What is intergenerational trauma?

Intergenerational trauma describes the possibility that difficult experiences of one generation will continue to affect subsequent generations as well. War, the Holocaust, forced migration, loss, poverty, violence, neglect, family disconnection, and other events that were difficult to process at the time they occurred can affect the way a family organizes around safety, connection, and belonging.

The influence need not pass through an explicit story. A girl does not need to know that her grandmother lost her family in order to grow up in a home where loss evokes great anxiety. A son does not need to know all the years of his father’s deprivation in order to learn that one must always be prepared for the day when everything will disappear. Children learn the family world also through the way the adults around them respond to life.

Thus an experience that occurred in one generation can take new forms in the next. It may appear in the way people draw close and separate, in the ability to lean on another person, in the relationship to money and success, in the difficulty setting a boundary, or in the feeling that one must hold everything alone.

How does trauma pass from generation to generation?

There is no single way trauma passes between generations. One of the significant pathways goes through the relationships within which children grow. A parent who lives in hypervigilance following difficult experiences can love their children very much and at the same time find it hard to feel that the world is safe. A parent who experienced loss may find it difficult to allow the child to move away, and someone who learned in childhood that leaning on others is dangerous can raise children to very early independence.

The family culture also carries its own history. In every family, perceptions develop about what to do when it hurts, whom to turn to when help is needed, how much space one can take up, which feelings receive a place, and what remains outside the conversation. Children absorb these rules long before they can articulate them.

Family silence is also information. When there is a person who is not spoken of, a loss that must not be mentioned, or an entire period the family prefers to leave behind, the next generation may not know exactly what happened. They still grow up within the family that had to organize around what occurred.

How can intergenerational trauma appear in our lives?

In daily life it does not necessarily look like trauma. A person can lead a functional life, work, raise children, and maintain good relationships, and yet recognize reactions whose intensity surprises even them.

One can hold everything alone even when there is already someone to lean on, feel guilt when setting a boundary, take responsibility for others’ feelings, or find it difficult to ask for help. In another person it will manifest as hypervigilance toward distance, great fear of loss, or a feeling that success and joy must be kept in measure.

It is easy to turn such patterns into self-definition: “I’m just like that,” “I’m an anxious person,” “It’s hard for me to trust,” “I’ve always been independent.” The intergenerational perspective suggests adding another question: Is this movement also familiar from the family in which I grew up?

The question does not determine what the source of the behavior is. It allows us to see a broader context, and from within it to examine which adaptations still serve us and which continue to operate even when reality has already changed.

Family loyalty and the price of living differently

Through the lens of family constellation, belonging is a deep need. A person remains part of their family of origin even when relationships are complex, even when they set boundaries, and even when they choose distance or disconnection. The recognition of belonging does not determine how the relationship should look in life itself.

Within this belonging one can also examine family loyalties. A daughter who grew up alongside a mother whose life was filled with sacrifices may discover that it is difficult for her to choose differently. A son whose parents struggled all their lives for economic survival can succeed greatly and still feel discomfort when life becomes easier. These are not proofs of hidden loyalty, but movements that are interesting to observe within the family context.

Family constellation has a broader language of belonging and order within the family system. There is no need to open it fully here; it deserves a separate discussion within the framework of Bert Hellinger’s Orders of Love. For the purpose of observing intergenerational trauma, one distinction is sufficient here: the generations that preceded me also preceded me in time and in the family story. I arrive after them and receive a life that has already passed through an entire history.

The past gives important context here. The present returns responsibility to us. One can honor the price paid by those who came before us and choose not to pay it again in order to prove that we belong.

Survivor guilt: when a good life evokes guilt

In families that experienced the Holocaust, wars, persecution, disasters, and great losses, survival can take on deep family meaning. Those who survived were sometimes required to continue living alongside the fact that loved ones did not survive. Even when these things are hardly spoken of, the relationship to life, to safety, and to joy can be affected by this history.

In subsequent generations this may take other forms: difficulty enjoying without guilt, hesitation to take up space, or an unexplained feeling that success distances me from my family. Not every such difficulty is “survivor guilt,” and family history alone does not provide an explanation for the experience. It can add a layer to understanding it.

For me, the interesting question is not whether one should be freed from loyalty to the family. I am interested in the possibility of remaining belonging to my family and being a separate person within it. Honoring what was does not require me to live the same fate again.

Intergenerational trauma within partnership

The couple relationship brings us to the places where we learned closeness, dependence, trust, and separateness. A person who learned in childhood that one cannot lean on others may discover that even with a loving partner it is difficult to ask for help. Someone who grew up in a home where belonging was bound up with giving up herself can recognize the same movement within the partnership as well.

For couples without family backing, this movement can take on additional intensity: when the partner is also the central relationship, the home and the family that was built, distance within the partnership can touch a much deeper fear than a specific disagreement. The past can help understand why the reaction is so strong, and it does not determine what the partner meant or what we should do now.

Differentiation allows holding both layers together. I can recognize that something deep was activated in me, and at the same time see the person standing before me as they are in the present. My history deserves understanding; my behavior within the relationship remains my responsibility.

There is also another distinction here that is important to me: The fact that a certain behavior developed from a survival need does not make every expression of it in the present worthy. I can understand why I learned to distance, to please, to control, or to attack when I am afraid, and still take responsibility for the price this behavior exacts from me and from the people with me. Understanding the past can allow me to carry this responsibility without turning myself into a flawed person.

What does research know about intergenerational transmission?

Difficult experiences of parents can affect their children in many ways: through the family environment, attachment and parenting patterns, learning, and responses to stress situations. Alongside these mechanisms, the possibility of biological and epigenetic mechanisms related to the effects of trauma on subsequent generations is also being studied.

Epigenetic research in humans still requires caution in interpretation. It is difficult to separate biological influence that may pass between generations from the effects of pregnancy, environment, parenting, relationships, and culture. Therefore I do not use epigenetics as proof that trauma “passes in the genes.”

For therapeutic work, we do not need a single explanation in order to be interested in the intergenerational context. One can observe what is known about family history, patterns that recur in relationships, and what is happening in the body in the present, and hold separately what we know and what we still seek to understand.

How does work with intergenerational trauma begin?

The work begins with observation. One can map the family and notice losses, disconnections, migrations, illnesses, secrets, roles that recurred between generations, and the ways the family learned to cope with distress. This information is not meant to find someone to blame for what is happening today. It broadens the picture within which we understand ourselves.

In family constellation I am also interested in position and belonging. Who is in the family picture and who remains outside it, what happens when a person stands before their family of origin, and what feelings appear when they turn their body toward their own life. What emerges in such work is material for observation, not historical proof of what occurred in previous generations.

The body adds its own information. One can understand very well that life has changed and still feel the breath shortening, the chest contracting, or the impulse to move away. In somatic work I am interested in what is happening in the body now and in the ability to stay with the experience at a pace that can be borne, without demanding that the body change before it feels safe enough.

When the family past meets the present

A patient in her thirties came to me with a difficulty that recurred in romantic relationships. She wanted closeness, and when a relationship became more significant, strong pressure appeared in her chest and an impulse to move away. In her life story there was no single event that explained the intensity of the response.

In the constellation work, a figure from the family system emerged who remained alone and was hardly spoken of. We did not know if there was a causal connection between her story and the patient’s difficulty, and therefore there was also no need to establish one. The image allowed us to observe what happens in the body when the patient turns toward this figure, and what changes when she returns and turns herself toward the partnership and her life in the present.

This distinction was significant. It was possible to give place to the woman who came before her and to her story, and at the same time to see that the relationship in her life now is a different relationship. The past remained part of the family story; it no longer had to be the only explanation for what is happening in the present.