Generational trauma can be passed down from generation to generation in many different ways. One is through children being exposed to adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). ACEs are fairly common in people with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, anxiety, and even suicide.
According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), 1 in 6 adults has experienced at least four ACEs in their lifetime. ACEs can include having parents with a substance use disorder or a mental health issue, undergoing an early death of a loved one, being in a house fire or car wreck, or being exposed to abuse or neglect.
Some ACEs are not preventable, no matter how hard parents try to shield their children—life can happen.
However, many ACEs could be prevented if adults were more careful about what they allowed their children to be exposed to. Often, generational trauma or intergenerational trauma can be exposed in the environment that the child is growing up in. However, this is not always the case. Some generational traumas or curses seem to be just passed down through the epigenetics of the bloodline.
This article will cover generational trauma and mental health more in-depth, look at some examples of generational trauma, offer some ways to reduce the likelihood of children being exposed, and explain how you can break free from generational trauma as an adult and help to prevent the rest of your lineage from suffering the same fate as you did.
What Is Generational Trauma?
Intergenerational trauma, or generational family trauma, is trauma and stress that get passed down from parents and grandparents to the children. What once was dismissed is now being proven more in the scientific world. The spiritual community has always known about generational trauma cycles being passed down. Many of the ancient texts mention generational trauma being passed down to offspring.
It doesn’t have to be a Big T trauma to cause changes in DNA and be passed down, either. Little T traumas, especially in childhood, can still result in changes that are passed down. Inherited trauma doesn’t always show up the same in each person either.
While your grandma may have anxiety about water because an ancestor drowned, you may carry the traumatic experience in your body in a different way. For example, you may have developed a substance use disorder (SUD).
So, the trauma was still passed down to you. Still, instead of having the same fears, your generational trauma expressed itself as an addiction.
Intergenerational trauma can be psychological as well. So, let’s say that your parents had a violent and toxic relationship with each other. So, you grew up in chaos and never knew what it would be like when you arrived home from school or from a friend’s house.
So now, as an adult, you find yourself attracting the same type of relationships that you grew up being scared of. The psychological trauma that your parents had from being in a tumultuous relationship was passed down to you, and now you are unconsciously attracting the same toxic relationships into your life until you heal the trauma.
Once you heal the trauma, you can begin to attract a much healthier type of relationship.
Trauma gets passed down through generations through the environment and genetics, which we’ll dive into here in just a bit. First, let’s look at some of the symptoms of generational trauma.
What Are the Symptoms of Generational Trauma?
Generational trauma can show up in many ways. Sometimes, the trauma can even be stored in the body somewhere and make its face known as a form of dis-ease.
Dis-ease is not a disease in the medical sense of the term. Instead, it is a “lack of ease or pain” in the body. But some of the common symptoms of generational trauma include the following:
- Depression
- Anxiety
- Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
- Codependency and trauma bonds
- Toxic parenting styles
- Domestic violent relationships
- Substance Use Disorder (SUD)
- Unexplainable fears
- Difficulty sleeping
- Intense dreams about a disaster
- Lack mentality
- Difficulty with money
- Mindset distortion
- Anger
- Cynicism
- Self-worth issues
- Avoiding relationships/full-on Hermit Mode (more than a healthy amount)
- Personality disorders, especially Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD)
- Unexplainable pain or headaches (not medically related; always check with medical professionals first)
- Food issues, overeating, or starving yourself
- Hoarding or the opposite (tossing away everything)
- Having a hard time trusting people
This list is not exhaustive by any means because everyone is different, and trauma will show up uniquely to each individual.
Generational Trauma and Epigenetics
There’s science behind intergenerational trauma effects being passed down to children.
In 2015, a study was done on Holocaust survivors and their children. The study found that the Holocaust survivors had a specific gene allele that their offspring also had. This gene, FKBP5, was associated with parental trauma and the child’s trauma.
This gene is associated with a vulnerability to developing psychological issues and post-traumatic events. The gene was also responsible for elevated cortisol, the stress hormone, in both parents and children.
Interestingly, the parent wasn’t exposed to the trauma while pregnant. It was before conception, which means that the parent’s trauma effectively was coded into their genes and then passed down to their children.
A study the following year in which the same author cited more than just epigenetics passed down but physical, behavioral, cognitive, psychological, and other biological markers, including neuroendocrine and neuroanatomical. Neuroendocrine means the central nervous system and hormones working together, and neuroanatomical is the relationship between the anatomy of the structures located in the central nervous system.
It turns out that various generational effects get passed down besides epigenetics. All the inherited effects were in response to the parent’s exposure to stress and trauma.
Historical Generational Trauma
Historical generational trauma and DNA can be passed down to offspring. Many studies have found that in certain areas where trauma affects the whole city or village, the children of the survivors show some of the same features that were inherited from the parents who lived through the trauma.
A review of indigenous people and intergenerational trauma being passed down led to the cause of obesity in four different studies. Epigenetic changes that led to obesity were also noted.
But the studies also revealed that it wasn’t simply genetics, but behavioral pathways were also at play.
Traumatic stress was passed down through behavior during the 1932–1933 Holodomor genocide of Ukrainians. The survivor’s children and grandchildren have trauma-influenced coping styles when it comes to food. Overeating and stockpiling food were present in both generations that came after the original trauma survivors.
Generational PTSD and Trauma
Another study found that mothers who had PTSD and were pregnant with their children had 2.5-fold, or 250%, more than unexposed children. The study cites that more work is needed to determine if generational PTSD was transmitted to the child, but the high cortisol stress hormone levels are a good indicator that it very well could have. Either way, the mother’s trauma definitely impacted the child.
Transgenerational Trauma
A longitudinal study that focused on transgenerational trauma and mice went all the way to the 4th generation. The study found that depressive-like symptoms were transmitted to at least the 3rd generation. Risk-taking behaviors were transmitted through all until the 4th generation. Mice that were exposed to early trauma and their offspring had :
- More risk-taking behaviors
- Depressive-like symptoms
- Difficulty with social recognition memory
- Memory loss
- Difficulty controlling insulin and glucose levels
On a positive note, some of the mice had improved stress resilience.
Interestingly, some of these symptoms, like risk-taking, are similar to borderline personality disorder (BPD), which has been linked in humans to ACES.
So, we know that BPD tends to run in families, but as far as I know, there’s not much of a genetic link that’s really been narrowed down. So, it’s quite possible that BPD is an inherited trauma response or stems from a trauma response.
Let’s move on to discuss some examples of generational trauma.
Is Generational Trauma Always Passed Down?
Generational trauma can affect multiple generations of a particular bloodline.
Generational curses like addiction, domestic violence, abuse or neglect, parents fighting all the time, “lack” issues, money problems, or unresolved trauma can lead to generational trauma. So, if you grew up in a household with a parent who had a substance use disorder, you could have generational trauma.
But it doesn’t always have to be so. So, let’s take the movie “Finding Nemo” as an example. Marlin, Nemo’s father, lost his wife and all his babies, except for Nemo. His trauma response was so severe that he developed an extreme case of agoraphobia. So, in essence, Marlin’s anxiety and fear were so intense that he felt like he or Nemo could die at any moment. He was basically afraid of leaving the house because it was too dangerous.
However, both films show that Nemo doesn’t suffer the same fate. In fact, it annoys him that his father is like that, but he loves him anyway and helps Marlin learn to overcome some of his fears and anxieties.
So, you see, you are not cursed with ancestral trauma forever. You can work through it, and you can release it. Maybe you can even help your family members by suggesting that they seek help to overcome their trauma, too.
Ways To Heal Generational Trauma
The good news is that if you heal the generational trauma that you are carrying around, then you can move on from it! You can also help your children because, when you overcome your trauma, you’ll show up differently for your kids and be able to teach them coping skills early on.
Trauma can be healed through therapy or coaching. When you see a professional who is well-versed in generational trauma and the impact that it can have on whole bloodlines, then they can hold the space that you need to be able to move on from it.
A therapist or a coach can also provide you with tools that you can use to face your issues head-on. Some tips for working on generational trauma on your own include:
- Practicing self-care
- Meditation
- Visualization
- Journaling
- Art or music therapy
- Exercise
- Yoga or Qi Jong
- Reading and learning more about generational trauma
You Can Overcome Generational Trauma
Generational trauma can show up in your life in many ways. If you want some additional help with breaking free from generational trauma, Unleash Your Healing Vibes can help.
I know all about generational trauma because I’ve risen up from the ashes of it myself. As I have lived with many of the ways that generational trauma can manifest, I have learned many tools that you can implement into your life so that you can break free and overcome it.
Reach out today if you are going through generational trauma or if you, have an addiction, or are stuck in codependency. Together, we can help you break the chains of generational trauma so that you can be better equipped to support the future generations of your family.