Healing Intergenerational Trauma

Intergenerational trauma occurs much more often than what we actually think.

This is the kind of trauma that passes down from generation to generation. It takes place when a parent who experienced any form or kind of trauma in their life that remains unhealed passes the trauma, usually unconsciously, to their children.

In this way the specific trauma forms a cycle that not only can impact the parenting style of this person, but it also allows the trauma to pass down to the next generations, while imprinting their lives with emotions, behavior, patterns and even physical disease related to this inherited trauma.

The nature of intergenerational trauma is such that continues to impact populations for generations after a collective traumatic event has occurred. A collective traumatic event can have a deeply negative effect and he wounding itself can pass to many generations. This is the experience of war as it holds within its complex and deep-routed emotional, mental and physical conditions created from facing fear, death, adverse conditions, suffering, starvation, poverty, loss, grief and more.

When intergenerational trauma is inherited and it passes down generation after generation, can cause unexplained emotions, phobias, fears, insecurities, disturbing patterns and deeply-rooted beliefs that play a negative role in the life of the person.

Trauma-responses come to the surface when the person who inherited the trauma is triggered from an internal or an external stimuli ,resulting to specific reactions, mental patterns, disturbing behavior, coping mechanisms and even substance abuse. All the above take place as unconscious strategies that help the person to coop with the trigger and therefore the unfelt pain behind it.

Intergenerational trauma can be healed when one is truly ready to accept and acknowledge the trauma and allow oneself to go though the healing process by feeling it fully. If the healing process is undone or incomplete then the trauma continues to pass down to future generations. If this trauma is felt and therefore healed it can truly transform the life of the person and their children after them.

Going through the healing process of intergenerational trauma is a complex yet simple approach. The cycle-breaker of this trauma needs to build the safety that will allow their felt sense to feel the pain in order to build a stronger capacity of their nervous system and eventually close the circle. In order to be able to feel all the intense and difficult emotions of the trauma, which were not felt before by the people who carried down the trauma, the cycle breaker needs to be able to experience all that but only when they have the capacity and when they are ready.

An example would be the experience of war, where PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) is developed and then the next generations carry the symptoms of fear, anxiety and unexplained phobias to name a few. If the person who chooses to break the cycle of trauma decides to allow the physical sensations and emotions related to the experience of war to be felt while cultivating a more expansive capacity and resilience of their nervous system, will eventually succeed in integrating the experience and eventually heal the trauma.

Healing trauma of one's lineage is a gift for the whole ancestral line. This will bring transformation not only for the self, but for the generations to come.

If you feel you are holding and carrying intergenerational trauma please know that is possible to heal not only yourself but your whole lineage.

Thank you for reading,

and remember that everything you seek is already within you.

Heart to Heart,

Christina

  © Christina Georgiou