How to overcome transgenerational trauma

Trauma can be passed down to generations and the root cause is difficult to find, so it’s challenging to overcome the mental health issues it causes.

I come from a family of unhappy wives, cheating, abusive husbands and suffering children. My mother told me some stories about our family history, but I couldn’t put the puzzle pieces together until a few years ago.

My maternal had six siblings. Six out of the seven children died between the ages of 50 and 63. My grandmother was 50 when she passed away. When my mother found her one morning, she looked like she had died in her sleep, and she was holding her current knitting project. She must have had a heart attack. My serial cheater, gambler, and child abuser, child molester grandfather made her life a living hell. She was 16 when they got married and got divorced about 20 years later. Five of her siblings also died of heart conditions, and only one of the seven siblings, lived to be 90 – she was single all her life, because of which she was the black sheep in the family. Other married women in my family died of cancer or the consequences of diabetes.

Divorce is a huge no-no in my family and when I was going through a divorce because I no longer wanted to be with my cheating husband, women in my family were torn between being supportive and preaching about the unity of family. While they understood how horrible it felt to be cheated on and humiliated almost daily, they also said things like ‘Bite the bullet, other women get cheated on, too. At least he has a good salary, ‘You will die alone’, ‘Your daughter will grow up without a father’, ‘You teach your daughter that family is not important’, ‘You teach your daughter that personal happiness and dignity and more important than keeping a family together’, ‘A woman is nothing without a man’, ‘Women don’t have property of their own’, and other “nice” things like that. I was determined to get divorced even without the kind of support I needed, so after my grandmother’s sister, I became the new black sheep who put herself first and who found living a single life easier than being married. Although shameful things happened in my family, some of my family members were open about them, so I was lucky enough to get an insight into why most women acted in certain ways.

While I was dealing with the legal aspects of divorce, I was also going to therapy because I couldn’t afford to be depressed and pulled down mentally in a period when I was the only stable point in my then-3-year-old daughter’s life. Therapy didn’t only help me get rid of the dark clouds over my head and heart, but also sparked my interest in self-development and digging deeper into my soul. Digging also meant discovering that some of my thoughts and feelings weren’t even mine. Fear, shame and guilt came from my female ancestors who sacrificed their lives to keep their families together. I also noticed the patterns of child loss and how they were never processed by the parents – especially the mothers – and mothers having horrible relationships with their daughters. I understood that these mother-daughter relationships were broken because they were too busy with the issues their cheating, and abusive husbands caused them, so they lived their lives in survival mode which made them emotionally unavailable. My relationship with my mother will never be fixed. Her resentment towards me for breaking the cycle is too strong and whatever I do is never good enough for her. If you are curious to know about how I healed my mother wound, click HERE. I have a wonderful relationship with my daughter, though, and I’m proud of it. A friend of mine said that it’s like a curse has been broken.

Here’s what I learnt about transgenerational trauma and the road to recovery.

If you have these symptoms, you might have transgenerational trauma:

• low self-esteem
• co-dependency
• unhealthy attachment styles
• self-destructive behaviour(s) and/or negative coping strategies
• keeping the trauma a secret
• immune system issues, chronic illnesses, autoimmune diseases

How to heal from it?

1. You need to identify where your traumatic responses come from. As I mentioned, certain thoughts and feelings I had weren’t mine, but they were passed down to me. Think about where your beliefs, thoughts and feelings originate. Are they yours or did you learn them from your family members? Notice patterns, attitudes and narratives in your family.
2. Acknowledge the trauma without judgment. Being judgemental of your family history and/or what you are going through mentally and emotionally will only make the situation worse. Be compassionate with your family and yourself, too.
3. Go to therapy, either individually or with family members and heal together.
4. Find alternative ways of coping, so you can have healthier coping strategies and create a new narrative.

After going through the healing process, I had a weird feeling for weeks. I felt like there was a thick, soft duvet around me, something that was protecting me during the freefall of single motherhood and starting my life over. I’m convinced that the energy I was feeling was my female ancestors accepting the fact that I had broken the cycle and protecting me.