![]() Anything about the traumatic event may be passed down, from the memories and stories about the event itself, to the more subtle and insidious ways in which the trauma has affected both the person directly involved and the family. Generational Trauma DefinedĮxperts describe generational trauma as post-traumatic effects that aren’t just experienced by one person, but are handed down, like an unwanted legacy, from one generation to the next. And traumas such as this, in which an entire group of people face the same traumatic event, are more harmful when passed down generationally it’s not just one person or family who faces the damage inflicted by the trauma, but entire populations of people. human-chattel slave trade, the genocide of indigenous people, the forced internment of Japanese-Americans and more.Īll of this constitutes trauma just as much as any individual traumatic event. Even just within the United States, we can remember the enslavement of human beings in the U.S. Too many cultural and racial groups around the world have been subjected to community trauma throughout history. ![]() Many traumatic events are individual, for example: one person experiences an assault but community trauma also exists. Although we use the words traumatized or traumatic colloquially in everyday language, in the psychiatric world, “trauma” actually refers to something very specific: it’s the emotional reaction we have to a life-threatening or terrifying event. What Is Trauma?īefore we talk about generational trauma specifically, it’s important to be aware of what the word “trauma” actually means. In other words, we can inherit trauma, and its effects, from our ancestors. It can even reach out and continue to affect people for generations afterward. But through research, we now know that it’s much more complicated than that trauma affects much more than just the person who survived the event. ![]() We usually think of trauma as an individual matter one person survives a traumatic event, and unfortunately suffers the mental and physical health effects of that trauma. If we don’t start healing our generational trauma now, we risk passing it down to our own descendants, as well - like a family curse that just won’t go away. What we might not think about is something that we’d rather not inherit: our ancestors’ trauma.īut research is showing us more and more, that generational trauma (sometimes referred to as intergenerational or transgenerational trauma) exists, and has significant effects on the mental health of people who were born generations after the person who survived the traumatic event. When we think about things that we inherit from our ancestors, we might think of things like family heirlooms, physical characteristics, legends, names and even wealth.
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