consciously behaving in this way or don’t understand why they feel safer when there is distance, developmentally, our learned behaviors get passed down through generations.
Belief Systems
Similar to behaviors, families can pass down powerful (and sometimes painful) beliefs like, ‘We shouldn’t talk about our feelings,” “You can’t trust people,” or “You have to be strong all the time.” These beliefs often come from survival strategies and they made sense at some point in the past, but they can become limiting when there is no real danger present.
Biology and Epigenetics
Here’s where science comes into play. Researchers are starting to show that trauma can affect the way genes express themselves through a process called epigenetics.
This process codes our genes to express certain traits and pass them down without changing the DNA itself.
Read more about how trauma gets passed down.
To better understand this phenomenon, researchers conducted an experiment on the effects of generational trauma in mice. They exposed a group of mice to the scent of cherry blossoms while simultaneously administering an electric shock. Over time, the mice learned to fear the scent of cherry blossoms alone because their brains behaviorally and chemically linked the scent with the shock.
The researchers then continued the study by having these mice produce offspring who were raised by different parent mice. When the offspring later encountered the scent of cherry blossoms, they appeared more sensitive, fearful, and jumpy. Because the original mice did not raise them, the offspring could not have learned this response through observation or direct experience. Instead, they seemed to inherit a built-in sensitivity to the scent.
Traits Get Passed Down
Something else caused these responses, and researchers found that biological coding likely created this effect. The researchers continued the study with the next generation of mice, and the third generation of offspring demonstrated the same responses. In this way, the offspring of the traumatized mice carried the effects of the original trauma and continued passing those traits down through generations, even though they never experienced the traumatic event or encountered the traumatized mice themselves.
Researchers have also studied the impacts of human trauma on generations. This includes those who survived major events like being held captive as a prisoner of war, or being a victim of the Holocaust. In many cases, children of these individuals demonstrated higher levels of cortisol (the stress hormone) and susceptibility to certain health issues. Similar to the mouse study, this means our biology may actually adapt in response to trauma. Those adaptations might be passed to our children epigenetically, especially when trauma isn’t processed or healed.
What Intergenerational Trauma Can Look Like
Have you ever thought, “I don’t know why I feel this way, nothing that bad happened to me,” while still carrying anxiety, fear, shame, or a sense of feeling stuck?
If this sounds familiar, you might be experiencing the impacts of intergenerational trauma. It often shows up through repeated emotional patterns in your family, such as anger, avoidance, impulsivity, or perfectionism. You may experience deep fear or distrust that doesn’t seem to match your current life or how you know yourself. Families may also carry health issues without clear medical explanations, including some chronic illnesses or mental health struggles. You might notice missing family history or unspoken secrets that feel significant but rarely get discussed. Many people also describe a feeling of carrying something that doesn’t fully belong to them.
As mentioned earlier, this isn’t just true in individuals and families. Intergenerational trauma can also impact communities that have experienced systemic oppression, racism, colonization, or forced displacement. In this way, people collectively share and carry trauma across generations and identities, passing it down through the same interconnected patterns.
Healing from Intergenerational Trauma
Now that you understand how pervasive intergenerational trauma can be, you might be wondering what’s next. When it comes to trauma on any level, there is always the possibility of healing, but it can be hard to know where to start. Breaking the cycle of intergenerational trauma requires curiosity, patience, bravery, understanding, and above all else, safety to depart from old patterns that are no longer serving you, your family, or your community.
Read more about intergenerational trauma here.
Gain Awareness
The first step in healing involves gaining awareness of the behavioral patterns in your life and asking yourself, “Where does this come from?” “Did I learn this, or does it feel instinctual?” and “What is this pattern or belief protecting me from?” By asking these questions, you can better understand your reactions, needs, and beliefs.
You can also benefit greatly from talking with someone you trust about what you notice. A therapist can help you explore healing and make meaningful connections, or a close family member or friend with shared experiences may help you feel understood and supported.
Challenge Your Patterns
Once you feel able to understand these patterns and where they come from, it is time to challenge them and shift the unneeded behaviors. Questions like, “Do I actually need this to survive?” “Is this really helping me?” and “Is this how I want to handle situations?” are a great place to start.
It may not be an easy task, but healing is possible and often necessary to move forward from intergenerational trauma. Trauma-informed therapy can help you unpack what you’ve inherited. It can help you choose what you want to keep, and release what you’re ready to let go of. A trauma-informed therapist can support you in developing new coping skills. They help with new narratives around resilience and new ways of relating with yourself and others apart from your trauma.
Moving Forward
As you can see from this blog, the impacts of intergenerational trauma are real and can exist in individuals, families, and communities who have lived through traumatic events. If you feel that you are experiencing this type of trauma, you are not alone, and healing is possible! Writer and researcher Resmaa Menakem, the author of My Grandmother’s Hands, captures the importance of healing intergenerational trauma: “When you heal historical and intergenerational trauma, you heal the people who came before you. You also heal the generations to come.” Healing doesn’t mean forgetting or blaming. It means making space to feel, to explore, to understand, and to choose a new path for yourself, one step at a time.
Do you want to explore intergenerational trauma in therapy? Reach out to myTherapyNYC to find out which of our therapists would be a good fit for you!
How have you worked through intergenerational trauma? Join the conversation in the comments below!
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1 comment
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