Intergenerational Trauma: How Trauma Passes Down Generations

What Is Intergenerational Trauma?

With intergenerational trauma, a parent indirectly exposes their children to their trauma through unregulated and unhealed trauma responses. This generational transmission often happens because the traumatized person is unaware of their symptoms and trauma responses, they are in denial, or they refuse to get mental health treatment.

For example, intergenerational trauma can look like a person experiencing a traumatic event and feeling unable and unequipped to make sense of it and to regulate their emotions afterward. They then bring this emotional dysregulation home and take it out on their wife and kids in the form of angry yelling. The children grow up without an example of regulation, and they end up repeating these same behavioral patterns with their own children.

A person who is experiencing intergenerational trauma will often experience many of the symptoms of PTSD – such as hypervigilance, anxiety, mood dysregulation, internalized negative beliefs, and cognitive distortions – but they do not experience PTSD flashbacks about the trauma or intrusive thoughts about the trauma because they did not experience the trauma firsthand, because the trauma was passed down to them through their parent’s trauma responses.

What Causes Intergenerational Trauma?

Any ancestral trauma that occurred has the ability to cause intergenerational trauma, but generally speaking, more severe and chronic trauma is more likely to impact future generations if left unhealed.

Here are traumatic events that could lead to intergenerational trauma:

• Racial trauma or systemic oppression
• Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs)
• War
• Genocide
• Natural disasters
• Plague
• Famine
• Persecution
• Imprisonment
• Domestic violence
• Colonization
• Poverty

How Generational Trauma Is Passed On

Traumatic experiences can be transmitted physiologically, environmentally, and socially.¹ Adult children raised by parents diagnosed with PTSD often report childhood emotional neglect, possibly due to parents reliving traumatic events and becoming emotionally detached or numb as a result. This behavior also establishes an unstable sense of safety and predictability.²

Additionally, parents affected by trauma may struggle to model healthy independence, self-soothing mechanisms, emotional regulation, and responses to crises. In turn, children struggle to adopt a balanced perspective of the world and life challenges, with some gravitating toward unhealthy coping mechanisms and similar behavior.²

Genetics & Intergenerational Trauma

In addition to learned behaviors from parents’ trauma responses, there is also a genetic element to inherited trauma. The study of epigenetics is focused on how a person’s environment and behaviors impact which genetics end up expressing themselves, known as “gene expression.” These gene expressions can be passed between generations, which is known as epigenetic inheritance. If a person’s DNA reacts to stressful situations by activating their fight-or-flight response, they end up passing on that reactive propensity to their children.³

Impact of Intergenerational Trauma

Intergenerational trauma can have a profoundly negative impact on a person. Individuals with intergenerational trauma are often unaware of what they are struggling with, which makes it much harder to address it adequately and begin moving toward healing. Due to this, it is not uncommon for people impacted by intergenerational trauma to develop maladaptive coping behaviors or to experience symptoms that seemingly have no cause.

Possible impacts of intergenerational trauma include:

• Substance abuse: Sometimes, individuals turn to substances in order to emotionally numb and dissociate from the impacts felt from trauma and intergenerational trauma. Sometimes, using drugs or alcohol to cope is a piece of the intergenerational trauma that is passed down to future generations.
• Low self-esteem: Trauma symptoms can include developing a poor self-concept, which can be passed on to children through social modeling and through the way parents speak to their children and about their children.
• Psychosomatic disorders: These include physical ailments that seemingly have no medically identifiable cause, such as gastrointestinal disorders, chronic pain, etc.
• Hypervigilance: When one generation is in a constant state of hypervigilance because of past traumatic experiences, this can be passed down to future generations through learned behaviors and epigenetics as well.
• Unhealthy relationships: If a person grows up having unhealthy relationship patterns modeled for them – such as abuse, aggression, controlling behavior, and poor communication – a person is much more likely to allow this behavior in their own relationships because it’s a normalized experience to think of relationships in this way.
• Dysfunctional parenting: The primary place that a person learns to be a parent is through the example of how their own parents navigated this role. Parenting is a major way that intergenerational trauma can be passed on to future generations.

How to Heal From Intergenerational Trauma

Healing from trauma, especially when it is intergenerational trauma, can be overwhelming and takes time to work through. After all, this trauma started long before you and has continued to manifest in various ways through different generations. Healing will look specific to each individual and family unit, but there are several places to begin working on your healing journey.

Here are nine ways to start healing from intergenerational trauma:

1. Learn your family history: To begin healing, you need to know the extent of past issues. Talk to your family about what occurred in an attempt to understand how their trauma may be impacting you. If the traumatized members are unable to talk, try to ask their loved ones for their insight.
2. Identify and discuss the impact: Coping with the effects of intergenerational trauma can be difficult because it is often difficult for descendants to identify what they are struggling with because they did not experience the trauma firsthand.  Begin to identify emotions and behaviors you may have inherited, such as anger, sadness, anxiety, and substance abuse.
3. Accept the trauma: Acceptance is not the same as approval or dismissal of the trauma. Learning to accept the trauma that happened to your ancestors and how it is impacting you simply refers to not fighting and denying the reality of your experience, which allows you to begin figuring out what moving forward and healing looks like.
4. Allow yourself to mourn: Sometimes our ancestors were not able to process what they lost in the process of surviving their trauma. Considering what they lost (identity, sense of safety, loved ones, their homes, etc.) and allowing space for that loss to be felt can help us make sense of our ancestors’ stories that were passed down.
5. Find support from others: Connecting with people who have an intergenerational experience similar to yours can be incredibly validating and helpful on your healing journey. There are many different group therapy and support groups for individuals suffering from intergenerational trauma, which can be incredibly helpful.
6. Focus on your overall health: If you do not have a foundation of your overall health, it will not only make it difficult to address the symptoms of your intergenerational trauma, but it can make your trauma symptoms worse. Make sure you are getting adequate sleep, eating regularly/enough, and staying hydrated.
7. Work on completing the stress cycle: Often, our ancestors were not able to adequately resolve the stress they were experiencing, causing that extreme trauma to become “stuck” in their bodies. Enabling your body to release the trauma through movement, creative expression, laughter, and crying can help your body process any stored stress from you and past generations.
8. Bring in the professionals: Trauma is always impactful, but intergenerational trauma takes a heavy toll that requires professional treatment to resolve.
9. Avoid past mistakes: Whatever thoughts, feelings, and behaviors were born from trauma must end. Although it is difficult, you can change your behaviors to ensure that the trauma does not continue to pass on.

Can Intergenerational Trauma Be Diagnosed?

While intergenerational trauma has been studied and shown to be a real phenomenon, there is currently no specific diagnosis for intergenerational trauma. However, if you are struggling with intergenerational trauma, it is likely that you will meet the criteria for a diagnosable disorder that will allow you to get professional support. Having a conversation with your mental health provider about any concerns and familial history that you have can also be a great place to start in getting treatment for intergenerational trauma.

Treatment for Intergenerational Trauma

Treatment to address intergenerational trauma is essential when healing from childhood trauma and protecting future generations. Various therapeutic methods can help individuals address distressing symptoms and understand the effects of intergenerational trauma.

Here are some trauma-informed therapies used to treat intergenerational trauma:

• Narrative exposure therapy (NET): NET focuses on treating clients who have experienced complex or multiple traumatic experiences.⁴ The goal of NET  is to help clients reframe the traumatic event in a manner that allows them to decrease the negative impact it has on their lives. Typically, NET can be completed in around 10 sessions.⁵
• The intergenerational trauma treatment model (ITTM): The ITTM is a time-limited (21-session) treatment program that is focused on treating a child patient and includes involvement from their caregiver(s). This model evaluates and resolves issues that the caregiver may be experiencing and focuses on increasing attachment between the child and caregiver in order to disrupt trauma transmission.⁶
• Trauma-focused cognitive behavioral therapy (TF-CBT): TF-CBT combines psychoeducation and CBT techniques to teach clients to learn coping skills to deal with stressors, develop relaxation techniques, create and process trauma narratives, and manage behaviors that could be detrimental to overall mental health.⁷
• Family therapy: Due to the complex nature of intergenerational trauma, family therapy can be a helpful way to process the overall story of trauma. Having multiple family members and generations present (if possible) can create a clearer picture of the different ways trauma has been passed down.

When finding the right therapist, take your time and seek someone with expertise in intergenerational trauma. A local therapist directory is a great way to find a therapist who specializes in intergenerational trauma and takes your insurance. You can also consult your insurance company or request a referral from your family doctor. If you prefer to see a therapist remotely, an online therapy service that takes insurance may be the right choice for you.