Written by Sam Mishra, The Medical Massage Lady
Sam Mishra (The Medical Massage Lady), is a multi-award winning massage therapist, aromatherapist, accredited course tutor, oncology and lymphatic practitioner, trauma practitioner, breathwork facilitator, reiki and intuitive energy healer, transformational and spiritual coach and hypnotherapist.
We often hear about how children who grow up, for example, with an abusive alcoholic parent, may experience history repeating itself with them becoming an abuser as an adult, so given the extensive symptomology of trauma on a physiological, psychological, emotional, and spiritual level, it is surely fairly easy to understand how trauma can be perpetuated through generations.
What is meant by the term ‘generational trauma’?
Research suggests that trauma significantly affects individuals, their families, and even their offspring. Those who do not personally experience the mental and emotional challenges associated with trauma tend to downplay them, yet studies have shown that the repercussions of traumatic events can extend beyond a single lifetime.
The term "generational trauma" describes the psychological repercussions of trauma transmitted to subsequent generations, creating severe difficulties for successors and potentially continuing for centuries. It is, therefore, not only an individual trauma but also a collective one. Families with survivors of abuse, racism, prejudice, or any kind of oppression may show signs of generational trauma. They may pick up memories, unhealthy coping strategies, and fears and learn certain fear, anger, guilt, and shame-based reactions from their ancestors based on their insecurities. This implies that individuals who did not directly experience the trauma may still exhibit linked psychological and emotional symptoms. The colonization of Native Americans is a good example.
Each person may experience generational trauma differently; for example, anxiety, self-destructive behaviors, depression, lack of trust, low self-esteem, or negative thoughts about the future. A person’s age may also affect how they experience generational trauma. Dysfunction within the family unit conditions a small child differently than someone who has already grown up. Co-dependency or dysfunctional attachments often sustain the consequences of generational trauma.
Healing is achievable through acquiring coping mechanisms and seeking professional support. It starts with finding the source of the traumatic reactions, which may be difficult to overcome if systemic discrimination is a factor. Any sense of self-judgment, guilt, or shame can make recognizing the trauma and its effect on your life problematic.
How do we inherit trauma from previous generations?
While generational trauma does not affect every family, it is a more frequent occurrence than we realize. Contrary to popular belief, it may not result from a single traumatic incident but possibly from a survivor’s guilt during the healing process or from long-term patterns such as domestic abuse or poverty.
There is a line of thought that trauma can transform DNA, a process known as epigenetic alterations, which may then be inherited genetically by offspring. These offspring have not personally experienced the trauma but nonetheless may have psychological scars or traumatic memories of it. Fortunately, it is possible to undo these epigenetic modifications.
Although we are commonly acknowledged to be socially conditioned as children by picking up unhealthy coping strategies and behavioral patterns from our carers, our trauma legacy may also have distinctive cultural elements. For example, descendants of Holocaust survivors may have a propensity to prepare for emergencies, or there may be a higher prevalence of anxiety, anger, fear, and other mental health conditions in generations following those who were oppressed through slavery. These cycles of hereditary trauma occurred when the ancestors who truly experienced these terrible events failed to recover. Following their trauma, they may have found it difficult to express their feelings or communicate effectively in a way that promoted trusting relationships, making it difficult for them to connect with others—possibly even resorting to unhealthy coping strategies and addictive behaviors to deal with the pain they attempted to hide. Similar practices become so ingrained that, without conscious awareness, younger generations may mimic those coping strategies.
What causes generational trauma?
As already mentioned, generational trauma may be genetic or cultural, but it is usually attributed to some kind of abuse (such as early childhood abuse or domestic violence), longer periods of oppression (such as slavery, genocide, or war), or natural disasters (for example, famine or Chernobyl). The capacity of those who have directly experienced the trauma to teach and care for their children will play a major role in how they manage their emotions and make decisions as adults. Adverse childhood experiences will certainly impact a child’s nervous system, creating a perceived lack of safety that can develop into coping mechanisms such as hypervigilance, often seen in those with PTSD.
Certainly, generational trauma can increase the likelihood of developing PTSD. This is not because it is inherited as such but because those epigenetic changes may reduce the capacity to manage stress and fear, potentially increasing the risk for generations to come.
How to recognize generational trauma?
The symptoms each person exhibits will differ according to each trauma and individual personality, but they will often be signs seen with any trauma, such as trust issues. Trust issues can result in unhealthy attachments and co-dependent or toxic relationship patterns. Hypervigilance, mental health issues, poor self-esteem, and addictive behavior are also common. Generational trauma, especially from issues like genocide or natural disasters, often manifests as a fear of dying.
There are five signs of generational trauma, however, which are seen repeatedly, not only in individuals but also throughout communities: poor self-esteem, anxiety, depression, isolation, and an inability to communicate effectively and express emotions.
As a result, those experiencing generational trauma may fall into negative behaviors and coping mechanisms such as detachment or trauma bonding, often leading to failed relationships, possibly due to self-sabotage. There may also be an element of denial, which can make suppressed emotions so unbearable that suicidal thoughts and behaviors become another challenge to overcome. It is also widely acknowledged that neglect, abuse, and violent behaviors may be observed in those with any trauma, either as the victim or the perpetrator.
These mental health conditions, or even the risk of them, can be a long-term issue potentially impacting physical health, not to mention the added pressure on family dynamics. We know that prolonged stress or unresolved trauma causes new neuropathways to develop, thus reprogramming the brain and causing us to respond to things differently. These changes within the nervous system can increase the risk of not only mental health disorders and substance abuse but also cardiac conditions, chronic pain, and diabetes.
When someone has been subjected to trauma spanning generations, they may feel inexplicable shame, guilt, or thoughts about their external environment. This creates a huge challenge in self-regulation because the person is usually unaware of anything outside the norm and has learned ineffective coping mechanisms. This explains why individuals who have experienced early childhood abuse often succumb to toxic relationship patterns as adults; they perceive genuine intimate connections as unsafe. In the case of generational trauma, König and Reimann (2018) illustrate this perfectly with their example of how children of Bosnian women who were raped experienced low self-esteem and anxiety because their mothers had not dealt with the associated fear and shame.
Even though future generations might not have personally experienced the traumatic event, they could undoubtedly assume the collective role of victims. Again, König and Reimann (2018) use the example of the ongoing Palestinian conflict to illustrate this collective impact.
Some studies have shown how daughters of Dutch women who experienced the 1945 famine had an increased risk of developing schizophrenia. This illustrates how damaging outcomes may increase when the individual is less able to reintegrate fragmented parts of themselves from the trauma because they may not be aware of the initial trauma, which was possibly buried by the direct subject. Families of Holocaust survivors, indigenous Australian communities, and even descendants of Nazi perpetrators provide comparable examples. König and Reimann (2018) explain this as:
“Transfer mechanisms between perpetrator and victim. Probably due to neuroception and/or mirror neurons, the victim also takes up how perpetrators ‘function.’ Not only the experience of the own self but also the other is taken up in a dissociated way and stocked in the archaic parts of the brain. The own behavior becomes, ignoring own competences and the functioning side of every-day life the one of the perpetrator in the past with somebody else.”
This explains how modified DNA contributes to generational trauma by altering how messages are transmitted in the body.
Can the cycle be broken?
Breaking the cycle of generational trauma can be a lengthy undertaking, potentially spanning years, but it can introduce a new narrative for you and your future generations. To do this, however, one must not only comprehend the root cause of the trauma but also identify how to overcome it so that it no longer results in trauma-based responses impacting other generations. This requires knowledge about your family’s story, which may mean having some very honest and difficult conversations, as well as recognizing any part you may play in continuing the trauma cycle. With this understanding comes the ability to help our children heal. Failure to do this work may reinforce trauma-coping mechanisms in younger generations.
Due to the complexities of generational trauma, therapeutic input from a trauma professional is recommended. They can introduce healthy coping strategies, such as hypnotherapy, guided meditation, free writing, or EMDR (eye movement desensitization and reprocessing). Much patience is needed, as the healing process can be emotionally demanding when your own resources may be minimal. In cases where genocide, war, domestic abuse, or racism are issues, there will also be a greater element of fear involved due to gaslighting behaviors.
Once you have identified the root cause of the trauma and acknowledged its existence within you, the most important step is to consciously decide to change and process whatever emotions may present themselves. Aside from professional support, self-care and compassion are also priorities. Healing will involve not isolating yourself, becoming more emotionally expressive and open, and confronting fears and the prospect of change to overcome the disconnection that so frequently happens with generational trauma. These are all difficult, so this is a big task, but there are ways to cope.
Coping strategies for healing generational trauma
I have already discussed the importance of seeking professional support, which may include therapy to examine family dynamics as a whole. I also mentioned self-care, which may be something as simple as mindfulness or breathwork to manage anxiety but may also include tougher assignments such as learning to set boundaries. Lack of boundaries is a common trauma response, particularly when people-pleasing behaviors are evident, as discussed in my previous article.
Generational trauma, whether through genocide, war, natural disasters, etc., often occurs in situations affecting a group of people connected by ethnicity, race, religion, or culture. Talking with others who have experienced the same situation may be helpful. Certainly, I know from my own experience with PTSD that I have learned a lot from talking to others in similar toxic patterns. We sometimes see things clearer when someone else holds up a mirror, reflecting our own traits back at us than if we simply tried to assess our own behaviors. For younger generations, this may mean educating themselves about their ancestry and history before pinpointing the source of certain emotions.
How can generational trauma be stopped if we are unaware of what happened to our ancestors? This is why I place so much importance on taking responsibility for your trauma in my transformation workshops. If we don’t address our own traumatic experiences in our lifetime, we will not only be teaching our children to use avoidance as a coping strategy but also leaving our own fear, shame, anger, and guilt as their legacy. Likewise, if we fall into the victim archetype as a result of our own trauma, we often repeatedly communicate that narrative to anyone who will listen (usually because we haven’t been listened to), pushing our children into victim mode.
If we don’t take responsibility, the cycle continues over the years, meaning the effects of historical trauma are so gradual that we simply assume the individual has a problem rather than considering their history. By holding ourselves accountable for how we respond to our own trauma, becoming more conscious of it, and changing our thought processes and behaviors, we can connect with others with a higher level of emotional intimacy, helping to avoid dissociation as a coping mechanism between ourselves and our children. In addition to the mindfulness, free writing, and breathwork already mentioned (and used in my workshops), another exercise I use is writing a biography. This often results in experiences coming up that we hadn’t consciously remembered, which is sometimes enough to change narratives and consequently change our story moving forward.
I hold my online transformation workshops a couple of times a year. They can guide you into taking responsibility and changing your thought processes through discussion, mindfulness, breathwork, and both paired and individual exercises.
Read more from Sam Mishra
Sam Mishra, The Medical Massage Lady
Sam Mishra (The Medical Massage Lady), is a multi-award winning massage therapist, aromatherapist, accredited course tutor, oncology and lymphatic practitioner, trauma practitioner, breathwork facilitator, reiki and intuitive energy healer, transformational and spiritual coach and hypnotherapist. Her medical background as a nurse and a midwife, combined with her own experiences of childhood disability and abuse, have resulted in a diverse and specialised service, but she is mostly known for her trauma work. She is motivated by the adversity she has faced, using it as a driving force in her charity work and in offering the vulnerable a means of support. Her aim is to educate about medical conditions using easily understood language, to avoid inappropriate treatments being carried out and for health promotion purposes in the general public. She is also becoming known for challenging the stigmas in our society and pushing through the boundaries that have been set by such stigmas within the massage industry.
References:
Bezo, B., & Maggi, S. (2018) Intergenerational Perceptions of Mass Trauma’s Impact on Physical Health and Well-Being. Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy.
Bombay, A., Matheson, K. & Anisman, H. (2009) Intergenerational Trauma: Convergence of multiple processes among First Nations peoples in Canada. International Journal of Indigenous Health vol 5. No. 3
Danieli, Y. (1998). International handbook of multigenerational legacies of trauma. New York: Kluwer Academic/ Plenum Publishing Corporation; Now Springer Publishing Company
DeAngelis, T. (2019) The legacy of trauma. American Psychological Association. February, Vol 50, No. 2 p 36
Kellerman, N.P. (2011) Epigenetic Transmission of Holocaust Trauma: Can Nightmares Be Inherited? Israeli Journal of Psychiatry and Related Sciences, 50, 33-39.
König, U. & Reimann, C. (2018) Closing a gap in conflict transformation: Understanding collective and transgenerational trauma. June.
Yehuda, R. & Lehrner, A. (2018) Intergenerational transmission of trauma effects: putative role of epigenetic mechanisms. World Psychiatry. Oct;17(3):243-257
