Hav­ing ex­plored many facets of trau­ma over the past weeks in as­sess­ing the preva­lence of trau­ma in our so­ci­ety, one must con­sid­er that some trau­mas ex­ist in pat­terns that are re­peat­ed.

What has hap­pened to us is not on­ly about our in­di­vid­ual ex­pe­ri­ences or com­mu­nal in­frac­tions, be­cause trau­ma of­ten can ex­tend in­to our lives even when we are not the one who ex­pe­ri­enced the orig­i­nal trau­mat­ic event.

The ef­fects of trau­ma can be trans­mit­ted in­ter­gen­er­a­tional­ly through be­lief sys­tems, parental prac­tices and emo­tion­al re­spons­es. The trau­ma that an adult car­ries can teach a child how to view safe­ty, trust, her­self/him­self, and the world around her/him.

The lit­er­a­ture on ad­verse child­hood ex­pe­ri­ences (ACEs) and in­ter­gen­er­a­tional trau­ma, al­so called trans­gen­er­a­tional trau­ma, ad­dress­es how un­re­solved trau­ma may in­flu­ence sub­se­quent gen­er­a­tions.

“In­her­it­ed” trau­ma be­comes in­grained in chil­dren as they ob­serve their par­ents’ or care­givers’ lev­els of fear, hy­per­vig­i­lance, dis­trust or shame.

Un­re­solved grief, es­pe­cial­ly where fam­i­lies se­cret dra­mas in si­lence, may cause chil­dren to ab­sorb the dis­tress that comes with the se­cret­ing of fam­i­ly im­broglios.

In­ter­ven­tion:

• With­out blam­ing the gen­er­a­tions be­fore, de­cide that trau­ma pat­terns may have been passed on to me, but it can al­so stop with me.

• Cre­ate new fam­i­ly nar­ra­tives around safe­ty, open­ness, com­pas­sion and help-seek­ing.

• De­vel­op emo­tion­al aware­ness and health­i­er ways of ex­press­ing dis­tress and seek sup­port where trau­ma is af­fect­ing re­la­tion­ships or func­tion­ing.

Much of what chil­dren learn about man­ag­ing their emo­tions, con­flict and re­la­tion­ships, they learn from adults, and even where par­ent­ing does not have harm­ful pat­terns, trau­ma may be trans­mit­ted.

If a par­ent lived with se­vere or de­bil­i­tat­ing crit­i­cism or harsh dis­ci­pline, these be­hav­iours may un­con­scious­ly be re­pro­duced, or a par­ent may go to the ex­treme op­po­site to cor­rect the pat­tern and cause a dif­fer­ent type of in­jury.

The pat­tern con­tin­ues where we par­ent as we were par­ent­ed, with­out con­sid­er­a­tion of the in­frac­tions on our lives and the trans­fer­al of the trau­ma to our chil­dren as par­ents re­spond to chil­dren from un­re­solved wounds. Of­ten, the hurt a par­ent car­ries sur­faces as anger.

In­ter­ven­tion:

• See your child’s worth be­fore their be­hav­iour and teach emo­tion­al reg­u­la­tion, first by your ex­am­ple.

• Pause be­fore re­act­ing. Ask, “What is it my child needs in this mo­ment, and is my re­ac­tion based on my child’s need or my trau­ma his­to­ry?”

• Teach chil­dren that emo­tions are ac­cept­able and re­place pun­ish­ment, shame and guilt by teach­ing bound­aries and ac­count­abil­i­ty.

Trau­ma dis­rupts our abil­i­ty to trust, com­mu­ni­cate, reg­u­late emo­tions and feel safe in re­la­tion­ships. When par­ents and care­givers have un­re­solved trau­ma, sur­vival strate­gies from their past are con­stant­ly re­ac­ti­vat­ed and un­in­ten­tion­al­ly passed on.

With­out a de­lib­er­ate ef­fort to break pat­terns, some­one who has ex­pe­ri­enced vi­o­lence, for ex­am­ple, may use ag­gres­sion as a re­sponse to any­thing that ap­pears as a threat. If a child suf­fers aban­don­ment, then as an adult they learn to in­ter­pret most ad­verse re­spons­es as re­jec­tion, then si­lence, with­draw­al, or emo­tion­al un­avail­abil­i­ty be­comes the bro­ken re­sponse to con­flict.

To change the cy­cle, par­ents or care­givers can de­cide that their re­la­tion­ship with the child would be a heal­ing ex­pe­ri­ence rather than a con­duit to trans­fer/trans­mit trau­ma.

In­ter­ven­tion:

• Prac­tise heal­ing by ac­knowl­edg­ing harm, tak­ing re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, lis­ten­ing to your in­ner voice and chang­ing your be­hav­iour.

• Recog­nise your trig­gers to lim­it re­ac­tions to them and over­re­ac­tions to your child or oth­er re­la­tion­ships.

• Es­tab­lish clear bound­aries about vi­o­lence, dis­re­spect and ma­nip­u­la­tion.

• Be con­sis­tent and learn to be­come emo­tion­al­ly avail­able. Learn to com­mu­ni­cate your feel­ings in­stead of ex­pect­ing oth­ers to fig­ure out what you need or are ex­pe­ri­enc­ing.

Trau­ma cy­cles can be bro­ken when we con­scious­ly de­cide that “what hap­pened to me may ex­plain me, but it does not have to de­fine me.”

Cy­cle-break­ing

Cy­cle-break­ing is fo­cused on heal­ing and be­gins with the aware­ness of the trau­ma; not sim­ply un­der­stand­ing what hap­pened but re­solv­ing to de­vel­op new ways of think­ing, re­lat­ing, reg­u­lat­ing emo­tions and re­spond­ing to oth­ers.

In­ter­ven­tion:

• Recog­nise what pat­terns I in­her­it­ed.

• Name what hap­pened to me and fig­ure out how it af­fects/af­fect­ed me.

• Un­der­stand what sur­vival re­sponse I de­vel­oped and the dan­gers it pos­es.

• Choose what I want to do dif­fer­ent­ly.

• Re­pair the wounds which I have in­flict­ed on oth­ers, for­giv­ing my­self first and ask­ing for their for­give­ness (do not be hung up if oth­ers are not for­giv­ing; peo­ple need to work through their own trau­ma).

• Prac­tise health­i­er, whole­some re­spons­es. Learn pat­terns that break im­pul­sive re­ac­tions and em­brace self-reg­u­la­tion.

• Re­peat new, health­i­er heal­ing pat­terns with con­sis­tent prac­tice.

Trau­ma may be in­her­it­ed, but heal­ing can be­come a bet­ter, more fruit­ful in­her­i­tance. In my life, I have de­ter­mined that I want a bet­ter emo­tion­al lega­cy than the one I in­her­it­ed and prac­tised, which has in­flict­ed hurt and trau­ma on oth­ers.

To­day, each of us can de­cide to break the trau­ma cy­cle say­ing, “I un­der­stand where this came from, and I am choos­ing some­thing dif­fer­ent.”

Fur­ther read­ing:

https://www.psy­chol­o­gy­to­day.com/us/blog/heal­ing-from-with­in/202203/in­ter­gen­er­a­tional-trau­ma-and-the-promise-of-heal­ing

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/ar­ti­cles/PMC6127768/