Intergenerational Trauma: What Is It and How Does It Affect Us?
Trauma is often understood as something that happens to an individual. However, its effects do not always end with the person who experienced it. Sometimes, the consequences of trauma can be carried across generations, influencing the emotional lives, relationships, beliefs, and behaviours of those who were not directly present when the original trauma occurred. This is known as intergenerational trauma.
Intergenerational trauma can occur when an individual or community experiences significant adversity, such as abuse, neglect, war, displacement, loss, discrimination, poverty, or other forms of prolonged suffering. The person who experiences the trauma may develop ways of coping that were necessary for their survival at the time. However, these adaptations can sometimes become part of family life and influence how subsequent generations understand themselves and the world around them.
For example, a parent who grew up in an environment where emotional expression was unsafe may learn to suppress their feelings. They may then struggle to respond emotionally to their own children, not because they do not love them, but because they never learned that emotional openness was safe. Their child may consequently grow up learning that emotions should be hidden or that vulnerability is something to be avoided. In this way, the effects of trauma can become woven into family relationships without anyone consciously intending for this to happen.
Intergenerational trauma can affect people in many different ways. It may contribute to difficulties with emotional regulation, anxiety, depression, low self-worth, difficulties trusting others, fear of abandonment, or problems establishing healthy boundaries. It can also influence attachment and relationships, particularly where patterns of fear, avoidance, emotional distance, or conflict have become established within a family.
There can also be a profound effect on the way a person understands themselves. Messages passed down through generations can shape beliefs such as I am not safe, I must always be strong, I cannot rely on other people, or my needs do not matter. These beliefs may feel deeply personal, yet they can sometimes have their roots in experiences that occurred long before the individual was born.
It is important, however, not to understand intergenerational trauma as an inevitable inheritance. Families can also pass down resilience, compassion, wisdom, and healthy ways of coping. Recognising a pattern does not mean blaming previous generations. Often, those who passed these patterns on were themselves responding to circumstances they did not choose and had never been given the opportunity to understand.
Therapy can provide an opportunity to explore these patterns with curiosity rather than judgment. By understanding where certain beliefs, behaviours, and emotional responses may have originated, a person can begin to distinguish between what belongs to their own present life and what may have been carried forward from the past.
Breaking an intergenerational pattern does not require rejecting one's family or history. Sometimes it simply means becoming aware of what has been carried, deciding what is still useful, and allowing what is no longer needed to finally be put down.
In this sense, healing can become more than an individual process. It can be an opportunity to change the story that is carried forward, so that future generations inherit not only the wounds of those who came before them, but also the healing.
