UNDERSTANDING GENERATIONAL TRAUMA
21 JUNE 2022 (19 MIN READ)
We often hear about generational trauma and the pain it causes, but we rarely understand how deep it really goes, as well as the mechanisms it operates through. Although hard to define in one sentence, generational trauma boils down to recreating the same environmental conditions that caused deep suffering from one generation to the next. The word “environmental” is an umbrella term here, which can include the actual physical environment itself, but more so, the emotional and linguistic environment. And by linguistic I mean the language used from parent to child. Putting it differently, how we were raised, and the pain that came with it, tends to be carried on to the next generation. This article will break down the mechanisms of how exactly this pain gets carried through from generation to generation. In this explanation, I will argue that it’s not exactly the pain itself that causes the most issues, it’s the habitual, unhealthy protective mechanisms from the pain that cause the generational trauma. Attempting to paint a better picture of this argument, consider my own story with generational trauma:
Although I had it better than most, in the sense that I never had to worry about money, violence, or sexual abuse, both my parents had severely traumatic childhoods that managed to make their way to me no matter how hard they tried at protecting me. Both my parents were physically abused by their mothers, which means that they grew up constantly feeling unsafe in their environment, anticipating a hard smack in the face at any second. Additionally, they had to do whatever it took to not get hit. This harsh reality led to them doing anything they could to make their mothers love them for who they wanted them to be—because who they actually were was only leading to massive amounts of ridicule and pain. With these two deep causes of unsafety and pain, they developed unconscious soothing mechanisms to help them from not having to feel the terror. My father quickly became a workaholic, as it gave him an escape from the deep pain inside, and it allowed for his mother to show him some form of love due to the external success it drew. After years of this pattern, this was internalized as only being able to love himself and feel safe if he was working. In terms of my mother, her intellect became a safe space to not allow herself to feel, focusing on gossip and frequent judgment of others to keep the focus away from her internal chaos. She needed drama in her life in order to distract herself from the pain she was hiding inside. Opposite to my father, this led to a deep resistance to engage in any kind of work, because she couldn’t bear to sit with herself and endure that drama-free life that comes with engaging in deep work on a consistent basis. Although this was a painful reality for my parents, how did these protective mechanisms from pain end up affecting me?
They affected me in two specific ways, repeated behavioral patterns and adapting myself to an idea of who I could be for them to love me. Since my mother needed drama in her life to distract herself from her own pain, she would hyper fixate on my physical ailments as a way to soothe herself. This meant obsessing over my asthma and eczema as a kid. Although this fear may sound normal for any parent, the moments where she would freak out over my disease were the only moments where she showed me deep love. Therefore, I would force myself to suffer so I could receive her love. I would excessively scratch myself on purpose so I would be bleeding a lot and at times, would hold my breath to force an asthma attack. Essentially, I was doing whatever it took for her to love me, so that I could not feel so awful about myself and why I may not be worthy of love. Over time—because my brain learned to draw the conclusion that deep suffering was the only thing that would give me love—my mind became addicted to hyper fixating on any mental or physical suffering. We can see here how what started as my mother’s protective mechanism from feeling her internal chaos, in the form of over-fixating on my health to distract herself from her own pain, shifted into me being addicted to suffering because it was the only thing that gave me her love as a kid. Now, with regards to my father, since he could only really love himself if he was working and accomplishing, he tended to only show me the love I desired when I was working hard and accomplishing something. This meant me feeling like a failure and as if I was unworthy of his love because I did not do well in school, which ended up getting internalized as me only being able to love myself if I was working hard and being the best. I still struggle with this deeply to this day. It is incredibly hard for me to feel good about myself and give myself love if I am not working hard or pursuing being the best. In other words, I cannot love myself for simply being. I can only love myself when I am doing, which means that I love myself conditionally. Here, what began as a soothing mechanism for my father to not have to feel his pain became a vehicle for me to find it incredibly hard to love myself. Within this elaboration, I hope you can see how the protective mechanisms from feeling the pain one endured as a child are actually what cause the generational trauma. This also means that the only way out is to drop the protective mechanisms and hold space for oneself to feel and process the pain they never allowed themselves to really endure. (The last section of the article will go into this idea in much more detail).
Although my parents did hand me some deep pain, I will never hold them in bad regards for two main reasons. One, if it hadn’t been for the way they emotionally challenged me, I would have had nothing to overcome, meaning that I would not be in possession of the knowledge I have obtained on transitioning from intense pain to peace. In other words, what broke me made me who I am proud to be today, so I do not wish that my childhood was any different. And secondly, my childhood had the potential to be a million times worse. The fact that my parents never laid a hand on me or were never verbally abusive spoke volumes to how much they had to hold back in order for them to give me a shot at a good life. Whatever they handed me stemmed from deep unconscious places they had no idea about. Because of this, I acknowledge and love them deeply for doing everything they could consciously do to keep me out of harm’s way. I am saying all of this because once we begin to unfold the layers of generational trauma, it is easy to start despising our parents and the pain they have brought our way, which is why I like to focus on how my childhood made me who I am today and how it could have been a whole lot worse, offering me a good dose of gratitude amidst the darkness.
The rest of this article will lay out the key ways in which generational trauma manifests itself, and of course, how to break away from the curse.
RELATIONSHIP TO SELF
One of the most popular avenues generational trauma seems to manifest itself through is the transcendence of parent to child relationship to child to self relationship. Put differently, our relationship to our parents and the way they communicated with us develops into the way we communicate with ourselves. And of course, funnily enough, the way your parents communicated to you was the way their parents communicated with them, which became transferred into their relationship to self and then into their relationship with you. This process goes back hundreds of years, hence the title, “generational trauma.” One of the ways we can break this curse is to deeply unpack our relationship to self; specifically, understanding which parts of our psyche do not stem from our essence, but rather an unhealed aspect of our parents that got absorbed by us. Going back to my story, since my mother would constantly worry about my health and dramatize what was objectively occurring to satiate her own anxious state, I started to frequently obsess over my health. Her pervasive communication to me around my health began to internalize as constant thoughts about my own suffering, such as always worrying about a potential asthma attack or thinking a slight moment of anxiety may develop into a panic attack where I would need to go to the hospital. Highlighting this unfortunate reality, when I once took a high dose of psychedelic mushrooms, I started to hear the internalized voice that was worrying about my health as my mother’s, giving me my first glimpse that this wounded, traumatic, obsessive thought process did not stem from me. After this transcendental experience, I still hear those thoughts in her voice, which helps me in separating them from myself.
In addition to transferred anxieties, we also inherit the self-esteem of our parents. For instance, if your mother always felt like she needed to look beautiful to feel worthy, she can transfer that to her child in the form of shaming them for looking otherwise, making her child feel the same way as her in the process. To pull the curtain off these personal insecurities that have been plaguing your life, pay close attention to how they may stem from the inherited pain of your parents. Deep in my soul, I know that our deepest insecurities stem from us not feeling like a part of ourselves was enough for our parents to love. But going deeper, it’s actually a transferred state of a parent not being able to love that side of themselves that then gets projected onto the child. The final section of this article will go deep into how to actually heal from these inherited traumas, but for now, you must realize the luminous power of awareness, which is always the first step to healing.
By coming to terms with the fact that these painful sides of ourselves do not even stem from us, but rather from the unhealed parts of generations of our family, it’s easier to start working through them. Just like it's better to heal the root cause of an illness instead of putting on a band-aid, in terms of doing the inner work, it’s always better to find where the mental pain originally stems from to heal it in totality. In more technical terms, rather than getting mad at ourselves for possessing a specific, toxic thought pattern and working from that place, it tends to be a deeper, more compassionate and healing process to identify the familial origin of that pain and direct our attention and energy there. In terms of my own process, having spent multiple failed years getting mad at myself for possessing constant hypochondriac thoughts and attempting to block them, the healing only began when I identified where they stemmed from, which allowed me to become more compassionate towards myself, shifting my energy from a dark, angry one to a more light, loving one.
Although understanding how generational trauma affects our relationship to self is fascinating, coming to terms with how it affects our romantic relationships is even more mind-blowing.
ROMANCE
Psychologist legend, Carl Jung, came up with a theory surrounding the repressed trauma we obtained from the relationship with our parents. The unconscious wounding representing our relationship with our mother is referred to as the “anima” and the one with our father is called the “animus.” In terms of how this affects romantic relationships, all the repressed pain from either parental relationship gets projected onto our lover of the same sex. For instance, if I was constantly terrified that my mother would abandon me as a kid, then I would irrationally project that fear onto my girlfriend in the present moment. This reality reveals how the pain we inherit from our parents shows up in our love lives until we heal it. Put differently, the relationship we had with our parents growing up will dictate the trajectory of all of our romantic relationships if left unchecked. That’s a pretty crazy thing that too many of us do not think about. And it reveals the dangerous grip generational trauma holds over us: that we cannot even open our hearts to someone without also opening the gaping wounds we suffered as children. However, since it is inevitable that we have to come to terms with this pain to start a clean slate for ourselves, falling in love does the best job in presenting the issues right in our faces for us to heal. And it also points out the wounds that go the deepest. Funnily enough, due to the generational trauma, chances are that your parents also have similar animas/animus, and their parents probably did too. Thus, by diving deep into healing your own anima/animus, you are also healing the ones of your parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, etc., which is no easy feat at all. But God chose you to break the curse out of all of those people for a reason—because you are the only one they believed had the strength and awareness to do so.
Another way in which generational pain works its way into our present relationships is through our unconscious acceptance of our parents’ relationship as the norm, and unconsciously projecting that into our current romantic circumstance. Let’s say your mother and father had a relationship that was similar to a father/daughter, where the father would call the shots and the mother would follow suit blindly. This pattern reflects most conservative households, where the father always had the final say. As a kid, if you observed this and accepted this as the norm, then in your relationships, you may project this ideal onto them. If you were a son in a household like this, you may feel inclined to attract a woman who feels more like a daughter than a wife, and treat her like an unequal. And if you were a daughter in the household, you may find yourself attracting a man who treats you the same way your father treated your mother. Thus, without our awareness, we can end up in the same exact relationship our parents had, with all the same traumatic patterns that came with it. We must break these patterns to have a chance of experiencing a life of true freedom, where we can feel what it's like to live from a clean slate and taste the drama-free sweetness that comes with that.
Along with affecting our romantic lives, generational trauma also seeps into our relationship with professional work.
DHARMA
The word “dharma” translates to our life’s calling, where our ego and spirit are in divine union. I believe that our sole purpose in life is to find this unique calling that each of us possesses and live through that. Furthermore, I also know that a lot of depression and anxiety stem from an inability to do so—since deep internal pain is caused by playing a role of who we think society wants us to be versus who we need to be for ourselves. Because of this, the minute we step into our true essence and away from a projected image is the minute that life opens doors for us. Yes, the brainwashing of society and the matrix of corporate America do play a role in not allowing us to discover our dharma, but the main culprit is what you may expect by now: generational trauma. Since we learn to love ourselves the way our parents loved us, the manner in which we perceive our life’s calling often becomes an unconscious vehicle for us to receive our parents' love. Think about those days where you got an A on a test as a kid, and you ran home with a big smile on your face, hoping to be smothered with love from your parents. This increase in love then made you believe that you are only worthy of a high level of love if you get a certain grade. Obviously, this is a pretty trivial example, but I hope you get the point. Whatever act of doing that you felt like you could get the most love from your parents for is what tends to become one’s life calling. However, this process does not stem from one’s essence, but rather what they can do to receive love.
Beyond one’s profession being caused by a specific receival of love for doing, receiving love for a specific state of being is also a big culprit. Consider a child who is often ignored by their parents, and through this constant negligence becomes incredibly loud and dramatic, forcing their parents to give them attention and care. This child then grows up with the notion that they can only receive love if they are loud and dramatic, not if they are quiet and peaceful. The child then grows up to be an actress, either on stage or in front of the camera, as it fulfills this innate notion that they are only worthy of love if they put on a show. I know many people that fall under this criteria. And although they are greatly talented, every single one of them lives in a state of internal chaos. This inner mess is due to the fact that everything they do is to receive love from the external, leaving the love they need to have for themselves dragging in the wind. If we allow our professional calling to stem from a place of needing a specific form of love from our parents, then we will be left empty at the end of every day. One must find a calling that allows them to fall in love with themselves over and over again, without the need for external validation, as this is the only way through to achieving a state of inner peace.
BREAKING THE CYCLE
Up to this point, I have broken down the three key avenues which generational trauma operates through: relationship to self, romance, and dharma. Now, I will dive into how we can actually go about healing from these painful roads. In terms of one’s relationship to self, awareness will always be the first step. And in this case, awareness consists of tracing back what pain-inducing thought patterns of yours stem from your parents. To find the most charged ones, take your biggest insecurities and figure out how your parents’ treatment of you may have caused them. Instead of leaving it with awareness, in the sense of figuring out where it stems from, this is where the journey goes deeper: become the pain that you could not bare feeling as a child. A lot of the time, feeling shame as a kid was so damn heavy that we escaped to our intellects as a way to reduce the somatic damage. Thus, instead of feeling the deep betrayal and heartache stemming from our parents’ treatment of us, we developed thought patterns that made us feel responsible for the way they labeled us. For instance, if your parents would call you a failure, instead of seeing how it would actually be a projection of them seeing themselves as a failure, you refuse to feel the pain caused by that betrayal and start to call yourself a failure—to keep your parents in a positive light and take responsibility. I am asking you now to honor the betrayal and honor how fucking painful it was to be ridiculed by the people you loved most in the world. Feel as much as you possibly can and continue to do so until the insecure thoughts that stem from them do not hold as much of a negative charge. Going deeper, once you remove the somatic charge from the thoughts and you can disidentify from them, whenever the thoughts reappear, take them as a reminder to replace them with self-affirming, loving thoughts. This is how we rewrite the mental script of generational trauma.
Next, for how to heal from the generational impact on our romantic lives, awareness is also the first step here. As hinted towards in the romance section of the article, the power here lies in becoming aware of the anima/animus inside you. If you have not become familiar with the repressed pain from your mother and father in your psyche, it will get projected onto your romantic partner. Often, relationships make the unconscious pain conscious, meaning that we can actually use the triggers in relationships as reminders of what we must heal from the past to love from a clean slate. In terms of dealing with the trigger, become the moment that caused it. Let’s say you get triggered by your partner not answering their phone for a long time. To heal this, become the time when you were a child and you had no idea when your mother/father was coming home, and you could not bear to feel all that pain. Now, since you are an adult, you can hold space for that inner child to express their pain without any judgment. Tolerating this pain as your adult self, while separating yourself from the actual events in the present moment that triggered it, is the best way through. The journey does not stop here, as you have to learn how to communicate your internal process to your partner without making them feel responsible. The best way to go about this is to get vulnerable and explain how the trigger brought about a feeling from the past, but you must make sure to own it as yours and not make them feel responsible for causing you pain. All they can do is hold your hand while you learn how to heal yourself. Finally, for the last step of this process, outside of the anima/animus, it’s important to become aware of all the negative sides of your parents’ relationship, because if they are left unconscious, they will reappear in your own relationship and cause the same troubles your parents had. I do acknowledge that it’s hard to put our parents in a negative light, but the shadow is part of them just like it is for us, and the more we ignore it, the more the darkness will cover the light. To become as aware as you possibly can, write out all the negative things about your parents’ relationship in detail, and watch your own relationship with a hawk’s eye so you do not repeat them. Unfortunately, this level of brutal honesty is what it takes to break through generational trauma. There is no cookie-cutter way through this mess.
To end things off, consider how to shake off the generational trauma when it comes to walking the frightening, yet deeply rewarding path of finding our life’s calling—our dharma. As explained in the corresponding section of this article, when it comes to our profession, we often tend to be driven by our unconscious need to receive our parents' approval. So, if our father showed us the most love when we did well at math, then we may desire to be a banker. Along with requiring our parent’s approval, we also learned to only love ourselves if we were doing the thing that our parents loved us for, creating the painful need to be doing something to feel worthy of internal and external love. Because of this painful reality, to truly find our gift, we must first cut out the need for our parents’ approval, as well as learn to love ourselves for simply existing. Once we do not look to our parents to receive conditional love, but rather ourselves for unconditional affection, we will gradually learn to love ourselves unconditionally, allowing us to find a profession that aligns with our unbiased heart. Although it’s important to cut out your unconscious need to get your parents’ love, their conditional love for you surprisingly created a deep gift amidst all the dark pain. For example, even though I do not do the same things I used to do in order to receive my father’s love, I still carry inside me the ability to work incredibly hard for a goal. That is the gift my father gave me. Without the need for his approval, all that is left in me is someone who will go pedal to the floor to see their dreams come to fruition. Once you discover the treasure amidst the threatening dragon guarding it, your mission will light up in front of your eyes. This truth highlights the driving force behind shadow work: finding the gift in the shadow that will feed your light.
