Have you ever considered how the stories passed down through your family shape who you are today? While I’ve appreciated knowing my family’s stories, histories, personal experiences, challenges, and triumphs, I had no idea the role they played in my sense of knowing who I am, in my resilience, and even in my trauma. Trauma-informed healing provides a powerful framework for understanding these narratives, helping to foster identity, resilience, and emotional well-being. The concept of the intergenerational self, coined by Dr. Marshall Duke and Dr. Robyn Fivush, explores the idea that understanding your place within your family’s narrative fosters a deeper sense of connection to self and others.
What Is the Intergenerational Self?
The intergenerational self provides a larger framework that helps you see where and how you fit within your family’s narrative, emerging from knowing and understanding your family’s history. It’s the recognition that you are part of a story much larger than yourself, connecting you to past generations and grounding you in a sense of belonging and purpose.
Research Foundations
Dr. Duke and Dr. Fivush’s studies, particularly their well-known Do You Know? scale, found that children who knew more about their family history displayed higher self-esteem, greater emotional resilience, and a stronger sense of identity. These benefits were linked to hearing family narratives, especially those that highlighted both successes and struggles.
They identified three types of family narratives:
- Ascending Narratives: Stories of hard work leading to success.
- Descending Narratives: Tales of misfortune or loss.
- Oscillating Narratives: Stories that show how families have faced challenges and bounced back.
The oscillating narrative, which balances triumph and adversity, is considered the most beneficial because it emphasizes resilience and adaptability. This aligns with practices of generational healing, where recognizing family narratives fosters resilience and growth For instance, many African American families have passed down narratives of resilience, balancing stories of hardship from systemic racism with those of strength and triumph.
The Power of Family Stories
Family stories are more than just entertaining anecdotes—they are blueprints for navigating life. Hearing about how your great-grandparents overcame challenges or how your parents adapted to adversity provides lessons in perseverance, adaptability, and collaboration.
For instance, learning that a family member survived financial struggles or overcame illness can inspire hope and courage. These stories often serve as a reminder that setbacks are temporary and growth is possible.
Consider the experiences of Japanese American families interned during World War II. Many shared stories of maintaining dignity and unity despite unjust treatment, inspiring later generations to value perseverance and social justice. Similarly, in Latinx communities, stories of migration often highlight courage and resourcefulness, fostering a deep sense of pride and connection to cultural heritage. Among LGBTQIA+ families, chosen or biological, narratives of resilience—such as coming out or challenging societal norms—help foster authenticity and self-acceptance.
Looking at it through this light, I can see that was exactly my experience of hearing the stories of my parents, grandparents, great and even great-great-grandparents. Given that my family historically always lived in poverty, there were certainly innumerable descending and oscillating stories. Yet, here my mom and her parents stood before me. That taught me, I now realize, that poverty doesn’t have to define you. I saw both through their successes and failures that despite not being able to pay the bills or receive needed medical attention, despite being societal outcasts and profiled by cops, we had plenty to smile about too. I learned to hold that both/and perspective.
The Hidden Influence of Intergenerational Trauma
Intergenerational trauma refers to the transmission of the effects of trauma from one generation to the next. This type of trauma can result from significant events such as war, systemic oppression, forced displacement,, family abuse, emotional unavailability and much more. When not addressed or processed, the psychological and emotional scars from such events can manifest in descendants as anxiety, depression, physical health challenges and many other signs and symptoms.
For example, among African Americans, the collective trauma of slavery and systemic racism continues to influence family dynamics, creating cycles of hypervigilance, mistrust, and resilience in the face of oppression. Similarly, immigrant families often carry the scars of displacement and economic hardship, which may show up in the form of a strong work ethic paired with an unspoken fear of instability.
Intergenerational trauma impacts people by influencing family dynamics, shaping belief systems, and perpetuating cycles of pain and dysfunction. Trauma-informed healing practices are essential to addressing these inherited patterns and breaking cycles of harm. A family might unconsciously pass down coping mechanisms like emotional suppression or hypervigilance, which originated as survival strategies but can hinder emotional growth in the long run and in subsequent generations.
This ties closely to the concept of the intergenerational self, which emphasizes the positive aspects of connecting to family history, and also offers a framework for understanding and healing from inherited trauma. By recognizing the patterns and narratives shaped by past trauma, individuals can gain insight into their behaviors and emotional triggers, fostering both personal growth and family healing.
Psychological and Neurobiological Implications
The intergenerational self aligns with psychological theories on attachment and identity formation. Feeling connected to your family’s past creates a stable and coherent sense of self.
On a neurobiological level, storytelling activates memory and emotional processing centers in the brain, helping you make meaning out of life’s experiences. Generational healing also involves understanding the impact of family stories on emotional processing and identity, helping individuals build a stronger sense of self. This integration of thought and emotion fosters resilience.
For LGBTQIA+ individuals, stories of rejection or silence within families may create deep emotional scars, but chosen families often rewrite these narratives into ones of belonging and empowerment.
Additionally, understanding intergenerational trauma can help individuals break cycles of harm. Trauma-informed approaches that combine self-awareness, family history, and healing practices enable people to heal and rewrite their family narratives. By embracing trauma-informed healing and generational healing, we connect more deeply with our family’s stories while rewriting narratives to foster resilience.
Practical Applications
Understanding the intergenerational self has implications for trauma recovery, personal growth, and creating a deeper sense of belonging. By connecting with your family history, you can begin to reframe limiting beliefs, uncover sources of empowerment, and develop resilience.
Here are a few ways to apply this concept to your healing journey:
- Storytelling Exercises: Interview family members or reflect on family milestones to uncover the narratives that have shaped your family’s journey.
- Reframe Painful Narratives: Use practices of generational healing to transform stories of hardship into lessons of strength and resilience.
- Explore Cultural Identity: Use family stories to deepen your understanding of your cultural heritage and sense of belonging. Exploring community histories can be especially meaningful for immigrants whose family stories are tied to displacement or cultural adaptation.
- Recognize and Address Trauma Patterns: Trauma-informed healing allows you to identify inherited patterns of behavior and emotional responses and work to heal those that no longer serve you.
Join the FREE Wellness Hub Community: Learn, Connect, and Heal Together
For those looking for additional support, resources, and community, here’s an opportunity to connect. The Wellness Hub is a free community platform offering a safe environment to connect with others on their healing journey. Here, you can learn from wellness providers who share insights and resources. The community fosters meaningful collaboration and shared learning experiences, making it an invaluable resource for those seeking empowerment and growth.
Whether you’re navigating intergenerational trauma or seeking empowerment, Wellness Hub provides the support you need to thrive.
Discover Wellness Hub today to find your community and enjoy free healing resources for intergenerational trauma.
When Families Are Unavailable or Unsafe
But what if your relatives are gone, inaccessible, or not safe people to ask about family stories?
This is a common experience, especially for those who have endured extreme traumas. People in these situations may find that family stories have been used to control narratives, influence perspectives, or undermine individuality.
If this resonates, you can still connect to your intergenerational self in other ways. For individuals from colonized communities, reconnecting with cultural narratives or ancestral practices can provide a powerful sense of belonging and healing. Consider exploring community histories or cultural narratives that align with your background, journaling to create your own story, or seeking guidance from trauma-informed professionals to reframe and reconstruct the meaning of your family’s history for your healing journey.
Part of what this looked like for me, was reading the book White Trash The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America by Nancy Isenberg. As I was walking into Barnes & Nobles with someone, I just so happened to be talking about my family’s intergenerational trauma, though I didn’t know that phrase at the time. There on the new release table, the title ‘White Trash’ grabbed my attention like a beacon. I burst out laughing and said, ‘Oh look! It’s my family history!’ The synchronicity of seeing such a provocative title that resonates with my personal experience right as I was talking about that very specific topic…well, of course, I had to read the book!
What I learned are that many of the challenges and trauma wounds my family still struggles with has a direct tie back to the fact that we are descended from individuals complicit in slavery. My great-great-grandfather fought for the Confederacy during the Civil War, which is a fact that many family members are quite proud of. The enormous, unacknowledged shame that my family carried across the generations from their past and ongoing complicity kept them silent in many aspects, unable to share many stories. In other aspects, they spun stories, owning the horrors of oppression as badges of honor, dismissing the depth of the impact they have on others.
My mom was a chain breaker in some of these particular family myths. She modeled inclusivity and treated everyone with respect and empathy. She was comfortable learning and owning where she might be wrong or simply not knowledgeable about the experiences of other people. She helped provide me with a different set of stories around the construct of race, and ethnicity, and also gender, sexual orientation, love and many nuances of othered and marginalized groups, and my place in those dynamics.
Learning a fuller picture of where you are in the context of your family, culture and the world are the very things I support coaching clients with! I’m all about supporting people in creating dream lives and trauma recovery is usually the largest part of the process. Trauma is the great disconnector, disconnecting us from Self, others and the world. Therefore, we all need to heal, aka, reconnect, on all those levels too.
Schedule a FREE CALL to explore trauma-informed healing and learn how understanding your intergenerational self can foster growth and resilience
Integrating Family and Individual Healing
Through intergenerational trauma and the intergenerational self, we see how the macro of family and culture impacts the micro of an individual’s sense of self. While there is lots of healing you can do on your own—and some you actually need to do on your own—you will at some point hit a glass ceiling. We need others—family, community—to heal into those broader and deeper layers. The Wellness Hub is one possible resource that provides an opportunity to connect with a safe community and access resources for healing at a deeper level.
The intergenerational self reminds us that we are not isolated individuals but part of a larger, ongoing story. By connecting with our family’s past, we gain a sense of purpose, resilience, and identity. Whether you’re on a healing journey, a leadership path, or exploring your cultural roots, embracing the intergenerational self can be a transformative process. By also acknowledging and addressing intergenerational trauma, you create an opportunity for profound healing, not only for yourself but for future generations as well.
