Understanding intergenerational trauma
Anyone who has been on the internet for more than five minutes in the last few years has probably seen “intergenerational trauma” or “generational trauma” popping up in videos on every social media platform. While some of these may be trite or generic, many of them are helping to spread community awareness of the phenomenon, which is good news for people who may sometimes find themselves parenting in ways that remind themselves of their own parents, and not always in the way they want.
What is intergenerational trauma or generational trauma?
In simplest terms it is the after effects of an experienced trauma that filter down through generations of families. That ‘trauma’ is broad and far reaching. It could be a singular traumatic event or multiple traumatic events. It could be chronic maltreatment; pervasive poverty that prevents stability or access to basic needs; abuse; neglect; institutional and systemic racism; slavery; historical or ongoing genocide; apartheid, occupation, and more, (DeAngelis, 2019). We can view this in terms of trauma’s effects on the individual family over generations and we can view it as a collective trauma that is held within communities. For many individuals, it is necessary to view the effects of trauma through both lenses. 
The effects of generational cycles of trauma on both the individual and community level may manifest as physical, mental, spiritual, and/or emotional: including high cortisol levels, high blood pressure, lower stress thresholds, higher susceptibility to substance use and abuse, mental and physical illness or disease, lower life span, etc. The effects can then easily snowball and cause issues in other areas of an individual’s life, and within a community through the loss of income, inability to access or maintain education, jobs, let alone hopes and dreams.
One of the more insidious effects of generational patterns of trauma is the way it shapes an individual or community’s beliefs about themselves, their lives, their worth, the world, and the people around them, and how this bleeds into what they teach their children, how they treat their children (“toxic behaviors”), and what their children learn through observation in these environments.
How does Generational Trauma Manifest in Families?
From here, the impact of intergenerational trauma starts to become more clear. I am going to give a few examples of this manifestation, using a more severe example and a more subtle example, as well as an example of community generational trauma.
Scenario 1:
For our more severe version, let’s say that an individual grew up within a family system that was not emotionally supportive, put high demands on children to ignore feelings and not ask for help, and severely punished children for speaking out, ‘being weak’, or not following rules. Let us say that the individual’s father also struggled with alcohol addiction, and was physical with his children regularly. It is likely that the father is not the first in his family to struggle with alcoholism and pushing down feelings. He may have learned that behavior from his own parents, and they from their parents. Our individual may have grown up being told to push down their feelings, or that their feelings were ‘too much’. They may now hold beliefs that they are ‘bad’, or unworthy of love and affection. They might develop an anger problem that manifests in physical abuse of their own spouse and children, or getting into physical altercations with others. All of these individuals in this family have now been exposed to further trauma and abuse, continuing a cycle of abuse, and patterns of behavior. As a result they may develop higher blood pressure, be quick to anger, or quickly overwhelmed and stressed out. They are more likely to develop mental illness and carry forward some of what they have learned into their adulthoods.
Scenario 2:
This one is a little more subtle. Here we have a parent who grew up in a home where one of their own parents ‘always got upset over every little thing’, and would scream at and berate their kids anytime they broke or spilled something. Now as an adult, they feel sudden and overwhelming panic and distress when their own child accidentally breaks or spills something, because they were conditioned to associate that action with a sense of dread and panic. Their own parent’s trauma (which likely was passed down from previous generations) has bled
another generation, and they are perpetuating the cycle. This parent may not scream at or berate their child, but they might find themselves raising their voice, having a hard time letting go of things, engaging in toxic patterns and feeling immense guilt over their actions.
Scenario 3.
This scenario refers to an indigenous community that has continuously suffered ongoing genocide and occupation via calculated government acts from forced relocations; denial of nutritious food; forced and nonconsensual sterilization of women, abduction and often, murder of children sent to religious boarding schools from the 1880s-mid 1990s, as well as disproportionate removal of children from indigenous homes, (Leason, 2021). These communities now face widespread poor physical and mental health, higher rates of suicide and homicide, systemic lack of education, jobs, and resources, (OMH, 2025).
There are so many other examples: an anxious adult who grew up in poverty and as a parent, engages with their child/teen only to discuss jobs, money, security, and responsibility, while ignoring aspects of affection, curiosity, warmth, and trust.
The parent who grew up during the Great Depression, hoards food and homegoods, and their grown up child struggles to ‘let go of things’. The family patterns that are created by intergenerational transmission are endless.
The Impact of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACES).
Some of the ways trauma trickles down through the generations is through the inadvertent formation of an environment in which a child is more likely to experience Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACES). It is crucial to note that it is not true that traumatized adults will necessarily create these environments. It is not true that traumatized adults intentionally create these environments. It is true that they are more likely to, given the aforementioned effects of generational trauma. For example, a parent with generational trauma is more likely to struggle with addiction, may experience incarceration, early death, and domestic violence. The Center for Disease Control lists these and the following experiences as ACES, and also acknowledges that this is not an exhaustive list, (CDC 2024):
- Experiencing violence, abuse, or neglect
- Witnessing violence in the home or community
- Having a family member attempt or die by suicide
- Living in a household with: substance use/abuse, mental health problems, instability due to parental separation or family members being incarcerated (negative cycles).
- Death of parent or immediate family member
- Houselessness, poverty, food insecurity
An important piece of information is that ACES can arise as a result of generational cycles of trauma, but they can also be a cause of trauma that then develops into generational cycles of trauma. For some families it may be that the initial cause of their generational trauma is due to ancestors experiencing ACES.
Breaking the Cycle: Baby Steps
If you have gotten this far you are probably recognizing patterns in your own family of origin that fit the cycle of generational trauma. So now what? What do you do with this information?
First, and this is just from me to you, take a couple deep breaths. Realizing you are one part of a complex trauma cycle that spans generations is A LOT. You are probably sitting back and rethinking family dynamics and patterns, and seeing your history and life in a new light. This process is hard. Being a “Cycle Breaker” is exhausting. It will make you want to scream and cry and bury yourself under your covers for a week. Or two. You may be making some connections just from reading this blog, or you may have started making these connections in your own individual therapy. Here’s the good news: you have done the hardest part already. You were able to use self awareness to pull yourself out of your own narrative long enough to actually look at the dang thing. You were able to stop and think “Wait a minute, I just reacted in the same way my mom reacted to me when I was a kid. I wonder why that is?” All the skills and tools you might learn in order to break the cycle don’t mean a thing if you can’t yet pull yourself back enough to recognize that you are IN the cycle.
Part two of this topic will explore strategies for actually breaking the cycle and working to actively be a Cycle Breaker. I am very deliberately putting those strategies in part two because you as an individual, as a parent, as a human, need time to practice just getting used to the feeling of recognizing where you are in the cycle. As I tell my clients, “baby steps”, ‘walk before you run”, etc, etc.
Here is what I want you to practice before we work on tackling the actual cycle/becoming a Cycle Breaker:
- Notice when you recognize those moments you are playing into a pattern. Notice how your chest and breath feel, how your gut feels, how your head feels. Because this is a conditioned response, your body is probably responding before your mind is. Typical sensations include: tightness in the chest, dysregulated breathing (either shallow or fast breathing), elevated heart rate, feeling hot or cold, clenching your abs, feeling like your gut is twisted up, sweaty palms etc. NOTICE IT.
- Take some deep, slow breaths. Remind yourself that you are safe, and okay. Be very gentle and compassionate with yourself here. I mean it.
- Once you are feeling more regulated, ask yourself to label the emotions you were feeling in that moment: were you feeling sad, scared, angry? Validate your feelings. Tell yourself it is ok to have those feelings. Journal about it, write it down. Start looking for patterns. Write down what led you to start playing into the pattern.
That’s it. That’s all I want you to do for now.
You may be thinking, but Sam, this is only three steps, I am not going to get anywhere with these three steps.
It does look simple, doesn’t it?
It’s not.
It will likely take you months to do these three steps. You are going to do really well for a while, and then you’ll get a surprise phone call from an abusive relative that sends you into a spiral and you backslide into old habits. You’ll feel like trash and think that it’s all been a waste of time and you will never get better. And then you will surprise yourself by catching yourself in the moment, and being able to label your feelings, and being able to calm down, and you’ll realize that cycle breaking not linear work, but you are making progress.
If I gave you step 7 and 8 right away you wouldn’t know what to do with it. You would try and likely fail because when we build a house, we start with the foundation. If I said “here, have windows”, you would have no framework to use them, no flooring on which to stand to install them (and no walls). You have to be able to see the path you are on, in order to choose to take a different one. (I pride myself on being good with metaphors).
Be gentle. Give yourself grace. You’ve got this. Part two of this blog coming soon!
Blog written by Sentier therapist, Sam Herdman, MCOUN, LPC
References
Center for Disease Control, (2024). “Adverse Childhood Experiences”. Retrieved from https://www.cdc.gov/aces/about/index.html
DeAngelis, Tory, (2019). “The Legacy of Trauma”, American Psychological Association, Vol. 50.2 https://www.apa.org/monitor/2019/02/legacy-trauma
Leason, Jennifer, (2021). “Forced and Coerced Sterilisation of Indigenous Women”, Can Fam Physician 67. 7. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8279667/
US Dept. of Health and Human Service, Office of Minority Health, (2025). “Mental and Behavioral Health: American Indians and Alaskan Natives. Retrieved from https://minorityhealth.hhs.gov/mental-and-behavioral-health-american-indiansalaska-natives
Ullah, et all, (2023). “Intergenerational trauma: A silent contributor to mental health deterioration in Afghanistan”, Brain and Behavior, Vol. 13.4 https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10097044/
