Last week, we talked about intergenerational trauma.
It’s a bit of a heavier topic, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned in my years working as a life coach for manifesting your dream life, it’s that the path toward life of your dreams isn’t always a smooth one.
That’s okay.
In particular, we explored how to break the cycle of intergenerational trauma in your own life.
This can be a powerful tool to help you move past the barriers holding you back from living your dream life.
But what about your own children?
True, working through your own intergenerational trauma can help make sure you don’t pass it on to your children, but is there more to it than that?
Let’s take a closer look.
Before we go any further, however, be warned that this article will deal with some potentially troubling topics, so
RECAP: What Is Intergenerational Trauma?
Intergenerational trauma is trauma that your ancestors experienced, which they then passed onto their children.
The term was originally coined to better understand how the children of people who experienced atrocities like war or genocide face, but it can apply to less extreme circumstances as well.
The way this trauma is passed on doesn’t always look like a one to one experience, however.
How Intergenerational Trauma Affects Children
Last time we talked about how intergenerational trauma can affect children from an emotional perspective.
A 2021 study shows that parents who experience neglect will have children whose neurology is actually wired differently.
In particular, the study found a stronger connection between the amygdala and the cortical regions.
It’s not clear exactly what this means, but Dr. Cassandra Hendrix, the researcher, believes it may be a mechanism to deal with anxiety and fear, or to promote resilience in anticipation of the baby experiencing similar neglect.
What this tells us is that babies aren’t necessarily the “blank slate” we used to think they were.
Their emotional lives may, in a way, be determined while they’re still in utero.
You might have inherited one parent’s eyebrows, or another parent’s nose, but you might also have inherited their emotional history.
But that doesn’t mean it has to stay that way.
You may have inherited your intergenerational trauma from your parents, but you don’t have to pass it on to your children.
The trauma you’ve experienced will always affect you to a certain extent, and that’s true with intergenerational trauma as well.
However, resolving the heaviness of how that trauma weighs you down can go a long way toward removing the barriers holding you back from living the life of your dreams.
Here’s how you can break the cycle of intergenerational trauma in your children as well.
1. Work Through How Intergenerational Trauma Has Affected You
This one might be obvious, but it’s worth looking at.
Last week, we talked about resolving your own intergenerational trauma, and how powerful a tool it can be in your practice of manifesting your dream life.
And while resolving your own traumas can make a big difference in your own life, doing so also makes it less likely that you’ll pass them on to your children.
That’s a good thing too – after all, when you consider what your dream life looks like, doesn’t it include healthy, well adjusted children free of the trauma and neglect you dealt with?
Understand your power here – it can be a lot to work through your intergenerational traumas, but they can also be a barrier standing in the way of your freedom from trauma and suffering, beyond which lies the life of your dreams.
Clearing those barriers can help you to not only bring your dream life in alignment with reality, they can also help you to get your children off to the best start as they manifest their own dream lives.
It’s important to remember, however, that processing on your own, or with the help of a trauma informed mental health provider, is important.
Please, don’t expect your parents or children to fix your issues.
Understanding, processing, and expressing your emotions without dumping them on the people in your life is a bit of a fine art.
However, working through the process can reveal more than you might expect.
Consider meditating or journaling about it, creating a vision board, or any other inner work technique you find to be helpful.
As you do, you may come to better understand what the life of your dreams actually looks like, and how your intergenerational trauma might be holding you back from achieving it.
For example, if you feel like manifesting a life of wealth and abundance is difficult for you, it’s possible that having been raised by parents who were stuck in a scarcity mindset left you with some attitudes about money that are holding you back.
As well, if you struggle to manifest a confident mindset, you may find that parents who guilt tripped you or used other emotionally manipulative tactics may lie at the root of that struggle.
It can sometimes be frightening to dig into such feelings, but it can also be liberating.
After all, if it’s your responsibility to heal your trauma – even if it wasn’t your fault you experienced that trauma in the first place – then you get to direct the way that healing takes place.
That doesn’t mean you’re alone in the process, but taking radical responsibility for your own healing can open you up to tremendous new possibilities in your life.
The process of clearing those barriers can help you to not only bring your dream life in alignment with reality, they can also help you to get your children off to the best start as they manifest their own dream lives.
2. Talk To Your Children About Your Trauma
Just as talking to your parents about the trauma they passed to you can help you resolve things for yourself, talking to your children about your own experiences can help your children emotionally prepare for what they may have to face.
Remembering, of course, that such conversations must be age appropriate, discussing what happened to you as well as what you know about what happened to your parents is important for a couple of reasons.
First, it can help them understand why you might react the way you do to certain things.
But it can also give your children greater context for their own feelings.
For children, especially younger ones, learning to process their emotions and make sense of everything happening in their brains can be overwhelming.
But if they understand where their feelings are coming from, they may have an easier time processing them. As well, you can explore the coping mechanisms you’ve developed that work for you and help your child develop coping mechanisms of their own.
Before you talk to your children (or your parents) about intergenerational trauma, however, remember what we talked about in the previous section.
It’s not your parents’ – or your childrens’ – job to work through your trauma for you.
Such conversations can be healing and illuminating, but it’s important to start by doing some of your own work.
3. Watch For Repeating Patterns
As you come to a better understanding of how intergenerational trauma has affected you, you’ll get to recognize your triggers and coping mechanisms.
Watch for those to appear in your children as well.
This might take the form of certain behaviours that come with your trauma.
For example, if you were raised in an environment where you were made to feel a lot of guilt, your child may then end up responding to you the same way you responded to your guilt tripping parents.
As well, if you were made to feel like nobody ever cared about what you had to say, your children might end up shy and quiet, unwittingly inheriting those traits.
Spend some time exploring your automatic behaviours, what the root of those behaviours are, and how they affect you.
Then, you’ll have an easier time recognizing such responses in your own children.
As a result, you’ll have a chance to discuss these feelings with your children openly and honestly, and from there help them develop stronger coping mechanisms.
Connect With Evelina To Book Your Appointment Today
None of us can change what happened in our past.
But all of us can change how we feel about what happened in our past.
The good news is that your past experiences don’t need to dictate your future.
Through the experience of navigating the grand quest we call life, the greatest beauty emerges through conscious exploration.
We ground ourselves, we explore ourselves, we develop ourselves.
Intergenerational trauma may have been where you came from, but it doesn’t have to be where you’re going.
It doesn’t have to be where your children are going.
We often find ourselves at a crossroad.
There are multiple paths available to us at any point in time, but it’s not always clear which one will lead us to the life of our dreams.
If you need guidance, you’re not alone.
The universe wants great things for you, but if you feel stuck and are seeking clarity, I can help.