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Generational Trauma: How Emotional Pain Trickles Down · Millennial Mental Health Channel

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Like this. Generational trauma leads to things like unhealthy coping mechanisms, leads to
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distrust of others from the last generation, leads to a lot of maladaptive ways
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to deal with stress and to deal with life. And it's important that we
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acknowledge that we can't just push it to the side and say get over it.
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This is Millennial Mental Health Channel. I'm doctor Justin Romano, a Child
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and Adolescent psychiatry fellow, and I'm Eddie Creo, a licensed clinical therapist.
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Our podcast is here because we wanted to start a much needed conversation about mental
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health. Our goal is to teach you as much as we can by sharing
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our own experiences and interviewing experts in the mental health field. We will discuss
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topics like mood disorders, psychotic disorders, substance use, personality disorders, and
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many more. Millennial Mental Health Channel buy Millennials for everyone. We hope you
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enjoyed today's episode. M MHC is a production of Spreaker from iHeartMedia. Emmy.
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Emmy say, I love to start out with Spanish because I know it's
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Eddie's favorite. Right before we started, Justin said, I got some special
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for you and I guess that's what it was. That was special. Thank
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you, my friend. I want you to feel good. I want you
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to feel happy. I want to make you laugh. Thanks. I appreciate
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it. That's why this works, that's why we continue to work. I
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appreciate Yes. Well, uh, we got an awesome episode for you guys
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today. But first I want to check in with you Eddie, now that
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you've heard some Spanish, how you doing, how you feeling? I'm good.
1:41
We are, I guess a little like personal like work story. We're
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in the middle of like intern interviews for next year. UM. This last
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year we decided we wanted a clinical intern to be at the high school with
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us. That's been that's been amazing this year. So we're looking forward to
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trying to find another intern for next school year. I had a couple interviews
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today, we got interviews tomorrow and Friday. It's pretty cool because we ended
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up with I think we're eight interviews total. All eight of the people that
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were interviewing ranked us in this whole like internship fair ranking system. They ranked
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us as either their number one or number two, so almost a quarter of
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the class ranked us really high. So that's super cool. For us just
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at our high school accounseling center. Yeah, I mean work has been working,
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has been cool. I've been really happy at the high school. Things
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have been going well. So yeah, pretty good. How are you my
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friend doing well? It sounds like everybody wants to work with Eddie though up
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there and up there in Portland, you guys get hit by the rain.
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I heard the storms on the Pacific northwestern bad. I mean, I think
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rain was okay on our end, Like it was definitely like windy. There
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was a storm like right before I went home for Christmas that was a little
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bit of a mess, messed up, might travel a little bit, but
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that was fine, and I think we talked about it episode a little bit.
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But when you know, actually in California, the rain was coming down
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pretty hard. Thankfully my parents were fine. But like the coastal towns,
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I heard Santa Cruz, California. If you're from the Bear, if you're
3:12
from California, you're very familiar with Santa Cruz because there's a commercial that plays
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like every spring and summer. It's like at the Santa Cruz Beach board walk
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in the warm California son board walk. Yeah exactly. So yeah, Santa
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Cruz unfortunately got hit apparently around ten million dollars of damages. So sorry,
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sorry Santa Cruz. But like the commercials, catchy, so catchy, and
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yeah, I grew up in Santa Rosa, California, and I heard that
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commercial all the time. I still sing that stupid jingle. But man,
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yeah, good memories for Santa Cruz beach board walk. Uh, you didn't
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tell me how you're doing. You gotta you gotta join in on this doing
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Gray. We have our our baby coming in March, and so we're just
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gearing up for baby, buying all the equipment, strollers, bassinets, baby
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cribs, reading all the baby books and it's it's been fun, interesting,
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a little stressful, but so excited, so excited to be a dad.
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Bet. Yeah, baby Eddie is on his way. I'm so excited for
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him. Baby Eddie is gonna be a beautiful baby. I also want you
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to know I have I will have zero disappointment when the baby's name is not
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actually Eddie. I just want that to be very clear to you, Dana,
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your parents that listen, Uncle Calvin like zero disappointment, Do not worry
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about me. I can't lead you on we're not we're not naming the baby
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Eddie. Yeah, it's all good. Well, justin alluded to it.
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I think we have a good episode. We're excited. I think we always
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have a good episode, but we're excited for today's episode. It's something that
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we have had kind of like on our list of episodes for a while,
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something that we wanted to cover. We talked about it as we're kind of
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heading into December and get it ready for the new year. This was an
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episode topic we wanted to cover, but we wanted to talk about generational trauma.
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It's something that it's probably a newer topic that gets talked about, something
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that hasn't been talked about or maybe even understood for a long time, but
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definitely something that impacts group tons of people, groups of people, populations of
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people, A ton of people can be impacted by generational trauma and if we
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don't understand what the impacts are, unfortunately can keep happening. So definitely we
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want to cover it, want to make it easy to understand and kind of
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go over some stories. But really the generational trauma, like a definition for
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it is the transmission of the psychological effects of traumatic events from one generation to
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the next. So basically trauma that goes from our grandparents to our parents to
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us that may potentially spill over to the next generation. A basic example of
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it is if someone experiences abuse from a parent, that person is more likely
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to be abusive to their children. Not the easiest example to talk about,
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but something that is very real, especially in our line of work. And
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this doesn't just include This isn't just limited to physical abuse. It can also
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include sexual, emotional and verbal and verbal can be stuffed like harsh parenting styles
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and shaming. And to give you more of a concrete example, and we're
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going to talk a lot about the studies that have actually gone on in this
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area. Is largely based on societal traumas, big events that happen to people.
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But say someone was serving in World War Two and they developed severe PTSD
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symptoms. They come home and family immediately notices that that person is not quite
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the same. The father becomes emotionally distant and establishes a pattern where he is
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unable to talk about any emotionally difficult thing. The dat explodes on the family
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when things go wrong, where it's times of high stress, so it feels
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like they're unable to talk to him about anything. The children grow up in
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this environment we're sharing their emotions leads to their parents blowing up on them,
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and they learn over time to bottle their emotions to stay physically safe because they
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don't want Dad to blow up on them. And then the children never learn
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to really express themselves in a healthy way, so they bottle their emotions and
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have similar explosions like their dad did. When the pressure builds up and spills
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over. The children eventually have their own children who similarly struggle to express their
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emotions in the same way, and the cycle continues. You know, when
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Justin sent these notes and I was looking at his example like this is like
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this could be used for a ton of different examples and not just like PTSD,
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just like parents that don't learn how to be like emotionally open or present
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with their children. It doesn't have to be like the extreme example of PTSD.
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But I feel like it's an example that I've heard like a ton over
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the last you know, five six years of being a therapist of like mom
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and dad have a certain way of uarantine or how they behave with their children
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that impacts how children perceive what is like normal in a family system, and
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then that transitions to or translates to how they are eventually with their own children
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or maybe even other people in their life. Totally lots of potential examples,
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and you know, losing a child in a family system, bad car accidents,
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at losing loved ones in general, people being in prison, people being
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in war. There's so many potential examples of things that could cause generational trauma
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and totally impacted a family unit. To give you some more examples, we're
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going to jump right into storytime. I'll go first with my story. This
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came right away when we were talking about generational trauma. But I remember one
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day and I might have talked about it on the show before, but one
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day in grad school, there was an article about I think it was like
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physical punishment, so like spanking basically in families, and like is this okay?
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Is this not okay? I think we now know there's a ton of
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examples research as to why it's not okay and should not be used as a
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form of parenting. But I remember the question was posed to the whole class,
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like are you for or against spanking your children? And it was like
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me and like two other people were like, I mean, it's not that
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bad, like I was spanked when I was a child, Like it's totally
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fine. And then like the class was not having it, like they were
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not like thrilled with what we had to say, and like they were there
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was not a lot of support, which is completely fine. It was good
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at learning experience for me, and it's really been something that's been important for
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me like moving forward as like as I practice and as a clinician. The
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thought of like just because I went through something, or just because our parents
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went through something, or just because like different groups of people have gone through
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something does not mean that, like and we talked about this recently, it
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doesn't mean that like the next group has to go through something to deserve respect
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or does it deserve things in life, like just because I survived something like
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and that was the thing too, That was the argument, and it was
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the dumbest argument. Well, I got spanked, so I was totally fine.
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Not true. Most likely you got spanked and you were not fine,
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and you do not do it with things the best and that should not be
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something that gets translated or transitioned to the next group of people. Yes,
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overall official MMHC stance. No, spanking doesn't really seem to data wise and
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study wise, actually helped that much and just tends to make kids more likely
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to commit violence in the future. But thence beside the point. My story
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briefly is, I just recently did a rotation at a child advocacy center where
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they do forensic interviews on kids who have been the victims of abuse, and
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God, that was a heavy rotation. I'd heard some crazy things that made
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me just shudder and shiver and shake. But my first reaction to a lot
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of these situations I can't believe this creep would do something this horrible to a
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child. And the staff there at the Child Advocacy center really helped me realize
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that that mindset doesn't really help that much. They tried to help me see
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that the perp, and I always love using that word, the perp likely
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went through a lot of abuse themselves. And the program worked really closely with
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law enforcement to punish people who had abused kids, because I think that's an
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important thing. You gotta have punishments in place there. But they also worked
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with social services to be able to offer a lot of resources to the family
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and to the purp such as therapy, psychiatry, educational resources, speech therapy,
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classes on problematic sexual behaviors, financial services, transportation. So their goal
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was to stop the cycle of abuse and give the family the resources it needed
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to heal from the trauma so that it didn't lead to generational trauma. And
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I thought that was so cool. I thought their mindset, their goal was
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perfect, and they just did such a great job of doing it. Yeah,
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that's it's the cycle it is you talk about, like the cycle of
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abuse, cycle of trauma, Like there has to be somewhere where the cycle
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stops. And if we're not, if we're just going to treat it the
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same way every single time and we're not going to try something different, the
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cycle is going to continue. And like there's no stopping it until you have
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like that that stop gap like this, like having the goal of Okay,
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yes there's repercussions, there's consequences, but we're also going to try and give
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you things that can be helpful for you in the future and so that this
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cycle stops here. So it stops here with you. And so many people
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when they go through something really traumatic or really stressful, their coping strategy is
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to avoid it. They go through the defense mechanism of denial. They don't
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want to accept it, they don't want to face it because it's it's hard.
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It's hard to face your traumas. It's hard to try and process what
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you have been through. But unless you do, and you do face that
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trauma, you try and process what happened to you, you're more likely going
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to commit that further down the line to people, to your children. So
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we always advocate please, please, please, if you've been through something terrible
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and you need help working through it, please reach out for help. Yeah,
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so real quick, this is like beside the point. The word perp
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is that like perpetrator? Is that what we're going for? Yes, I
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guess I can't explain that. No, no, no, you're good because
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the first thing I thought of was criminal Minds. For years, for years,
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I would watch Criminal Minds and not know what the hell they were saying,
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but it was unsub right. Is that what the phrase was or the
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word was, Like I just needed to clarify, that's all. It's not
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even that related. Sorry, No, I appreciate that, because I mean
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there might be someone out there who's like, what the hell is a PERP.
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Yeah. So when I started writing this episode, I thought this would
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be somewhat of a side of science with not a lot of hard data or
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evidence or studies. But I who's really wrong? Full disclosure. We got
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a lot of our info for this episode from an article from the American Psychological
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Association entitled the Legacy of Trauma. We're putting the link in the description if
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you want to check it out for yourself, but it did a great job
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of detailing a lot of the papers and data and research that's come out on
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this topic. For those that don't know, the American Psychological Association is the
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leading organization for psychology in the US. And the reason why I say it
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that way is last week I was given a presentation in the health class here.
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I sure would I and I introduced the APA in such a manner so
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really adds nothing to today's episode. I just wanted to throw that out there,
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Okay, So moving forward with the article from the APA. How this
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all got started, How this field got started. People first became interested in
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this after the Holocaust, like one of the worst tragedy in human history.
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They were interested in how such horrific events would change family dynamics and the pervasive,
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like psychological impact that it was bound to have on people directly impacted,
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and then the people directly after and the generations after. So in nineteen sixty
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six, Vivian Racoff hopefully I'm saying that correctly, released one of the first
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studies on this, showing high rates of psychological distress among Holocaust survivors, which
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sounds correct. Interestingly, families tended to develop different adaptation styles such as like
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feeling like a victim numb also you can call this being emotionally detached. Rates
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of depression and anxiety and PTSD were higher in these families compared to the families
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that did not have trauma. And then the rates of depression and anxiety were
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particularly higher in the families where the parents adopted the unhealthy styles of being numb
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and a victim and the theories that they theorized that children developed high anxiety to
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compensate for their parents who are not able to handle stress situations or high stress
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situations. Basically the parentification of the children, so giving children younger children who
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are maybe not ready for these responsibilities or these responsibilities that they have to have
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at their young age. Basically giving them responsibilities that they were not ready for
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and that they had to just do and they had to undertake because of the
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impact that it had on their parents. I see the most parentification of children
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in cases where parents have really bad substance use issues. So, for example,
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say a mom has really bad trauma, she never works with someone to
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develop coping skills or processing it, and her main way of coping with the
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trauma she went through was alcohol. And so I've seen parents who drink a
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lot of alcohol and spend significant amounts of time intoxicated, and then the children
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essentially have to learn to parentify themselves to be able to take care of themselves
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because their parents are unable to do it. So that's kind of what we're
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talking about with parentification of the children. Another major source of research in this
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area was with Amy Bombay, who studied the Indian residential schools in Canada,
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which, oh my gosh, so many reports over the past couple years of
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mass graves of just hundreds of bodies found underneath these schools. It's horrible what
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happened up there, and I mean horrible what we've done in the United States
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too, But reports, reports show that these schools ripped children away from their
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mothers and their cultures and tried to teach them to be ashamed of their culture,
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their language, and their heritage. Studies show that the children and grandchildren
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of that generation reported more psychological distress and more overall suicide attempts. So that's
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a really good example of that generational trauma that the generations that didn't even go
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to those schools had the downstream effects that still affected them and hurt their mental
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health significantly. When we're getting ready for this episode, I was thinking of
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how like for some people maybe these examples like wouldn't I don't like hit home
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or wouldn't feel like it's something that like impacts them. But if you are
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in the United States, maybe Canada, to probably other countries. But I
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guess I'm just speaking of the United States experience and me growing up in the
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United States. When we talk about generational trauma, we have to talk about
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the African American community, of the black community here. They have gone through
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a unspeakable amount of trauma and the last four or five hundred years whatever it
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is at this point, like that they have had to deal with, like
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with slavery, and how this country was built, like it almost unspeakable.
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It is unspeakable, just the amount of trauma that a whole group of people
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that have had to go through and how much that ripple effect has continued to
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this day and like still continues. I mean, the African American community,
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the black community has gone through so much trauma and went through so much trauma
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in the early days of this country. They continue to face a significant amount
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of trauma to this day. You know, hear white people will make the
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argument that this was years ago, they should get over it. Fuck that
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I haven't cussed yet today. That's the first time I'm gonna cuss. No,
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Like, there's no there's no getting over it. Like there's no like,
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I guess you hear the argument too of like, well we weren't around,
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Like what do I have to do with that? Well, it's like
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what you have to do with it is that you're you're still kind of helping
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to perpetuate these this discrimination, this unfairness that people have to do with because
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of like the way that society is built, the way that our country has
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been built, in the way that our country has been for years, and
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the way that has been the country has been for a long time and has
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now been like amplified over them. And this is anecdotal, but the amount
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that has been amplified over the last I guess twenty years of my life that
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have really seen like how black people in this country get treated so damn poorly.
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I guess the point is that we're that we're trying to make is that
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it is incredibly hard to quote get over these severe traumas. Just at these
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traumas, specifically slavery, extreme racism, things like lynchings that people had to
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see. I mean, slavery is not segregation. These are not things that
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like there are people alive today that still and I chuckle because like it like
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really puts it into context. There are people who are alive today that were
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still around when like things like slavery. And honestly, there could be an
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argument that, like slavery is still a thing with the prison system, but
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that's for a different episode. Things like slavery, things like segregation, We're
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not that far off. There are people who are alive today who are around
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when it happened. On both sides of it. It is a part of
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our long term history as a country. It's also a part of our modern
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history, and it's very important that we acknowledge that because it's not something that
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you can just get over when it's still a part of the country today.
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So all that to be said, like this generational trauma leads to things like
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unhealthy coping mechanisms, leads to distrust of others from the last generation, lead
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to a lot of maladaptive ways to deal with stress and to deal with life,
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and it's important that we acknowledge that we can't just push it to the
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side and say get over it, and we have to learn how to actively
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try and dismantle a lot of the systems in place that are preventing the healing
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of this. And I think systemic racism is also preventing the healing of the
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generational trauma that African Americans have been through. For example, there were many
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incidents of scientists using black people for involuntary medical research, which created a lot
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of distrust of medicine in the black population. I don't know if you guys
21:48
have ever heard of the Tuskegee experiments on syphilis, and it was horrible,
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horrible what they did to black people without their knowledge. This was not voluntary
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research, so that kind of stuff that you could argue is generational trauma,
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because I know a lot of Black people today who are still like, I'm
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not so sure about doctors. I don't know if I can trust them because
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of that trauma that that previous generation went through. Not to mention the systemic
22:14
racism that prevented black people from getting loans, building their wealth and having the
22:18
means to become financially independent and pulling themselves up out of poverty. And we've
22:23
talked about a lot of this a couple of times on the show, but
22:26
that black people were specifically left out of the GI bills. So they came
22:30
back from World War Two and they didn't have a lot of the same opportunities
22:34
that white people did in terms of loans, in terms of college degrees.
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They've had to work so much harder for everything they have. And this is
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why we have to support our African American communities. We have to try and
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heal that damage to what was done with them and help them lift themselves out
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of poverty. Is a really good place to start. Back to your point
22:52
about the like distrust in medicine. I mean, just look at recently,
22:56
like with COVID and like the COVID vaccine. Like a lot of people of
23:00
color and families of color have a big distrust for medicine in this country,
23:06
and there was a big push in these communities to try and convince them that
23:11
it's okay to take this vaccine and that things will be fine. But there's
23:15
a pretty big barrier that they had to push through in order to get people
23:18
to think and know that this was safe to take. Well, great example,
23:22
and that probably is one of the contributing factors as to why black people
23:27
were more likely to die from COVID than white people's because they were so much
23:30
more resistant to get the vaccine. Among other issues in this country, that
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definitely was one of them. Yeah, So we've given a lot of historical
23:38
examples and some of the early studies that were done. So we want to
23:42
discuss a little bit about the mechanism of how generational trauma happens. The example
23:48
we're going to use the first one is looking at the Rwandan genocide in nineteen
23:52
ninety four. If you've ever seen the movie Hotel Rwanda, which I'm going
23:57
to go on a little bit of a tangent. I watched this movie my
24:00
freshman year of high school. Was not ready to see the movie when it
24:06
was Dude, it like, ah, it fucked me up, Like it
24:11
was like the day before Christmas break or holiday break in high school my freshman
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year, and it like I'm so bad at watching movies where there's like I
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get like such like an emotional response when like people die in movies or like
24:27
family like family issues happen. And there, dude, I'm telling you,
24:33
that movie mess me up. And I think I went through the whole day
24:36
with like a pit in my stomach of like I feel sick, like this
24:40
is not anyway, that's a tough movie to watch, but unfortunately it's tough.
24:45
But but it's like historical, like it happened, Like it's not like
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obviously there's there's dramatization in movies, but it happened. So anyway, I
24:53
can't remember the whole like premise justin jump in about the basically the Rwanda genocide,
25:00
but if I remember, there was two groups of people, it was
25:02
like the Hutus and the tooth season. Am I on the right track or
25:04
am I am I butchering this? No? We're doing this on no?
25:08
Okay, No, I wasn't wrong. I was not wrong. We're okay,
25:11
I'm googling this. Yeah, nope, I was right. Boom,
25:15
thank you. Okay, it was I had to look that up because I
25:18
felt terrible if I was wrong. Okay, So let me give you the
25:25
the the quick Wikipedia rundown. We're doing this life like as we're doing this
25:30
on the fly, as we record. I love this, okay. So
25:33
the Rwandan genocide it occurred between April seventh and fifteenth April seventh and then July
25:38
fifteenth of nineteen ninety four during the Rwandan Civil War. During this period of
25:42
around one hundred days, members of the Tootsi minority ethnic group, as well
25:48
as some of the moderate Hutu and tah were killed by armed Hutu militias,
25:53
and the most widely accepted scholarly estimates are around five hundred thousand to six hundred
25:59
and sixty two thousand Tutsi deaths. So it was it was I did say
26:03
the correct thankfully, because I would have really felt stupid anyway. Okay,
26:07
So we'll continue that was going on and during the Rwanda genocide, mothers who
26:14
went through the trauma of the civil war and the genocide, they had changes
26:18
in their communication style. So the second generation, the children, they showed
26:22
heightened poverty, greater family work burden, and compromise parenting because of this.
26:27
And meanwhile, teens discuss how they felt the factors affected in their own lives.
26:33
And then many said that poverty rendered them unable to attend school and force
26:36
them to work harder to help keep the family afloat. And there are theories
26:40
that people developed survival messages like you can't trust anyone during this time and trying
26:45
to protect themselves from other groups of people. So in a survival situation like
26:48
war, this survival message might be true, like it might be a way
26:52
to keep families safe, to make sure that you don't end up in a
26:56
dangerous situation. But if this message has passed on to children living in quote
27:00
normal situations, so after the trauma has happened, it can create unhealthy habits
27:06
that create distrust and fear, and then it can make people afraid to ask
27:10
for help and rely on others and not know why because we're passing on this
27:14
message from generation to generation. Yes, and thanks for diving a little bit
27:18
into that genocide. I honestly did not know much about it. I got
27:22
you and wow, over half a million people were massacred. That is horrible.
27:27
That is just horrible. So there are a lot of psychological reasons why
27:33
that trauma is passed down or social mechanisms why that has passed down, But
27:37
they are genetic too, which brings me to our nerd Alert, which is
27:44
the part of the show where we like to put on our sexy scientist glasses
27:48
and we usually talk about the brain on nerd Alert. Today we're talking about
27:52
epigenetics, which is nerdy enough. I figured it more into a nerd alert.
27:57
But we've all heard about genetics, so humans have in total. I
28:03
think it's fascinating that we know specifically how many genes we have. We got
28:07
about twenty five thousand genes that we translate into proteins that make us humans,
28:11
So there's like twenty five thousand different things that make an entire human. I
28:15
think that's fascinating to know you have a finite number of genes that twenty five
28:21
thousand number, But how those genes are expressed can vary greatly. Your genes
28:29
are under really tight regulatory control, but there can be changed as to how
28:33
tightly those genes are packaged and stored that alter how much they are expressed.
28:41
So if genes are packed in really tight, it's harder to get to those
28:45
genes to express them. But there are ways that your body can open those
28:48
genes up, make them more exposed, so that they turn into proteins more
28:52
often. So how tightly or loosely they are packed is essential or is essentially
28:59
your epigenetics. So, for example, if you're under a lot of stress,
29:03
your body will release more stress hormone cortisol. In states of chronic stress,
29:08
your body will loosen up those genes that package cortisol so it can crank
29:14
up production more often and more quickly because the body thinks it needs more of
29:18
that cortisol to survive. So genetics are obviously passed down between generation, but
29:23
epigenetics, that machinery around your genes, also gets passed down. So if
29:30
a mother has epigenetic changes that are causing excessive expression of say that cortisol gene,
29:37
the children are more likely to overexpress cortisol as well. So studies have
29:41
shown us that trauma doesn't change those twenty five thousand genes those are set.
29:48
That doesn't change the genes, but does affect the epigenetics, how those genes
29:52
are stored and accessed for use science. Was it a jump street twenty one
30:03
street? Was there like a whole thing, where like Channing Datum was like
30:06
hi, and like goes up to the board and is like writing all these
30:10
like wrong equations. It's like science science, It's completely wrong. That's damn
30:17
Yeah. I mean it's important to think about. It's important that people know
30:19
because I think trauma is being discussed more and more often now again anecdotal these
30:25
days, and like more and more people are having like at least a basic
30:27
understanding of trauma and like how much it's not so much this like like before
30:33
I went to war and like I experienced trauma, Like trauma is perceived trauma.
30:38
So if that's something that you perceive as traumatic, that in itself can
30:44
impact the way that you behave and the way that you do things and the
30:45
way you interact with your environment, that can impact you for your lifetime.
30:49
During your lifetime, you could have children with those children that trauma, that
30:55
perceived trauma you had can impact the way that you interact with your children.
30:57
That can impact the relationship be happy with your children. Like it's wild and
31:03
there's so many different mechanisms, and we talked about a few of them that
31:06
it does get passed down that if you go through something really traumatic, there's
31:11
so many different ways that it can impact generations down the line. So we
31:17
gave you all the problems. You're hopefully wondering, what do we do?
31:21
Well, you came to the right place. Hopefully you didn't stop listening,
31:22
because this is what you can do. Here's some hopefully helpful information. Most
31:27
of the evidence based interventions that we have are based around supporting families. I
31:32
mean, I think that's why it's so important in therapy and mental health treatment.
31:34
In psychiatry, there is a family involvement and family component. These programs
31:41
teach effective communication, it reduces family conflict, and it teaches kids coping skills
31:45
and how to say things like no to drugs. All these things have been
31:48
shown to be effective. It also appears to be important to have people connected
31:52
to the community so that there is trust in the people around them. They
31:56
feel safe to ask for help, and other people outside the family can suggest
32:00
that the family get help in resources. This is really important. We talk
32:04
about this a lot. Me working in a public school, we talk about
32:07
the importance of students having a trusted adult in the building. Like, if
32:13
there's a trusted adult, there's a higher chance that they ask for help.
32:15
If they ask for help, there's a higher chance that they get the resource
32:17
that they need. If they're students that don't currently have a trusted adult,
32:22
we try and figure out how we can help them get a trusted adult.
32:23
We do all these things to help build trust for students and help them get
32:28
a trusted adult. Then I think that the positive impact is going to be
32:31
it's gonna be great, it's gonna be really helpful, like moving down the
32:35
line. Even just the fact that you all are listening to this and trying
32:38
to understand it better is also an important factor in addressing generational trauma. You
32:45
can't fix what you don't know, what you don't understand. Just having a
32:47
better understanding already is going to have a better impact on people that you interact
32:53
with in the future. It creates that ripple effect, and people that you
32:58
positively impact they can positively impact other people, and the people they positively impact
33:02
can impact. It goes on and on, and I can say it until
33:07
I get tongue tight. It is good. It is helpful. I think
33:10
you made a really good point about having a trusted adult or a mentor.
33:16
There's actually been a lot of good data going into mentorship programs, into making
33:22
sure that young people have someone that they can go to, who they can
33:25
trust, and how especially in young transgender people where the suicide rate is so
33:30
high in the transgender population, just having a single adult that they trust and
33:37
that they can go to for help reduces their suicide risks significantly. So there's
33:43
there's such an individualistic mindset in the United States where it's like you gotta do
33:47
it on your own, you gotta be self sufficient, you can't ever ask
33:52
for help, you gotta It's just so unhealthy and we need to rethink the
33:57
way our society is structured. Easier said than done, I know, but
34:02
it is for the sake of everyone. It's for everyone's benefit that we start
34:07
supporting people instead of just constantly trying to tear everyone down and trying to be
34:14
so autonomous and individualistic. But it's also important to be aware of some of
34:19
the most significant historical traumas out there that people around you are going through.
34:25
Similar what we mentioned to with African American people in this country. If someone
34:30
experiences a trauma, give them a way to talk about it or work through
34:34
it, similar to what we were mentioning at the beginning of the episode with
34:37
the Child Advocacy center, give them resources, give them therapy. Therapy can
34:42
be a wonderful tool for helping to process traumas, and in any population,
34:49
it's really important to implement healthy lifestyle habits in general and try and instill the
34:53
importance of these in the next generation. Oftentimes, people of lower socioeconomical the
35:00
ones that go through the most traumas. They're the ones that have the least
35:02
access to food, They're the ones that are working jobs that don't allow them
35:06
the free time to get exercise. So we always push for the importance of
35:10
a healthy diet, trying to get exercise, stress reduction, and getting good
35:14
sleep because those are the things that help your mental health the most at baseline.
35:19
Those are the evidence based measures that anyone and everyone can do to better
35:23
their mental health, and that's not always possible in those populations that we want
35:30
to be aware of that because they are under so much socioeconomic stress. But
35:36
trying to promote those healthy habits and giving people a way to have those habits
35:40
in the future. We think is such an important thing. We kind of
35:45
talked about it last episode of just like the importance of like small steps,
35:49
small changes are more attainable. Trying to change something greatly overnight is gonna leave
35:54
you feeling discouraged. It is going to leave you feeling like it's not possible.
35:59
But trying to have like a culture basically, whether that's in your if
36:02
you're a teacher in your classroom, if you work at a school in the
36:05
school, a culture of in your clinic that you work at, it,
36:08
whatever profession you're in. Having a culture of these positive ways to take care
36:15
of yourself and positive lifestyle changes cannot only help with like coping and not only
36:20
help with someone's overall mental health and well being, but can help with how
36:22
they process certain things and how they deal with significant impacts that they've had.
36:28
Yes, dude, so right on fire. Well, as much as we'd
36:35
love to talk forever, we do got to wrap us up a little bit.
36:38
We're going to hit you with some take on points. The first one
36:42
being Generational trauma is an area of scientific research that started with studying families who
36:47
had gone through the Holocaust. Generational trauma leads to changes both psychologically, socially
36:53
and epigenetically that can impact multiple generations down the line. The main way to
36:59
over come generational trauma is to be aware that it happens, support families who
37:04
have been through tough dramatic events, and being aware of historical trauma that may
37:07
be impacting the people around you, and always, as a general rule,
37:13
spread as much love and be as supportive as possible. It's so easy to
37:16
get into the negative mindset of someone struggling. Oh it's their choices that have
37:22
put them there, but that doesn't really help anyone. It's important to try
37:25
and think of, oh, someone struggling, how can I support them?
37:30
How can I lift them up? We can make this world a better place
37:32
together. There it is. Thank you all for listening, thank you all
37:37
for writing with us and rocking with us. We're gonna leave you all with
37:39
the same, maybe not the same. I feel like I change it once
37:43
in a while, with the similar message that we tell you every single time.
37:46
If you enjoyed what you heard today. We have a ton more episodes.
37:51
I don't even know what number are on at this point, but you
37:52
can find our episodes wherever you get your podcasts. If you listen on an
37:57
Apple podcast, feel free leave us a five star review. You can all
38:00
leave us a comment if you would like. On Spotify, you can leave
38:01
us a five star review. We would love that. You can find us
38:05
on social media Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, at Millennial MHC I think,
38:09
even on YouTube. That's our handle at Millennial MHC. We're on the YouTube
38:13
too. You can watch us interact with each other. If you don't just
38:15
want to listen, email us too if you'd like at no not at It's
38:22
Millennial mh channel at gmail dot com. I've talked enough. Justin has talked
38:27
enough. We are done for today. Thank you all for listening, and
38:30
as always, like the great Marshawn Lynch One said, take care of you
38:34
all. Mentals