Understanding the Impact of Intergenerational Trauma on Family Dynamics
Explore and understand the profound effects of intergenerational trauma on family dynamics in this insightful post by Williamson & Associates. Begin healing trauma today!
Sometimes, trauma can get passed down from the original generation, who experienced it directly, to younger generations. In other words, your ancestors’ trauma may affect you even though you were not directly exposed to it yourself.
Historical incidents like war, genocide, and slavery that leave a family with deep scars are frequently the cause of intergenerational trauma. Intergenerational trauma in BIPOC and Indigenous communities in Canada is inextricably linked to the legacies of racism and colonialism. These historical injustices have maintained trauma cycles, hurting future generations through systemic barriers, cultural dislocation, and psychological consequences. Intergenerational trauma can also include personal experiences such as addiction, abuse, domestic violence, and severe neglect. Families who have been through such traumas may see patterns of mental health difficulties, substance abuse, relationship problems, and other problems that are passed down through generations.
With its focus on attachment and emotional bonds, Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) offers solutions to heal these deep-seated struggles in family systems and heal trauma.
Exploring Intergenerational Trauma
When the emotional and mental effects of traumatic events are passed down from one generation to the next, future generations may experience shame, guilt, anxiety, and low self-worth, even though they have no knowledge of these traumatic events.
This is called intergenerational or trans-generational trauma. Trauma can be passed down from one generation to another through parental behaviours and parenting styles. Furthermore, the brain is influenced by environmental factors, including parental emotional responses. This can lead to inherited neurochemical changes from trauma. Studies show that both collective traumas, such as genocide or slavery, and personal traumas, like abuse, can affect following generations, often without recognition or treatment of these challenges.
The Role of EMDR and Somatic Experiencing in Healing Intergenerational Trauma
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) and Somatic Experiencing are effective methods to heal intergenerational trauma by processing and releasing trauma that has been stored in the body and mind. This helps people process transgenerational traumatic experiences.
While EMDR uses bilateral stimulation to help the brain reprocess traumatic memories, somatic experience focuses on bodily sensations to release trauma.
The Role of Emotionally Focused Therapy in Healing
Emotionally Focused Individual Therapy (EFIT) helps people heal by building a safe connection and emotional understanding. It does this by addressing the relational parts of intergenerational trauma to encourage understanding so that a person can embrace the factors that have shaped an individual’s identity.
Intergenerational trauma can impact the dynamics of a relationship, affecting how partners connect, communicate, manage conflict, and fulfill each other’s attachment needs. Emotionally focused couples therapy (EFCT) assists in healing intergenerational trauma by fostering a secure bond and a more resilient relationship between partners, helping an affected partner understand and reprocess emotional experiences in the safety of a partner’s embrace.
Emotionally focused therapy for families (EFFT) helps families with the legacy of intergenerational trauma by helping family members uncover and process somatic responses and emotions to create secure bonds of connection.
An essential part of EFT is creating a caring therapy space where individuals, couples and family members can explore and talk about their inner wants, needs, and concerns. The EFT therapist at Williamson & Associates acts as a guide, helping clients navigate the complexities of their internal world and the complicated relationships affected by trauma that have been passed down through generations.
Understanding the Impact on Family Dynamics
Integenerational trauma manifests itself in family dynamics in a variety of ways, including communication patterns, attachment styles, trouble setting boundaries, and coping mechanisms like substance abuse, self-harm, or eating disorders. It can severely impact the connection between partners, parent-child dynamics, sibling relationships, and interactions with extended family.
Healing and Transforming Family Relationships with EFT
Emotionally focused therapy (EFT) emphasizes the importance of relationships in lessening trauma and transforming heredity. EFT helps clients process suppressed emotions by guiding them through significant emotional challenges that have formed their self-perception, emotional management, and relationships.
Guiding you on this journey, your therapist helps you treat yourself, your family members, and your ancestors with greater empathy and compassion. This allows you to move from guilt and shame to self-compassion and self-love. Emotionally focused therapy (EFT), whether as an individual (EFIT), couple (EFCT) or family (EFFT), encourages emotional awareness and regulation within yourself, your marriage, partnership and family, which can contribute to healthy communication and relationships.
Empowering Families to Break the Cycle of Intergenerational Trauma
At Williamson & Associates, we offer trauma and PTSD therapy, EMDR therapy, somatic experiencing therapy, emotionally focused individual therapy (EFIT), emotionally focused couple therapy (EFCT), and emotionally focused family therapy (EFFT) to heal attachment wounds and interrupt the cycle of intergenerational trauma. Our trauma and EFT therapists will offer the empathetic support necessary to delve into your trauma and start your journey toward recovery and healing.
After trauma is processed, traumatic memories become part of your identity and enrich your life story, allowing you to become more conscious of the historical and cultural effects on your identity.
Individual, Couple & Family Therapy in Olds, Alberta for Intergenerational Trauma
Intergenerational trauma can have a significant impact on family dynamics, which in turn affects family members' emotional well-being and the quality of their relationships both within and outside the family. Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) can assist in healing trauma by helping you reprocess these wounds and restore family relationships.
In "It Didn't Start with You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle," Mark Wolynn argues that ignoring family pain is counterproductive. He argues that unresolved trauma often returns as concerns or symptoms in future generations. Wolynn invites us to embrace our personal and collective stories. He warns that without recognizing the trauma's fundamental causes in our families, we may mistake these fears and feelings for our own.
Williamson & Associates’ trauma and EFT-trained therapists can help you identify and understand the root events of trauma in your family history and embrace these experiences as a part of your story. If you want to address the impact of intergenerational trauma with the support of our trained therapists, book a session or a free 15-minute phone consultation.
See other posts about Trauma Therapy, Individual and Couples Counselling and Family Therapy in Olds, Alberta:
Managing Conflict in Your Relationship: Tips from EFT Couples Counsellors and Family Therapists
Rekindling Intimacy: A Couple's Guide to Sexual Healing and Connection
The Top 5 Myths about Couples Counselling, Marriage Therapy and Relationship Therapy
Strengthening Family Bonds: Exploring the Benefits of Family Therapy