Emotional wounds, Intergenerational trauma
raising awareness, breaking cycles
One of the areas that I am interested in, is intergenerational trauma and the intergenerational growth and gained ancestral wisdom from doing the transformative and hard work of healing and working through the cycle of pain.
I am reading Break the Cycle, by Dr. Mariel Buque discusses the effects of intergenerational trauma on a person. She aptly points out that it “forces us to numb our creativity, joy, and overall zest for life.”
The hope the Buque and others offer us it not only that we have ancestral wounds, emotional inheritance and intergenerational trauma, but that we can address it as well. She writes that her mother reminds her “to break up with that generational lie.”
She is a trained therapist and uses techniques and suggestions that help us to access what she calls our “intergenerational higher self.” I get that it sounds hokey but I also think it important to remember that our ancestors did have wisdom and insights and their own survival techniques, not only wounds and trauma.
The point of addressing intergenerational trauma is that it can also lead to intergenerational growth, which—much like post-traumatic growth—allows us to heal and transform. Essentially, rather than saying—this is the bag of emotional shit that our ancestors gave us—through our upbringing/environment and our DNA—and it’s all we have and we’re basically screwed, instead, we can address the wounds. We can transform, heal, and evolve, into better versions of our DNA/line. We get to learn from our ancestors’ shortcomings, mistakes, traumas, emotional wounds.
I cling to claims like these, because they offer hope.
I consider my own emotional inheritance (as defined by Galit Atlas), that I’ve been reflected on lately:
I know that I have financial fears that are a direct result of the financial insecurities my mother faced, growing up and living, married with my father, before I was born. I know I grew up with that scarcity mindset. I know that it sometimes plagues me now—even though I am comfortably middle class. I don’t have children and I don’t buy fancy crap and I don’t live extravagantly beyond my means. I have enough money, to eat and to pay my bills and to enjoy some fun and to travel. I know this, rationally.
Yet, irrationally, the fear grips me. I remember hearing my mother saying this often. I know that it is my emotional inheritance.
I know that I also fear abandonment and often feel homeless, even though I have never been homeless. I have often failed to nest. I’ve chosen a nomadic existence, and more often than not enjoyed living with another—a partner or a friend or another.
Again, I consider my mother—the one whose own mother abandoned her. She was tossed around from relative to relative that didn’t want her and then to foster families, other peoples’ homes.
I obviously understand the correlation. It seems that, as a girl, identifying my mother, I learned—both from how I was raised, what she felt and feared, from her own childhood and adulthood, scarring moments, imprinting themselves onto her.
Perhaps yours is a fear of being abandoned, or of heights or water, or tiny spaces—ever wondered if there is someone in your family who experienced a death or injury to something like that?
Mark Wollam’s book, It Didn’t Start With You, in addition to Atlas’ book, offers another compelling argument.
They both also make the case that even bringing cognizance and awareness to your wounds or inheritance can help you to heal. Interesting theory. I am not saying it’s a quick and easy fix. Some of the wounds are scars that run deep. And yet—knowing this, about myself, I speak with myself rationally now—even though I feel the fear.
I talk to myself rationally that I have a home.
I have enough money.
I won’t be homeless, toothless, lacking solvency.
I am a middle-class, white-collar, academic professional.
Sometimes we need to talk ourselves down. When we inherit the fears, we don’t always inherit the rational thoughts and logic that correspond to them.
This is why intergenerational trauma and emotional wounds that are unaddressed take over and feel so damn powerful.
