Latest / Internal Insights / Generational Trauma and Why You React the Way You Do
Transcript
- Ted Thao: Hey, I'm Ted Thao This is Internal Insights. I'm a licensed professional counselor, which means I spend most of my weeks listening closely to people work through the hardest parts of being alive. This podcast is where I take what I'm hearing without any names or identifying details and open it up into a conversation for anyone willing to think a little harder about themselves and the world around them. Have you ever snapped at someone over something tiny? Then sat there and wondered, where did that reaction even come from? Let's talk about generational trauma, because it might explain more than you think. Trauma is what happens when something overwhelming hits us and we don't have room to process it. We usually think of it as something that happened to one person. But painful experiences don't always stop with the person who lived through them. They can be passed quietly to the people who come after. Picture this A grandmother who grew up in a time of scarcity. She saves every rubber band, never leaves food on her plate, and gets tense whenever a bill arrives. Nobody sat her grandkids down to explain why. They just exorbed the message that money is never safe and the hard times are always coming. Her son grew up watching that worry play out at the kitchen table. And he learned to stay quiet about money so he wouldn't set anything off. Years later, one of those grandkids feels a knot in their stomach every time they check their bank balance. And they can't quite say why. This isn't about money. Researchers have been studying this for decades. The idea took off when clinicians noticed the pattern in children of Holocaust survivors. Since then, Researchers have described it passing through several routes at once family dynamics, what gets said out loud and what gets burried how caregivers respond to their child's fears, and the stories of a family tells about itself and the culture families live in. Biology may be a part of the picture too, but scientists are still working out how much. In animal studies, Some effects of stress do appear in offsprings, and humans, the evidence of passing trauma down through biology isn't settled yet. What is clear is that the everyday environment a kid grows up in shapes them a great deal. So, then what does this look like day-to-day? It can show up as always being alert. Reading a room before you're even in it. It can mean trying so hard to keep everyone happy that you lose track of what you want. It can mean feeling guilty when you rest or go quiet instead of how you feel. Maybe you're the one who's always keeping the peace, or the one who never asked for help because asking felt risky even when you were young. Someone asked me recently, why do I react so strongly to small things like a certain tone of voice when nothing big is happening right now? And that's a fair question. The answer is often that your body learned something important a long time ago. When a raised voice meant danger, your system learned to treat the tone as a warning sign. The reaction isn't a flaw of your character. It's an old lesson still running in the background. Many people feel embarrassed by these reactions, but they make a lot more sense once you see the history behind them. Once you see that, the reaction stops feeling like proof that something is wrong with you and starts looking like information. Notice what happens in your body first. Didn't ask where that signal might have been learnt. Those two questions alone can change how you respond. And if the pattern feels heavy, talking it through with a counselor can help you sort out what belongs to your family and what you get to decide for yourself. Not every family carries this, and you don't need a diagnosis or a therapist to begin noticing your patterns. The good news is that patterns can change, even the ones that started long before you had any say. You didn't Pick the lessons you grew up with. But you get to decide which ones you keep. This week, try noticing the moment your body reacts before your mind has a story for it. Just notice it. You don't have to fix anything yet. That's where I'll leave it for today. You don't have to agree with everything I said, but I'd invite you to sit with it a little longer before you move on to whatever is next. I'm Ted Thao this has been Internal Insights. And if you want to learn more about my work, you can find me at internal insights therapy dot com. Take care, and I'll talk to you next time.