Generational Trauma: How Culture Shapes Safety, From Your Parents to You

I pulled a chair up to the wall so I could reach the phone.

My mom couldn’t breathe. I needed a neighbor to come and take her to the hospital.

I sat next to her, praying they would be in time. I felt like I couldn’t breathe either.

This happened more than once. My sisters and I lived with it constantly.

That’s my story. It’s also a story about generational trauma.

What Is Generational Trauma?

Trauma is too much too soon, or too little too long, without a safe other. That’s how I learned it in my Compassionate Inquiry training with Gabor Maté.

When that happens, the nervous system can become dysregulated.

Then that dysregulation gets taught to the younger generation. Not intentionally.

That’s generational trauma, also called intergenerational trauma.

My Mom’s Story Started Long Before Mine

My mom grew up in the South. As a child she had asthma, but it only flared when she worked in the tobacco fields. People thought she was lazy. No one believed her.

Her brother had polio and needed a lot of medical care. Her mom often had long hospital stays with him. In her first year, my mom was shuffled from aunt to aunt while her brother fought for his life.

No blame here. I think my mom’s illness was often not seen when she was a child.

What a Child Learns About Safety

I believe my mom was afraid she was going to die and leave us without a mother, much like the long stretches she spent without hers.

She held us close and told us her fears. She didn’t have a close support system.

We felt that anxiety. We were always looking out for the threat in our environment.

One year I saved my money and bought her a pocket nebulizer for Mother’s Day.

I learned I had to be very careful with my mom because she was fragile. What I learned about illness is that loved ones are fragile and can easily die.

I learned a rule: if I am really good, my mom won’t get stressed, and then she can breathe. If I made her upset, she might get so upset she would die.

My body learned it too. Because of my mom’s illness, I developed a fear of blood draws. Her veins collapse. Mine don’t, but I almost pass out every time I need blood drawn.

I had separation anxiety from the time I can remember. It wasn’t until my 40s that I could feel what the lack of safety had been like.

It’s a System, Not a Person

The culture a person grows up in affects their nervous system. That nervous system goes out into the world and meets the culture again. There’s a dance between the two.

• The culture your mother grew up in shaped how safe she felt.
• How safe she felt shaped how she raised you.
• How you were raised shaped your nervous system.
• Your nervous system now meets the culture around you.

Here’s an example from my family. My fear of swimming probably comes from something my grandparents witnessed in the water. My grandfather forbade his children from getting into any kind of deep water, so they never learned to swim. They learned to fear drowning.

He wasn’t trying to pass on fear. He was trying to keep his children safe. I carried it anyway.

This happened to your mother. It happened to you.

That isn’t blame. No one in this chain was the villain.

Your Body Carries It Too

I believe the fear I carried about my mom’s illness led to lots of inflammation and, eventually, autoimmune disease.

I’m not a doctor, but we do know how chronic stress affects our minds and bodies. If you’re worried about your health, talk with your doctor. You can learn more on my Biology of Trauma page.

Under the Anger

Clients often come in with anger. Underneath the anger is hurt or fear. We make space for all of it.

Then comes the system: understanding the beliefs and fears that drove their parents’ actions.

When I asked my mom to imagine what it was like for her tiny self, passed from aunt to aunt, she began to understand why she has certain needs.

Understanding isn’t excusing, and it doesn’t erase what your body missed. But it can change what the anger has to carry.

Is This Yours, or Someone Else’s?

Sometimes a fear isn’t ours at all. We picked it up from the people who raised us.

With clients, I ask them to pause. Then I ask the question: “Is this yours, or someone else’s?” Then I ask them to notice.

They don’t have to answer out loud.

For me, I realized the fear was my mom’s. It was her fear about her mother eventually not coming back.

Once I realized that, it was much easier to work with.

That fear started in my mom’s childhood, during the long stretches her mother spent at the hospital with her brother. It traveled through her to me.

Noticing the Belief

I was carrying this belief: “If I just do enough and do it perfectly, I can control life and death.”

I laughed when I realized the belief I had been carrying all these years. Then I told my younger self that no one and nothing can do that.

Now, when the urge to overperform shows up, I ask myself if it’s coming from that belief.

1. Notice the urge.
2. Pause.
3. Observe. Ask, “Is this mine?”
4. Course correct.

If the urge to overperform sounds familiar, you can read more about over-achieving as a fawn response.

The Past Can’t Be Undone. The Present Can Change.

I always believed I was an anxious person. I thought it was a trait that couldn’t be changed.

I was having panic attacks and taking medication for anxiety.

I still get anxious at times. But through somatic therapy, ketamine-assisted psychotherapy (KAP) and IFS, I have worked through the beliefs and feelings stored in my body that kept me anxious.

I also did Brainspotting on my fear of blood draws, and I do much better now. And I’m no longer afraid of swimming.

My nervous system runs on a different program now.

The past can’t be undone. But we can do something about the present.

I would love to be part of that process. Book a free 15-minute consultation, or take the fight, flight, freeze or fawn quiz to see how your body learned to protect you.