Intergenerational trauma occurs when the impacts of trauma are passed from one generation to the next. Trauma can shape thoughts, feelings, and behavior, thus affecting how individuals parent and communicate with their children. These factors can perpetuate trauma, furthering the cycle of anxiety, fearfulness, and other mental health impacts.
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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
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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:
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Bring in the professionals: Trauma is always impactful, but intergenerational trauma takes a heavy toll that requires professional treatment to resolve.
- 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.
Recover from Trauma with the Help of a Therapist.
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How to Stop Passing on Intergenerational Trauma
Once you recognize that you may have inherited family trauma or that you have experienced your own trauma, you want to ensure you do not pass it on to your children. Processing your trauma and taking care of your body is critical. It is also important to hold yourself accountable for not behaving in automatic ways that create further damage.
Here are ways to prevent intergenerational trauma:
- Examine your unhealthy patterns: Understanding and disrupting your own unhealthy patterns is one of the most impactful ways that you can prevent passing on intergenerational trauma to your children. Expanding your emotional regulation, replacing unhealthy coping patterns, and getting treatment for any mental health concerns are all aspects to consider.
- Discuss your family history with your children: Open and honest communication reduces any shame associated with the trauma and offers your children a clear understanding of things that they could potentially need to address in the future.
- Work on healthy attachments with your children: By building healthy attachments with your children, you are working to ensure that they do not develop any unhealthy attachments. This allows them to enter into healthy relationships later in life and stops them from perpetuating intergenerational trauma.
- Notice and challenge any unhelpful beliefs you carry: Unhelpful beliefs are often ones that are polarizing and impact a person’s outlook. These could include things such as “The world is an unsafe place” or “People are inherently bad”. While these things can be true, believing them as a general rule can encourage hypervigilance and disrupt the relationships necessary for emotional health.
- Model healthy relationships for your children: This can include modeling healthy relationships with your partner, with adult friends, within your community, and with strangers in general. This gives your children a healthy example to follow for how to act and what to expect in their relationships throughout their lives.
Examples of Intergenerational Trauma
While sometimes intergenerational traumas can be isolated events within a family, there are also several examples of specific populations that were the target and recipients of traumas that have lasted for generations. Because of the severity of these traumas, intergenerational traumas still have impacts that can be seen and documented to this day in the descendants of several affected groups.
Here are some prominent examples of intergenerational trauma:
Indigenous Populations
Indigenous populations experienced and absorbed the shock and trauma of the sudden introduction of foreign people to their populations. These introductions caused a variety of traumas to indigenous people all over the world, including the introduction of disease, colonization, war, enslavement, and sexual and physical violence. In several instances, traumas continued into later generations as well, as in the case of residential schools and relocation to reservations for the Indigenous American community.
Black Americans
More often than not, the arrival of Black Americans’ ancestors was rooted in trauma and continued for many generations. A majority were abducted from their homes in Africa and forced to journey to the Americas, then to endure enslavement, hard physical labor, and abuse. After the discontinuation of slavery in the United States, exposure to traumatic events continued and has continued for many generations in the form of racism, discrimination, poverty, and incarceration.
Genocide
Being targeted for genocide based on belonging to a specific population is an intergenerational trauma that has been studied frequently, particularly related to survivors of the Holocaust. Attempting to escape, to attempt to hide and evade capture, and to survive in Holocaust camps have had a lasting impact on intergenerational trauma being passed down to descendants of Holocaust survivors.
In My Experience
Frequently Asked Questions
What Is a Trauma Response?
A trauma response refers to the changes in a person’s thoughts, beliefs, behaviors, and physical reactions due to experiencing a traumatic event. Traumatic events impact people differently, and each person will develop their own unique trauma responses. Trauma responses often include coping mechanisms that aim to adapt after the trauma, and they often come out after encountering a trauma trigger.
Choosing Therapy strives to provide our readers with mental health content that is accurate and actionable. We have high standards for what can be cited within our articles. Acceptable sources include government agencies, universities and colleges, scholarly journals, industry and professional associations, and other high-integrity sources of mental health journalism. Learn more by reviewing our full editorial policy.
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Yehuda, R., & Lehrner, A. (2018). Intergenerational transmission of trauma effects: putative role of epigenetic mechanisms. World psychiatry: official journal of the World Psychiatric Association (WPA), 17(3), 243–257. https://doi.org/10.1002/wps.20568
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Charles Portney, M. (2020, November 16). Intergenerational transmission of trauma: An introduction for the clinician. Psychiatric Times. https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/view/intergenerational-transmission-trauma-introduction-clinician
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Ryan, J., Chaudieu, I., Ancelin, M.-L., & Saffery, R. (2016). Biological underpinnings of trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder: Focusing on genetics and Epigenetics. Epigenomics, 8(11), 1553–1569. https://doi.org/10.2217/epi-2016-0083
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American Psychological Association. (n.d.). Narrative exposure therapy (NET). American Psychological Association. https://www.apa.org/ptsd-guideline/treatments/narrative-exposure-therapy
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Neuner, F., Catani, C., Ruf, M., Schauer, E., Schauer, M., & Elbert, T. (2008). Narrative exposure therapy for the treatment of traumatized children and adolescents (KidNET): from neurocognitive theory to field intervention. Child and adolescent psychiatric clinics of North America, 17(3), 641–x. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chc.2008.03.001
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Copping, V. (2023, January 20). The intergenerational trauma treatment model information for professionals. The Intergenerational Trauma Treatment Model. https://theittm.com/the-intergenerational-trauma-treatment-model-information-for-professionals/
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Brown, R. C., Witt, A., Fegert, J. M., Keller, F., Rasenhofer, M., & Plener, P. L. (2017). Psychosocial interventions for children and adolescents after man-made and natural disasters: A meta-analysis and systematic review. Psychological Medicine, 47, 1893-1905. https://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0033291717000496
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The Intergenerational Trauma Treatment Model. (2020). Retrieved from: https://theittm.com/
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TF-CBT. (2020). Retrieved from https://tfcbt.org/about-tfcbt/
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Brown, R. C., Witt, A., Fegert, J. M., Keller, F., Rasenhofer, M., & Plener, P. L. (2017). Psychosocial interventions for children and adolescents after man-made and natural disasters: A meta-analysis and systematic review. Psychological Medicine, 47, 1893-1905. https://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0033291717000496
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U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (2020). PTSD. Retrieved from https://www.ptsd.va.gov/understand/common/common_adults.asp
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Centers of Disease Control (2017). Key injury and violence data. Retrieved from https://www.cdc.gov/injury/wisqars/overview/key_data.html
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APA (2020). Retrieved from https://www.apa.org/monitor/2019/02/legacy-trauma
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Bakó, T., & Zana, K. (2018). The Vehicle of Transgenerational Trauma: The Transgenerational Atmosphere. American Imago, 75(2), 271–285. https://proxy.ulib.csuohio.edu:2096/10.1353/aim.2018.0013
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Barlow, J. N. (2018). Restoring Optimal Black Mental Health and Reversing Intergenerational Trauma in an Era of Black Lives Matter. Biography, 41(4), 895.
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Author: Dakota King-White, Ph.D., LPC (No Change)
Medical Reviewer: Kristen Fuller, MD (No Change)
Primary Changes: Added sections titled “What Is Intergenerational Trauma?”, “What Causes Intergenerational Trauma?”, “Genetics & Intergenerational Trauma”, “Impact of Intergenerational Trauma”, “How to Heal From Intergenerational Trauma”, “Can Intergenerational Trauma Be Diagnosed?”, “How to Stop Passing on Intergenerational Trauma”, “Examples of Intergenerational Trauma”, “In My Experience”, and “What Is a Trauma Response?”. New content written by Maggie Holland, MA, MHP, LMHC and medically reviewed by Rajy Abulhosn, MD. Fact-checked and edited for improved readability and clarity.
Author: Dakota King-White, Ph.D., LPC (No Change)
Medical Reviewer: Kristen Fuller, MD (No Change)
Primary Changes: Added sections titled “What Is Intergenerational Trauma?”, “Intergenerational Trauma Examples”, and “Healing Intergenerational Trauma.” New content written by Eric Patterson, LPC, and reviewed by Kristen Fuller, MD. Fact-checked and edited for improved readability and clarity.
Author: Dakota King-White, Ph.D., LPC
Reviewer: Kristen Fuller, MD
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