Breaking Generational Trauma
Trauma is something that lives inherently within all of us. It manifests in pain, anxiety, depression, perceptions, etc. The truth is, many of us live with our trauma without realizing how it affects us in our day-to-day lives. Naturally, as human beings, we tend to face traumatic experiences, sometimes without realizing it. Pain travels through families until someone is ready to feel it. The root of this generational curse is typically avoidance—avoidance of situations, people, or emotions that impact us profoundly. There is a famous quote that states, "You can only meet someone as far as they’ve met themselves," and it rings profoundly true.
What is Generational Trauma?
Let's explore what generational trauma is. Intergenerational trauma happens when our parents' or ancestors' "raw or unprocessed experiences" are passed down from generation to generation. In other words, it explains how our past, or the past of others, can inherently inform our present. Undoubtedly, personal history plays a key role in our psychology. As Galit Atlas once wrote, "When we are ready to unpack our inheritance, we are able to confront the ghosts we carry within." The study of epigenetics suggests that if we have a parent who lived in chronic stress, that trauma becomes imprinted in their genetic encoding—and those genetic markers are passed on to us. I also believe the biggest way we inherit trauma is through our environment and the people who raised us or grew up with us. Parents who are still in a trauma state (and often don’t know it) may miss cues to care for us and may be unable to engage with us in nurturing ways that help build a healthy emotional foundation. Understanding a child's love languages is crucial to their development, as well as understanding how they express themselves toward you.
What can this look like? Caregivers may be short-fused and highly reactive, or emotionally unavailable, and these ways of dealing with stress are modeled to the child, who then carries those forms of self-soothing into adulthood. Unfortunately, sometimes those behaviors produce harmful results. Although passed down, generational trauma and the pain that comes with it eventually demand to be felt—and they should be. Whoever chooses to break this cycle paves a new way for themselves and those who come after them.
Personal Experience
The way generational trauma is passed down and felt is unique to each individual. Personally, I found that I was unable to realize much of the trauma passed down in my family until I got older. This is natural because, as human beings, we continuously learn through experience. I realized that much of the external validation I sought was because I felt like I didn’t fully receive it at home. And this is not to shame or criticize my parents or loved ones in any way—each family is different, as is the way they express love. As a daughter of immigrants, and I’m sure many reading this can relate, love wasn’t always expressed verbally as much as it was through acts of service. For example, my parents would bring me back a dessert and leave it on the counter for me to find because they knew it was my favorite, or they would prepare my favorite meal, allow me to go out with my friends, etc.
Those were all amazing gestures, don’t get me wrong. I say that I didn’t realize some of the passed-down trauma because, as I got older, I noticed I constantly sought words of affirmation, or I would frequently be surprised when other people offered them to me. Over time, I came to realize that words of affirmation are one of my love languages (which can change over time), but I also learned that my parents didn’t always show love that way because the way they received love growing up was different. Again, this is not to say the way they received love was bad; it was just different. They grew up on a different continent, with different customs, and with different parents. The important thing to understand is that being different isn’t bad—it helps explain what separates us from those who came before us. It distinguishes us as humans in beautiful and profound ways. It also gives us the opportunity to learn from one another and evolve, which I think is one of life’s greatest gifts.
Furthermore, I am now 21, and whenever I feel like I want to receive words of affirmation from family members, friends, or anyone around me, I give them to myself and express them toward others. I think the act of expressing it toward others is important because it helps me avoid withholding what I may have wanted to receive more of. In doing so, I end a cycle and spread even more love to those around me and the world as a whole. How cool is that? That, to me, is how you start to break generational trauma. Additionally, therapies like EMDR therapy, as well as books and articles, are extremely helpful.
Deciding to Feel the Pain and End the Cycle
Pain and fear are driving forces when it comes to facing trauma. Emotional tolls are created long before we are even born. All the eggs a woman will carry form in her ovaries while she is a fetus in her mother’s womb. In other words, when your mother was in your grandmother’s womb, she carried the egg that would eventually become you. Simply put, there is an undeniable emotional and biological connection between newborns and their mothers, and the same goes for their mothers, grandmothers, great-grandmothers, and so on. Foundations are a huge part of our identity—we inherit not only the physical features of our parents but also their stories, narratives, and views on life.
Think of it this way—when you’re at the doctor’s office and being diagnosed with something, or when your doctor is trying to get a better understanding of you, they ask about your family history. We may wear these experiences as a badge of honor and pride, but with them naturally come unresolved conflicts. Unresolved trauma, depression, and anxiety will undoubtedly surface at some point in our lives. This can be both inherited and created by ourselves. When it comes to ending the cycle, it's important to recognize that experiences shape people, their actions, and their emotions. When you have an experience, you attach an emotion to it, and it's almost like you lock those two things into your psyche and body. So when people say, "Trauma lives within the body," it's because it does. Should you experience something triggering, you feel it first in your body with some sort of sensation—fear, anxiety, anger, and so on.
We have the opportunity to confront the pain and know the truth, which many generations didn’t have. Here are a few tips to deal with trauma:
Tend to your body: Care for your body with practices like exercise, meditation, and positive interactions.
See both sides: This is hard, I know. Try to relate to your loved ones and understand and accept what circumstances may have led them to behave the way they do (this doesn’t mean you condone it). Then, decide what you will do to change that for yourself and those who come after you.
Seek community: Try to find healing spaces or talk to other family members and friends. Open dialogues where you feel safe to express yourself and receive from others can be an amazing outlet.
Love and have compassion for yourself: This is straightforward but surprisingly one of the hardest human practices. Give yourself grace; you are experiencing all of this for the first time and choosing to do so! There is no right or wrong, only the present moment. Try to enjoy the journey, as the destination could be more beautiful than you’ve ever imagined.
