It took me a decade to find the language to explain that,” she says. And I had to figure out the language to unfold that. “I was profoundly aware that the past was living in me. “It was very taboo for me to even claim that the grieving I was doing was related to what happened before my family got to this country,” she says. When her professor later instructed the class to “listen to their bodies,” Gerson felt gripped with grief. But Gerson couldn’t, and found herself balled up on the floor. In a graduate school dance class in her mid-20s, Gerson’s professor instructed the class to dance freely. When she was growing up on the East Coast of the United States, her family spoke of the horrors of gas chambers at the dinner table.

trauma bonding, or an emotional connection between an abuser and their targetĪuthor Merissa Nathan Gerson’s great-grandparents, great-aunts, great-uncles, and other relatives were murdered in the Holocaust.impaired self‐esteem stemming from minimization of the child’s own life experiences in comparison to the parents’ trauma.There are many ways intergenerational trauma might affect families, including: Intergenerational trauma can bring some families closer emotionally, while causing other families to drift apart. Intergenerational trauma can affect individuals and families in different ways. parents bypassing or not coping with their trauma.normalization of hatred, cruelty, and dehumanization toward others.

Some ways trauma can be passed down include: According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, this is “the study of how your behaviors and environment can cause changes that affect the way your genes work.”Ī 2018 review explored evidence that suggests children may be influenced by exposure to parental trauma that occurred before they were born and even prior to their conception. In the 1990s, researchers began to look at the biological mechanisms of intergenerational trauma via epigenetics. Others attributed intergenerational trauma to children becoming “containers” for their parents’ unwanted pain. Some experts in the medical community attributed intergenerational trauma to the stress of living with a traumatized person who may still be reliving horrific events. The conversation of exactly how trauma is transmitted was contested for decades following Rakoff’s paper. The late psychiatrist Vivian Rakoff, PhD first introduced the concept of intergenerational trauma in his 1966 paper on children of Holocaust survivors. Trauma can be transmitted in many ways - from our genetics to conversations at the dinner table. When it’s not coped with, it gets passed again,” said Merissa Nathan Gerson, author of “ Forget Prayers, Bring Cake,” a visiting assistant professor of communications at Tulane University, and inherited trauma consultant for Amazon’s “Transparent” series. How intergenerational trauma is passed on those belonging to North and South American Indigenous tribes, especially descendants of the Indian Reservation Schools in Canada and the United States.those of Vietnamese and Cambodian descent.Japanese Americans with ties to Japanese internment during World War II.But this type of intergenerational trauma also affects many other groups of marginalized communities, including: Historical trauma was first discussed in relation to survivors of the Holocaust and their descendants. Historical trauma and marginalized groups Those who are descendants of people who have experienced violence from living in war zones and other hardships - such as World War II, effects of the Cold War, the Vietnam War, or conflicts in the Middle East - may also be more likely to experience intergenerational trauma. However, people from marginalized groups - such as People of Color and those in lower socioeconomic classes for generations - may have more pronounced experiences with intergenerational trauma. Who does intergenerational trauma affect?Īnyone can experience intergenerational trauma, and some may argue that everyone experiences this phenomenon to some degree.

Intergenerational trauma vietnamese