Intergenerational trauma has been clinically recognised for over eighty years. Yet for many people seeking psychological support, it remains difficult to identify. There is often no single event to point to, no clear personal history of trauma, and no family narrative that explains the distress. Instead, people present with symptoms such as chronic anxiety, hypervigilance, emotional numbness, depression, or a pervasive sense of threat, recognised clinically as common effects of intergenerational trauma. The body appears to be reacting to something that the mind cannot consciously remember, sometimes rooted in a traumatic event that began decades prior.
The earliest clinical observations of intergenerational trauma emerged from work with the children of Holocaust survivors (Kellermann, 2001). Clinicians noticed that trauma-related symptoms were present even when individuals had grown up in relative safety. There was no direct exposure to violence, yet the nervous system behaved as though danger were ongoing. This work marked a turning point in how trauma was understood. It moved the focus beyond the individual, recognising trauma as something that can ripple through family systems over time. It can be transmitted through various mechanisms, including socialisation, cultural norms and practices, and even biological factors. These processes can shape how individuals and communities see themselves and their place in the world, influencing identity, culture, and a sense of belonging, demonstrating how one generation impacts subsequent generations.
Trauma Without Autobiographical Memory
We don’t need to remember trauma for the past to have an influence on our present lives. Research shows that overwhelming experiences are often remembered in the body rather than as clear, autobiographical memories (van der Kolk, 2014). What remains are physiological states such as heightened arousal, defensive reactions, emotional numbness, or shutdown.
As Bessel van der Kolk describes, trauma is stored in the body and nervous system, not solely in conscious memory (van der Kolk, 2014). When stress overwhelms our nervous system’s capacity to properly process an experience, memory fragments. This contributes to sensations, impulses, and emotional responses persisting long after the original threat has passed.
In intergenerational trauma, this occurs without a person being directly exposed to threat or danger themselves. Descendants may carry inherited patterns of nervous system activation such as hypervigilance, emotional dysregulation, or dissociation, without knowing what they are responding to (Kellermann, 2001). The absence of a remembered story can deepen confusion and shame. Nothing bad happened to me, so why do I feel this way?
From a trauma-informed perspective, symptoms are not just evidence of a pathology or diagnosis. They are signs of a system organised around survival.
Epigenetics and Stress Inheritance
Importantly, epigenetics does not imply inevitability. Gene expression also responds to the environment and social context, meaning safety, regulation, and supportive relationships can alter these biological patterns over time (Meaney, 2010). Epigenetics provides a lens for understanding how trauma can ripple across generations. Rather than altering DNA itself, epigenetic processes influence how genes are expressed in response to environmental conditions, particularly stress (Meaney, 2010). Trauma, especially when it is extreme or prolonged, can leave biological traces that shape stress responses and health in those who come after, influencing the way trauma experienced in one generation affects others.
Research has documented how past experiences can influence epigenetic patterns. For example, prenatal exposure to famine has been linked to higher rates of diabetes, schizophrenia, and changes in body mass index (BMI) while studies of Holocaust survivors and their descendants have found epigenetic changes in genes that regulate the body’s stress response, including the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal (HPA) axis (Yehuda et al., 2016).
Crucially, epigenetic influence is not destiny. Gene expression responds to the environment and social context, which means that experiences of safety, regulation, and supportive relationships can reshape these biological patterns over time (Meaney, 2010). In other words, while trauma can leave a mark, healing and care in the present have the power to change how the body and nervous system carry it forward.
How Intergenerational Trauma Is Transmitted Through Family Systems
Intergenerational trauma is not passed down as a memory of events. It is transmitted through adaptations and coping mechanisms to threats. Families exposed to chronic danger develop survival strategies such as emotional suppression, vigilance, control, dissociation, or hyper-responsibility. For that family, through the generations, these can become embedded ways of relating to the world.
Attachment patterns, emotional regulation strategies, belief systems, and unspoken family rules all carry the imprint of what was once necessary for survival (Herman, 1992). Silence can pass experiences on, even when nothing is spoken. Losses that are not named, fears that are not acknowledged, and emotions that are not tolerated continue to shape behaviour long after the original context has disappeared.
As Judith Herman observed, children inherit ways of relating to safety rather than stories about the past (Herman, 1992). When the body adapts to danger before the mind can make sense of it, those experiences may never be fully understood or explained.
Legacy Burdens and a Parts-Based Understanding
Internal Family Systems (IFS) offers a useful framework for understanding inherited trauma. Developed by Richard Schwartz, IFS describes intergenerational trauma as “legacy burdens”, which represent emotional and physiological loads passed down through family lines (Schwartz & Sweezy, 2020).
From this perspective, what we call “symptoms” are not signs of something being wrong, but signs of something that once worked. For example, a person who feels chronically responsible for others may be carrying a part that learned, generations earlier, that staying alert and in control was the safest way to survive. Anxiety, emotional shutdown, or a need for control can all be understood as strategies that once helped the family system cope with threat or instability.
Similarly, children raised by parents who have lived through trauma, even loving, attentive parents, may grow up with an unspoken sense that they need to protect that parent. They might become highly attuned to others’ emotions, minimise their own needs, or feel uneasy relying on anyone else. These patterns are not the result of poor parenting, but of a child’s sensitivity to what felt necessary in the emotional environment they grew up in.
When these patterns are viewed as protective rather than problematic, shame tends to soften and curiosity can emerge (Schwartz & Sweezy, 2020). Healing then becomes less about getting rid of parts and more about creating enough safety for them to loosen their grip, so the nervous system can begin to respond to the present, rather than to dangers that no longer exist.
Interrupting the Pattern: Healing Intergenerational Trauma
Healing intergenerational trauma does not require reliving ancestral suffering or reconstructing family history in detail. What matters is what is happening now: how the nervous system responds in the present within the current generation, and which patterns are still being carried forward into the next generation.
Awareness and naming are often the first steps. When people begin to understand their symptoms within a generational context, self-blame tends to soften, making room for meaning rather than judgement (Herman, 1992). What once felt confusing or shameful can start to feel understandable.
Approaches such as family systems therapy or constellation work can help bring attention to unacknowledged loss or disrupted bonds, even when factual knowledge of the past is limited (Kellermann, 2001). Still, insight alone is not enough. Sustainable change depends on establishing safety in the present: physiological safety in the body, emotional safety within oneself, and relational safety with others.
As regulation increases, inherited patterns no longer need to stay active. The nervous system can begin to recognise that the conditions which once required constant vigilance are no longer here.
When the Past Has No Memory
Intergenerational trauma reminds us that the past does not need to be consciously remembered in order to be felt. The nervous system carries patterns shaped by earlier experiences, even when there are no clear stories attached to them.
These patterns aren’t fixed. When we identify what patterns from the past are playing out in the present, we can build a sense of felt stability that counteracts the very need for these behaviours.
This is the foundation of the work offered at Khiron Clinics, where healing focuses not on recovering forgotten memories but on supporting regulation, restoring a sense of safety, and helping the body update its responses in the present.
FAQs
What are some examples of intergenerational trauma?
Intergenerational trauma can show up in subtle but persistent ways. Examples include families shaped by war, displacement, famine, colonisation, racism, domestic violence, addiction, or long-term poverty. The trauma may not be spoken about openly, yet patterns such as hypervigilance, emotional suppression, difficulty trusting others, rigid control, or chronic anxiety become embedded in family life. A person might grow up in relative safety but still experience a pervasive sense of threat, difficulty relaxing, or an underlying belief that the world is unstable. Often, what is inherited is not the story of what happened, but the nervous system’s adaptation to it.
Can you inherit your parents’ trauma?
Research suggests that trauma can influence subsequent generations through multiple pathways. These include relational dynamics, attachment patterns, learned coping strategies, and potentially biological processes such as epigenetic changes in stress-response systems. This does not mean trauma is genetically “fixed” or inevitable. Epigenetic expression responds to environment and context. Experiences of safety, supportive relationships, and regulation can significantly reshape how the nervous system functions over time. Inheritance is not destiny.
How do I know if I have intergenerational trauma?
There is rarely a single test or defining moment. People often describe a sense that their reactions feel bigger than their personal history seems to explain. You might notice chronic anxiety, emotional numbness, difficulty trusting, hyper-independence, or feeling responsible for others’ emotions without a clear reason why. It can also show up as repeating relational patterns across generations, unspoken family grief, or a strong sense of shame that feels older than your own experiences. A trauma-informed therapist can help explore whether your symptoms may be connected to generational patterns.
Is intergenerational trauma linked to adverse childhood experiences (ACEs)?
Adverse childhood experiences can be one pathway through which trauma is transmitted. If a parent is carrying unresolved trauma, their capacity for regulation, attunement, or emotional availability may be affected, even if they are loving and well-intentioned. Children adapt to the emotional climate around them. Over time, these adaptations can become embedded patterns. In this way, unresolved trauma in one generation can increase the likelihood of stress exposure in the next, although protective factors and supportive relationships can interrupt this cycle.
How is intergenerational trauma different from personal trauma?
Personal trauma refers to distress following direct exposure to overwhelming events. Intergenerational trauma involves inherited patterns of nervous system activation, attachment, and belief systems shaped by earlier generations’ experiences. Someone with intergenerational trauma may not have a clear autobiographical memory of danger, yet their body reacts as though threat is present. The distinction is less about severity and more about origin: one arises from direct experience, the other from transmitted adaptation.
Can therapy help interrupt patterns that one generation passes to the next?
Yes. Therapy cannot change what happened in the past, but it can change how the nervous system responds in the present. By increasing regulation, awareness, and relational safety, inherited survival strategies no longer need to remain active. When a person develops greater emotional flexibility, self-compassion, and the capacity to tolerate connection and vulnerability, this shifts the relational environment for future generations. Healing in one person often alters the pattern for those who come after.
References
Herman, J. L. (1992). Trauma and Recovery. Basic Books. https://ia803207.us.archive.org/14/items/radfem-books/Trauma%20and%20Recovery_%20The%20Afterm%20-%20Judith%20L.%20Herman.pdf
Kellermann, N. P. F. (2001). Transmission of Holocaust trauma—An integrative view. Psychiatry, 64(3), 256–267. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11708051/
Maté, G. (2018). In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts. North Atlantic Books. https://archive.org/details/inrealmofhungryg0000matg_d1g3
Meaney, M. J. (2010). Epigenetics and the biological definition of gene × environment interactions. Child Development, 81(1), 41–79. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20331654/
Schwartz, R. C., & Sweezy, M. (2020). Internal Family Systems Therapy (2nd ed.). Guilford Press. https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2019-44317-000
van der Kolk, B. (2014). The Body Keeps the Score. Viking. https://ia601604.us.archive.org/35/items/the-body-keeps-the-score-pdf/The-Body-Keeps-the-Score-PDF.pdf
Yehuda, R., et al. (2016). Holocaust exposure induced intergenerational effects on FKBP5 methylation. Biological Psychiatry, 80(5), 372–380. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26410355/
