A lot of us carry emotional patterns that didn’t actually start with us. Maybe you feel anxious all the time, find yourself overreacting in certain situations, or keep running into the same relationship problems again and again. You might believe, “Something’s wrong with me,” but that’s not the whole story. These patterns are rooted in your family history.
Intergenerational trauma is what happens when trauma gets handed down across generations through relationships, beliefs, and the way we handle stress. Looking into these roots isn’t about blaming anyone; it’s about understanding ourselves and showing compassion.
This is Part 3 in Wise Mind Centre’s trauma series. We will discuss how trauma gets passed on, what it looks like, and how therapy can help break these cycles for good.
Read Previous Parts of our Trauma Series
- Part 1: Do I Have Trauma? Signs You Might Not Know to Look For
- Part 2: Understanding Complex PTSD: When Trauma Doesn’t Look Like One Big Event (Part 2 of 4 Trauma Series)
What Is Intergenerational Trauma?
Intergenerational trauma (also referred to as generational trauma or transgenerational trauma) describes how the effects of intense or long-lasting stress can ripple through a family for generations. Trauma isn’t only about the event itself; it’s about how the body and mind respond to experiences that feel life-threatening, emotionally unsafe, or deeply destabilizing.
When those responses aren’t fully processed, they can be passed down to children and even grandchildren through learned behaviours, relationship patterns, belief systems, stress responses and even genetics. It’s like carrying invisible family baggage. We don’t choose it, and most of the time, no one even realizes they’re passing it on.
What Causes Intergenerational Trauma?
Researchers first started looking into intergenerational trauma after seeing the effect on the descendants of Holocaust survivors. Since then, experts have recognized that many experiences can contribute to trauma being passed down, including colonization, enslavement, cultural genocide, forced migration, war, famine, and disasters. Trauma can also stem from systemic racism, discrimination, poverty, and years of financial insecurity.
On a family level, trauma can come from abuse, emotional neglect, violence at home, parental incarceration or loss, or growing up with caregivers who have their own mental health struggles. Research on adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) shows that chronic stress in childhood can significantly affect emotional regulation, physical health, and relationships later in life.
How Trauma Gets Passed Down
It’s not clear exactly how trauma is passed down. However, it can be transmitted through the way we connect, the stories we tell (or don’t tell), and even through our biology. Here are some of the most common pathways:
Trauma and Attachment
When caregivers live under chronic stress, it can affect how emotionally available they are. Even loving parents may be anxious, distant, overprotective, or quick to react. Kids pick up on this. Their nervous systems adjust to protect themselves, sometimes by becoming hypervigilant, people-pleasing, shutting down emotionally, or avoiding conflict.
Trauma and Family Beliefs
Trauma can travel through the unspoken rules in a family: “Don’t talk about feelings,” “Be tough,” or “You can’t depend on anyone.” Silence, secrecy, or minimizing emotions teaches kids that certain feelings aren’t safe. Over time, these rules shape how the family deals with pain, talks to each other, and handles stress.
Trauma and Stress Responses
Chronic stress tunes our bodies to stay on high alert or sometimes to shut down completely. When this becomes the family norm, a heightened stress response feels normal, even if there’s no real danger.
Epigenetics and Trauma
Epigenetics explores how life experiences influence which genes turn on or off, without changing DNA itself. Trauma can activate genes linked to survival responses like fight, flight, freeze, or fawn. These changes can be passed down to future generations, setting them up to be on guard for danger, even if the threat is long gone. This can make people more resilient, but it also means living in a body that can’t relax, always scanning for danger, often at the cost of peace of mind.
Common Signs of Intergenerational Trauma
Intergenerational trauma can be difficult to recognize because many of its effects overlap with anxiety, depression, or PTSD. If your family’s been carrying stress or trauma for generations, certain patterns can become so familiar that they just feel normal. Signs of intergenerational trauma may show up in some of the following ways:
- Feeling cut off from yourself or your emotions. Sometimes you just go numb or feel like you’re not even real.
- Difficulty recognizing or talking about your feelings.
- Trouble trusting people or maintaining close relationships.
- Pulling away from others or feeling deeply alone, no matter who’s around.
- Ongoing shame or guilt or a sense that you’re not good enough, even when you can’t pin down why.
- Constantly feeling vulnerable, helpless, or not quite safe.
- Not knowing who you really are.
- Experiencing intense mood swings
- Avoiding certain people, places, or topics that make you uneasy.
- Using substances to escape when things get too overwhelming.
- Recurring nightmares or unwanted thoughts
- Living with ongoing anxiety, low mood, or heightened stress responses
How Therapy Helps Break Intergenerational Trauma Cycles
Breaking intergenerational trauma cycles doesn’t start with blaming anyone. It begins with recognition. When you name trauma as part of your family’s story, things that felt confusing or shameful start to make sense. That realization is powerful, but it’s hard to get there alone.
Trauma-informed therapy offers support, structure, and perspective to help interrupt these cycles. People learn to acknowledge their family history with compassion, recognize how inherited trauma shows up in their thoughts, emotions, relationships, and bodies, and begin to shed habits that no longer serve them.
Approaches like Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) can help challenge deeply ingrained beliefs like “everything is my fault” or “I have to hold it all together.” Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT) helps you handle big emotions, set boundaries, and build healthier connections. EMDR and other trauma-focused therapies help your nervous system process and release long-held stress responses, even when there are no clear personal memories of trauma.
Healing intergenerational trauma isn’t about erasing your past. It’s about creating enough safety, awareness, and support that trauma no longer dictates your future. When one person begins this work, it can transform family dynamics and reduce the risk of trauma being passed down.
Wise Mind Centre offers trauma counselling in Vancouver and online across BC. Change is possible, and with the right support, long-held patterns can soften, shift, and make room for something new. Book a free 15-minute consultation or your first appointment today.
References
American Psychological Association. (2023). Intergenerational Trauma. Dictionary.apa.org. https://dictionary.apa.org/intergenerational-trauma
Carter, R. T. (2007). Racism and Psychological and Emotional Injury: Recognizing and Assessing Race-Based Traumatic Stress. The Counseling Psychologist, 35(1), 13–105. https://doi.org/10.1177/0011000006292033
Cleveland Clinic. (2025, November 3). What Is Generational Trauma? And How You Can Break the Cycle. Cleveland Clinic. https://health.clevelandclinic.org/generational-trauma
Greene, C. A., Haisley, L., Wallace, C., & Ford, J. D. (2020). Intergenerational effects of childhood maltreatment: A systematic review of the parenting practices of adult survivors of childhood abuse, neglect, and violence. Clinical Psychology Review, 80(1), 101891. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpr.2020.101891
Psychology Today Staff. (2026). Intergenerational Trauma | Psychology Today Canada. www.psychologytoday.com. https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/basics/intergenerational-trauma
Ryan, J., Chaudieu, I., Ancelin, M.-L., & Saffery, R. (2016). Biological underpinnings of trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder: focusing on genetics and epigenetics. Epigenomics, 8(11), 1553–1569. https://doi.org/10.2217/epi-2016-0083
Schickedanz, A., Escarce, J. J., Halfon, N., Sastry, N., & Chung, P. J. (2021). Intergenerational Associations between Parents’ and Children’s Adverse Childhood Experience Scores. Children, 8(9), 747. https://doi.org/10.3390/children8090747
Yehuda, R., & Lehrner, A. (2018). Intergenerational transmission of trauma effects: Putative role of epigenetic mechanisms. World Psychiatry, 17(3), 243–257. https://doi.org/10.1002/wps.20568