The Impact of Generational Trauma
Generational Trauma
“Trauma is in most cases multigenerational. The chain of transmission goes from parent to child, stretching from the past into the future. We pass on to our offspring what we haven’t resolved in ourselves.”
~ Gabor Mate, The Myth of Normal (2023, p. 34)
REMEMBER SAMANTHA?
Samantha struggled through much of her adult life in abusive relationships and was diagnosed with PTSD, as a result of the trauma she experienced. Unbeknownst to her, many of her challenges were rooted in her childhood trauma that led her to such dysfunctional relationships, as an adult. The trauma she experienced wasn’t any kind of overt abuse, but rather the unresolved trauma of her parents, which was caused by unresolved trauma in their parents. Samantha was parentified by her mother, because her mother didn’t have the emotional support and stability she needed growing up and wasn’t receiving that support from her husband. This was done unintentionally and without malice, but the damage was done, nonetheless.
"Parentification is often referred to as growing up too fast. Typically, it occurs when a child takes on parental responsibility for their siblings or even their parents, taking care of a sibling or parent physically, mentally, or emotionally. This can damage a child’s mental well-being and lead to long-term mental health conditions such as depression and anxiety.”
~ WebMD
MEET SAMANTHA’S MOM
Mabel is a baby boomer, born in 1954 to parents who had gone through the Great Depression and multiple world wars. Mabel did the best she could, but she was merely surviving, as were her parents. The most common spoken and unspoken mantra of her generation was to “pull yourself up by your bootstraps.” There were rarely recommendations for counseling or psychiatry and no one knew what mental health was, at that time. In fact, the first edition of the DSM (The Diagnostic & Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) wasn’t published until 1952. The field of psychology and psychiatry, as we know it today, was in its infancy. Treatments were often violent and came with negative outcomes. For example, Valium was first prescribed in 1963 and was quickly coined “mother’s little helper” and became one of the most prescribed meds of its time. Being in the family of benzodiazepenes, Valium is highly addictive and was misused and overused until the consequences were addressed and there were restrictions put into place in the 1980s.
THE BODY KEEPS THE SCORE
One of the challenges of early mental health treatment is that they often came with painful side effects or there was re-traumatization through ineffective talk therapy interventions. For example, Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT) was originally developed and used in patients with schizophrenia starting in the 1930s. The idea was to induce a seizure and in doing so, it would trigger a positive psychological response. In the beginning, the treatment was done without anesthesia and the patient’s experience was quite violent and came with considerable memory loss. It is now used more for treatment-resistant depression and patients with high levels of suicidal ideations and, according to the NIH (Tirmizi, et al, 2012), changes in how ECT is administered has significantly reduced negative side effects. Through better electrode placement, the use of anesthesia and muscle relaxants, and tailored dosage, the risk of mortality reduced from 0.1 to 0.002% and patients recover much faster with reduced memory loss. The early recipients of ECT were subjected to a traumatic treatment that could have been held in their bodies and increased their negative psychological symptoms. Along with those who were told to repeat their trauma stories over and over, again, through talk therapy, there were entire generations of folks who did not heal and may have gotten worse. Those born in the Greatest Generation (1901-1927) and the Silent Generation (1928-1945) suffered more with early psychological treatment and carried that trauma within their DNA and then passed it on to the next generations.
HOW THEN DO WE RESPOND?
For those born in Generation X or the Millennial eras, you may be asking how to respond to your parents and grandparents who carry with them an incredible trauma load. It is absolutely okay to recommend counseling and to set boundaries, as needed. Just because one knows why someone is acting the way they do doesn’t make it right. Tara Westover, author of Educated, talks with Kate Bowler on her podcast Everything Happens, and said that she believes her parents did their best, but their best wasn’t good enough for her.
“’You can love someone and still choose to say goodbye to them,’ she says now. ‘You can miss a person every day, and still be glad that they are no longer in your life.’”
Tara Westover, Educated
For many people, boundaries like those of Tara Westover, are essential to managing their own mental health. In fact, it’s imperative that adult children of abusive parents set boundaries to protect their psychological health. However, the response to their parents and any conversations surrounding healthy boundaries should be done with understanding and kindness. Gabor Mate, in his book The Myth of Normal, says that “Blame becomes a meaningless concept the moment one understands how suffering in a family system or even in a community extends back through the generations” (2022, p. 35). He goes on to quote the great John Bowlby, the originator of attachment theory:
“Recognition of this [trauma] quickly dispels any disposition to see the parent as villian” (2022, p. 35).
Becoming mired in bitterness, blame, and resentment toward a parent who suffered through trauma and violent trauma treatments before there was adequate research and more helpful therapeutic interventions is not the solution. They are simply a product of their generation and need to be viewed through a kinder lens. For some in those earlier generations, the thought of unpacking decades of trauma now is overwhelming and downright terrifying. They may be content to pull up their proverbial bootstraps or live in a world they created that feels safe. It may not make any sense to their children or grandchildren, but it’s how they survived and were productive for all those years. The best you can do is to set boundaries and seek out your own counseling through a treatment like EMDR or Internal Family Systems to work through the trauma passed on to you so that you break the cycle of generational trauma and respond differently to your own children.
DO YOU SEE YOURSELF IN SAMANTHA OR MABEL?
ARE YOU READY TO BREAK THE CYCLE OF GENERATIONAL TRAUMA?
Begin Adult Trauma Counseling in Columbus, Ohio. You don’t have have to suffer any longer.
ReferencesMate, Gabor & Mate, Daniel. (2022). The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness & Healing in a Toxic Culture. Avery: an imprint of Penguin Random House. Tara Westover: Remaking Home. Everything Happens, Kate Bowler/Apple podcasts. 12 April 2022. https://podcasts.apple.com/gh/podcast/tara-westover-remaking-home/id1341076079?i=1000624691178.Tirmizi, O. MD, Raza, A. MD, Trevino, K. PhD, & Husain, M. MD. (2012). Electroconvulsive therapy: How modern techniques improve patient outcomes: Refinements have decreased memory loss, other adverse effects while retaining efficacy. Curr psychiatr 11(10): 24-46. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4193538/