Intergenerational Trauma and its Impact on Agency

What does agency, your grandparents, Civil War soldiers, and the biblical book of Malachi have in common? Intergenerational trauma. Intergenerational trauma is something that likely, knowingly or unknowingly, affects the majority of us. Like it or not, the events that happened to our parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents can fundamentally shape who we are and what we might become beyond the basic response that “well, yeah. They raised me” might suggest. Traumatic events that occurred to a relative shape just how much of an agent you actually are. The more visible and biological examples include studies on the “Hunger Winter” done in the Netherlands during 1944. That winter there was a particularly brutal famine across the country. Adults were only eating 400-800 calories each day. These studies showed that people who were conceived during this time were more likely to have heart disease and be obese than those born during easier times.

Another example was a study done on Civil War soldiers. They found that sons of the soldiers who had endured worse conditions as prisoners of war were more likely to die young than sons of soldiers that were not prisoners, despite the fact that these sons were born after the war. This is likely due to epigenetic factors, which are the processes by which genes are turned on and off. These sorts of changes get inherited by later generations, negatively impacting their lives. This is an example of what scientist Rachel Yehuda calls “environmental resilience.” Epigenetic changes are what biologically prepare us to cope with the environment that our parents inhabit. If parents are living in a warzone, then the epigenetic changes in the parents are passed down to the child so that it is ready for that sort of environment. This occurs even if the environment has shifted, like for example, if the child was prepared for a warzone prior to birth but the war is over and peaceful times ensue. If the parents are living in a stable situation, that information gets passed on to the child. As such the socioeconomic status, the location of residence, among other things of your parents, grandparents, etc. directly influence how your biology functions. These effects are well-documented by individuals such as Robert Sapolsky, Bessel van der Kolk, and Gabor Mate among others. This constitutes is the biological aspect of intergenerational traumas. In addition to the biological aspect there is the bodily aspect of intergenerational trauma and a psychological aspect of intergenerational trauma, the latter two appearing as the lived experience of an individual. 

Lived Experiences of Trauma

Traumatic experiences are lived experiences, which may sound obvious, but the bodily healing of “psychological” trauma is often left behind for the more widespread talk therapy. But, oftentimes, in traumatic experiences language breaks down. A common feature of trauma is the inability to articulate what exactly has happened. Both words and memory fail. During traumatic instances thoughts become scattered, disorganized, or disappear completely. Memory can become fragmented and scatter as brief images, bodily sensations, or emotions that get stored in the unconscious and can be triggered by certain sensations, movements, or images, as seen in PTSD. An example of these sensations is found in a study done on mice. In these studies mice were exposed to a certain smell and given a shock immediately after. (Poor mice…) The researchers found that even in the mice’s children and grandchildren, when they were exposed to that smell they showed anxiety and extreme fear. (Again. These poor mice.) The bodily effects and the bodily sensations were passed down generations. In other words, the lived experiences of the traumas were passed down to future generations. This is not just the psychological factors or defense mechanisms that might be learned by virtue of being the child of said person. This is the actual first-hand effects of the experience. 

Mark Wolynn describes a few examples of the lived experience of trauma by descendants in humans in his book It Didn’t Start With You. 

Jesse came to Mark after over a year of not sleeping. He was only twenty but looked decades older than that. Prior to his insomnia, Jesse had been an athlete and straight-A student. His insomnia had led him down a spiral of depression and despair. This caused him to forfeit a baseball scholarship and drop out of college. Not one of the doctors, psychologists, sleep clinicians, etc. could help him. Jesse didn’t know what was the cause of this insomnia. He’d slept just fine up until this time. He reported that one night, Jesse woke up at 3 in the morning. No matter how many blankets he put on he stayed freezing cold. In addition to this, he had a sudden fear that if he fell asleep something awful would happen. This lead to him jolting himself back awake in fear every time he was near sleep. He knew this fear was irrational but could not shake it. 

It was later revealed that his father’s older brother, an uncle he didn’t know he had, had frozen to death while checking power lines in a storm. There were tracks in the snow showing he had struggled to hang on. He was found face down in that blizzard, his hypothermia lead to unconsciousness and death. Jesse was unconsciously reliving certain parts of his uncle’s death. There was a fear of letting go to unconsciousness. If his uncle let go, he would (and did) surely die of the cold. Mark says that that connection was a turning point for his patient, Jesse. He had an explanation of the fear that gripped him while falling asleep. This allowed for the process of healing to occur. He was able to disentangle himself from the trauma endured by an uncle he’d never met, but whose terror he had unconsciously taken on as his own. Jesse became free of his insomnia and he gained a deeper sense of connection to his family, present and past.

Wolynn gives another example of a woman named Ellie. Ellie had a fear of going crazy that seemingly arose out of nowhere when she graduated high school. She thought that it was just her own mind being overactive and worrying about adulthood. However, when they looked at her family history she learned that there was a precedent for this. She learned that her grandmother, at the age of 18, had accidentally started a fire that killed her first child, a newborn infant. Her second child suffered from severe mental illnesses which led to her institutionalization at the age of 18 where she died soon after. Ellie’s grandmother, the youngest of the three never spoke of any of this again. Ellie’s mother told her that after Ellie was born, she had obsessed over something going terribly wrong. She worried that she would inadvertently do something that would cause Ellie to die. She had severe feelings of dread and depression during Ellie’s pregnancy which only got worse as she was born. 

In any other situation, Ellie might just be given therapy and eventually come to some incorrect conclusion about her feelings. Placed in the context of intergenerational trauma, her worries, just as Jesse’s worries are completely understandable. Now, she has the chance to work through the three generations of trauma and overcome the effects of it. Perhaps mitigating them in the generations to come. In other words, prior to her realization of and working through her families’ trauma, her ability to act freely is constrained. She is stuck unconsciously following the patterns of her family. Once she recognizes the pattern, she has the capability to change it. Carl Jung figured out that what remains unconscious does not just disappear on its own. Instead, it resurfaces in our lives as fate or fortune because whatever is not conscious gets experienced as fate. We will just continue to repeat our unconscious patterns until we become aware of them and work to change them, both on an individual level and an intergenerational level. This happens on a psychological as well as bodily level. In Jesse’s case, his body was reenacting the trauma of his uncle. Dance therapy works from some individuals with trauma because it allows the body in addition to the mind to process the trauma. MDMA and cannabis-assisted therapy perform the same function (See here for a video exemplifying processing trauma bodily).

The Hearts of the Children and Fathers

So what does the biblical book of Malachi have to do with this? God says he will send Elijah to turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, and if not he will curse the earth. This passage is meant to clarify the eschatological scheme and messenger from the chapter prior to it, but also is used in other places by Mormons as a call for genealogical work. This is along the lines of how I view it in this context. Turn the hearts of the children to the fathers and the fathers to the children. There is significance to each aspect. The significance for the latter is calling the fathers to work through their own traumas so that their children might be free of their effects. The former is calling for the children to learn of and recognize the traumas of the fathers so that they also might not transmit them to the next generation. This functions as a sort of fail safe, if the fathers don’t work through it then the children will or if the children wouldn’t work through it the fathers already have. It also works even if the fathers have worked through their own issues. Since no one is perfect, the children are free to work on more minute issues arising from generational issues. The fathers work to make the children more free than they were and the children work to be free of the limitations imposed on them by their parents, grandparents but also on the societal issues handed down to them by the previous generations. The goal is for each generation to become freer than the prior one. You see, traumas inhibit freedom. What had happened to Jesse’s uncle restricted him. Ellie was subject to the torments of her ancestors. The sons of the Civil War soldiers were less healthy and lived shorter lives as a result of their ancestors’ choices (The fault of which was not necessarily their direct parents, but society’s decision to go to war broadly speaking). 

For argument’s sake, lets say that I am living a life that is 97.5% determined by external factors (biological factors, where I was born, my upbringing, society, etc.). For a visual representation, imagine a corral that contains the space of possible actions I could take. The boundaries of this corral are set by the external factors. I only have control over only a small fraction of where those boundaries are set. I have 2.5% influence on my life, meaning I can consciously influence or deviate from external factors by a small amount. Let’s say that I spent time and energy as part of my 2.5% recognizing patterns of familial behaviors, traumas, defense mechanisms, etc. That work and effort might make it so that instead of my life being 97.5% determined, or 97.5% living on autopilot at the mercy of my unconscious, I now have 10% control over my life. Through this hard work I could increase the boundaries of the corral and the space of possible actions has increased due to my effort to expand the corral. I’ve broken free from some of the constraints that the unconscious patterns placed on me. Because I worked through much of my shit, perhaps now my child would be born into a life that was 96% determined instead of the 97.5% that I was born at. 

I feel very strongly that I am under the influence of things or questions which were left incomplete and unanswered by my parents and grandparents and more distant ancestors. It often seems as if there were an impersonal karma within a family, which is passed on from parents to children. It has always seemed to me that I had to . . . complete, or perhaps continue, things which previous ages had left unfinished. —Carl Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections

References/Further Reading

Gabor Mate, When the Body Says No: Understanding the Stress-Disease Connection. Wiley, 2011.
Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma. Penguin Books, 2015.
Mark Wolynn, It Didn’t Start with You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle. Penguin Life, 2017.
Robert Sapolsky, Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers. Holt Paperbacks, 2004.
Carl Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections. Vintage, 1989.