Ending Generational Trauma
For you and yours.
It takes one person to end generational trauma.
I have been thinking about a lot lately. Almost everything we say and do is not new. For most of our lives, our actions reflect what we saw, felt, and experienced directly or indirectly. How our childhood stays with us, and impacts our adult life.
Not much is talked about how the environment a child is raised in shapes the life of the adult they become. In all of this, I realized that so much more is passed down from parent to offspring beyond DNA and genes such as anger, difficulty trusting others, low self-esteem, violence, and trauma.
Many adults follow the same patterns as their parents or grandparents, without consciously realizing they are mirroring those behaviors. It is not easy to break a cycle of generational trauma because it is often deep-rooted and widespread across multiple parts of your life.
However, it is possible to break these patterns and heal from the trauma that has been present in your family history.
How do you identify generational trauma?
Generational trauma can be different and unique to everyone. While something may not seem severely traumatic to someone from an outside perspective, the mental, emotional, and interpersonal damage is real.
One glaring feature of dealing with generational trauma is the difficulty of processing and communicating your emotions. Some people may have generational trauma from one single incident, while others may have it from long and repeated experiences of different traumatic experiences.
Some common markers of those dealing with generational trauma include but are not limited to anger issues, anxiety, low self-esteem, self-denial, attachment issues, detachment and disconnection, isolation, and even depression.
Let's end the generational trauma.
After realizing that your tendency to always be on the defensive or discovering that the reason every question, correction, or criticism makes you feel like you have something to prove is due to generational trauma, you owe it to yourself (firstly) to break that chain, but how and why?
Breaking the chain of generational trauma is for your peace of mind and growth, and that of those who come into your life. To break generational trauma, you need to understand the underlying problem, learn how to work through it, how to prevent the triggers, and treat the root cause of the problem so that the patterns do not pass to the next generation.
You owe yourself peace of mind.
These steps can help start your healing and recovery journey.
Find the origin of the trauma.
Accept that it is there, and if you are contributing to it.
Communicate your struggles with your support system.
Seek professional help.
Do less fault-finding, and commit more to healing and recovery.
Replace familiar practices with new and healthy ones.
Breaking generational trauma is not easy at all. It requires an openness to accept that something is there, and a willingness to do the work to end it with you.
Generational trauma does not have to continue with you.
You can heal from generational trauma and end the patterns in your family. It is challenging to be the first person to end the chain of trauma-based behavior. Still, it is a valuable way to help protect yourself and the communities around you from the harm of generational trauma. You can save the next generation if you try.
The freedom you experience from breaking away from generational trauma outweighs the challenges you face in your healing journey. You deserve peace.