Generational Trauma Explained: Understanding the Cycle

Maybe it seems like your family has struggled with the same problems for generations. You might be looking back on your childhood and realizing that your parents, grandparents, and even your great-grandparents all seemed to carry the same emotional burdens.

Now, you recognize that you haven’t quite shaken these issues, either. The problems that older generations of your family lived with are still echoing in your life. Sometimes, trauma doesn’t just affect one person. Instead, the symptoms extend through the family tree for several generations. It continues until some family members make conscious efforts to break the cycle. Here’s how generational trauma can persist for decades, and how ending the cycle is possible.

How Generational Trauma Begins

Generational trauma can begin when one or more family members are negatively affected by threats to their safety or wellbeing. This could include violent conflict, political turmoil, forced migration, substance use, growing up in deep poverty, abuse within the family system, or other forms of trauma. Those who live through the traumatic events may not have access to any form of support or treatment for coping with these issues. They may not even realize just how these events have harmed their mental health. Therefore, they’re not able to fully heal.

Parenting Approaches Influenced by Trauma

When someone lives through trauma, and they’re never able to connect with resources and support to help them overcome their symptoms, the influence of these events can affect their parenting style. They might turn to substance use to cope during hard times. They may adopt an authoritarian parenting style or neglect their children’s needs. The parent might not understand that they’re hurting their children. They may view their parenting methods as “normal” because other family members of their generation act the same way.

The Effects of Generational Trauma on Children

Children growing up in situations like this often end up suffering from anxiety, depression, phobias, and other mental health conditions. They may have difficulty in school. Alternatively, they might push themselves academically to the point of burnout so that they can become independent from their families as soon as possible.

Generational trauma can also cause children and young adults to shy away from bonding with other people. They might feel isolated from their peers. Alternatively, they might run towards people who remind them of their parents and end up in friendships and relationships that mirror their family’s behavioral patterns.

The Cycle Continues

When these children reach adulthood, they might not recognize that they’re dealing with generational trauma. As a result, they may not think to reach out for help. Just as their parents before them, they can easily assume that their mental health troubles and harmful behavioral patterns are normal. This is how the cycle continues into the next generation. As one generation grows up and has children, they adopt the same parenting styles as their own parents. In the end, their own children can easily end up grappling with the same problems as several generations before them.

Breaking the Generational Trauma Cycle

In order to find freedom from generational trauma, individuals often have to realize that their mental health struggles are rooted in their family’s history. This does not necessarily mean cutting ties with their families, but they may need to set boundaries around interactions as a form of self-protection. Additionally, going to therapy can be a useful step. People addressing generational trauma in therapy may want to attend individual sessions or family counseling to work on these issues with their relatives.

–

If you’re trying to break the cycle of generational trauma, we encourage you to fill out our contact form to schedule a trauma therapy consultation.