Intergenerational Trauma - Essay Example

? Intergenerational Trauma and its Consequences Intergenerational Trauma and its Consequences Intergenerational trauma is thetype of trauma that transcends from one generation to the next. This happens when the generation that initially experiences the trauma does not take the responsibility of resolving the trauma. Transmission of this type of trauma may occur from parents to children. From children, this type of trauma passes down to the next generation. In other instances, a community that suffers disaster may never get over the resulting pain and may transmit the pain to the succeeding generation. Intergenerational trauma has the potential to cause detrimental effects down many generations. This paper will discuss the transmission of intergenerational trauma within the family unit and the community and highlight the detrimental effects that it causes. Familial Traumas Intergenerational trauma may result from insufficient mourning for familial and cultural tragedies that usually passes over to the next generation. In the familial case, family crises, cases of hopelessness, and despair, when improperly managed, may project themselves in children or other members of the family. Negligence of children during their childhood translates to feelings of rejection later in life (Krugman, 1987). Negligence may involve any case of inadequate response and attention to the needs of a child. Any experience that causes obstruction in the discovery of the self in the individual affects the wellbeing of the child. Children who undergo trauma in their childhood are likely to project similar situations to others in the future. Intergenerational trauma passes down the generations. In the family unit, when adults lack the capacity to control the tension and trauma affecting them, they have the tendency of taking it out on the children within the family. Psychologists have described the mechanism through which this happens as triangular. When adults cannot manage conflicts carefully, there is a high probability of transmitting the conflict to the younger generation (Krugman, 1987). Children have the tendency of taking in the tension and its effects only appear in later days. In some cultures and families, there is a justification of taking any form of tension on children than other adults. For example, spouses facing physical abuse usually avenge it on children. In other cases, parents undergoing depression are likely to ignore the needs and feelings of children. Transmission of trauma from one generation to the following generation has proved very rampant. According to Marilyn (1999), in most cases, parents opt to use children as scapegoats and this leads to endless blames. In other families, children face the compulsion of taking sides with either of the parents, reversing familial hierarchies. Other familial crises may reverse roles making the child a caregiver to siblings and sometimes to the parents. When children carry different forms of unresolved traumas from their childhood to the adulthood, the trauma typically moves from one generation to the next. Children growing from any of these situations are likely to present effects of the unresolved trauma in their future relationships and decisions and in to the generation that follows. Depending on the level of trauma that an individual experiences, the trauma may linger in the mind of the individual for long periods. The individual may harbor vivid images of any violence that he or she faced and these may affect the tone of speech, feelings, and may determine an individual’s reaction to future circumstances. The impact may prove to be gross and extend to affect interpersonal behavior. The depth of trauma depends on the relationship between the victim and the assailant. Any form of abuse emanating from a close family member who should be a secure source of protection and security causes immeasurable trauma to a child. This causes the child to feel immensely insecure and with time, the child projects vulnerability. Such vulnerability compels the child to develop response mechanisms in order to cope with the surging trauma. Children are likely to trade their well-being with maintaining closeness with the parent despite the trauma faced. Cultural Transmission of Trauma When disasters strike a certain community or group of people, it may prove impossible for the people to burry the pain and carry on with their lives. A community comprises of families and unity can only exist when families are intact. Disasters usually devastate communities by breaking up families. The pain that results when disasters hit communities may persist into future generations. The effects of past traumas pose a great threat to future generations. Many of the societies that have faced traumas in the past have presented progression of the pain into the future (Marilyn, 1999). Consequences of Intergenerational Trauma When parents neglect the needs of children in their childhood, they suffer deprivation of their childhood privileges (Salma, Andelson, and Shapiro, 1975). During family crises, children may result to carrying out the roles of caregivers. This deprives them of the opportunity of being children and compels them to take demanding responsibilities. In some cases, some children have had to abandon being children and take up motherly and fatherly roles to themselves and their siblings. These children yearn for attention, emotional and physical support from their parents. However, they never receive satisfaction for any of their needs. These children often result to suppression of their needs (Josette, 2004). The suppression is an outward expression of satisfaction while deep inside they struggle to build a self-image. They feel rejected and consider themselves a burden to others. The feelings of rejection often affect their development. It hinders the realization of the real self. When a child fails to define the ‘self’, he or she may never realize the highest need in the hierarchy of needs. This translates to the fact that these children lack the opportunity of realizing self-actualization. In worse scenarios, transmission of trauma from parents to children may affect the individuals that children become when they mature. The way these children perceive the parent that deprived them of their childhood rights will have adverse effects on their social life (Salma, Andelson, and Shapiro, 1975). Children will likely form an association of the characters inherent in their parents with those projecting any similar aspects. This will translate to fear towards such people. The association may often go overboard and attract unwarranted fears even in adulthood. The negative mentality may hinder formation of worthwhile relationships in the lives of such individuals. Children that have experienced strained parent-child relationships are likely to project inferiority- superiority complex in their relationships (Krugman, 1987). Due to the persistence of rejection, some individuals who struggled to get over rejection in their childhood portray inferiority in their relationships. Often, they face an inward conviction that they are insufficient in their relationships. Some partners may seek to dominate decision making in their relationships in order to counter the rejection that they once faced in their childhood. The union of two vulnerable individuals is highly susceptible individuals to critical times. Its structure may lack a firm foundation and defined boundaries and this compromises the relationship greatly. The previous trauma prevents each individual with a level of incompetence in cognition and emotional instabilities, factors that serve to limit the structure and functionality of the relationship (Krugman, 1987). In other cases, individuals that have experienced abusive relationships seek to establish symbiotic relationships with their partners. They rely on such symbiosis to counter the rejection they have faced in the past. Any prompt to exercise autonomy triggers rebellion from the individual. The rebellion results to counter any moves that may cause the individual to experience separateness. According to Krugman (1987), separation of such an individual from his or her partner acts as a vivid reminder of the agony and pain of the past. This only serves to complicate the relationship because it limits the other partner from any autonomous living. In addition, the surging trauma affects an individual’s choice of an eligible partner. Children growing in families with crises may adopt a resistance attitude towards any form of emotional turmoil. They are likely to prefer a partner who presents similar characteristics and attitude towards life (Krugman, 1987). A marriage between two individuals with such an attitude towards life will present numerous challenges. A relationship will require an emotional attachment and this may pose a great challenge to the couple. They may lack the capacity to resolve issues because they hold back emotionally. A distance will crop up between the partners when an emotional tension occurs. In addition, intergenerational trauma may force an individual to avenge the pain on their future family. Children growing up in violent families may turn violent against their spouses or children. They may avenge in exact measure or worsen the situation in the future. Parents who have grown in violent relationships project violence to their children through physical abuse to their children and spouses. On the other hand, some individuals growing in abused families tend to settle for partners who have acquired parallel outlooks of life. Individuals who assume a dominating attitude to counter the abuse they faced are likely to prefer traumatized individuals have a passive personality (O’Loughlin, 2010). The dominant partner seeks to provide security and protection to the passive partner expecting exclusive loyalty back. However, this coexistence does not last and the wife may withdraw from him emotionally in her passive nature, a situation that is likely to lead the dominant partner into more devastation. Since the union does not meet his expectations, he results to physical abuse of his wife and may extend to the children. Unresolved traumas from previous experiences compel women to stick to abusive relationships. Previous trauma affected their self-esteem negatively and the projection of the pain to future relationships may force an individual to persevere the humiliation in an abusive relationship (O’Loughlin, 2010). Such women have contented with low self–esteem and lack the motivation to move out of the relationship. Intergenerational trauma from the past has the potential to trigger women to learn the trait of hopelessness, an attribute that hinders them from walking out of abusive relationships. Intergenerational trauma has detrimental effects on the society. Families with inherent cases of abuse present a closed and isolated system from the rest of the society. Such forms of trauma alienate the abusive families from the entire society (Kai, 1976). The alienated family has a high susceptibility to losing ties with the entire society and leads to an enmeshment of the family internally. Horrible traumas cause a shift on the equilibrium affecting its standing in the society. Intergenerational trauma devastates a society immensely. It may cause the society a high level of hopelessness especially if the trauma results from a situation that robbed the people of necessities (Kai, 1976). Segmentation of the family unit causes a real blow to the societal make-up. Trauma may devalue a culture completely causing a decline in societal structure. Any trauma emanating from the family unit has immense effects to the society because of the family significance in relation to the entire society. Since the family takes a central position in the society with its hierarchies and connections to other societal institutions, trauma within the family extends its effect to the society. Outside the family system is a more complex structure of the society that suffers at the degradation of the family unit. It is evident that intergenerational trauma causes detrimental effects to the individual, family and the entire society. Intergenerational trauma is any form of trauma that transcends from one generation to other. This usually occurs when one generation has failed to take the recuperative measures of resolving traumatic experience but takes it out the succeeding generation. As described, this form of trauma presents adverse effects psychologically. It obstructs the realization of the self and hinders effective relationship building in society. Intergenerational trauma compromises the ability of building effective relationships. Many cases of previously traumatized individuals present deficiencies in the core aspect s of building relationships. References Josette, G. (2004). Skeletons in the Closet. International Forum of Psychoanalysis, 13:84-92. Kai, E. (1976). Loss of Communality at Buffalo Creek. J Am Acad Child Psychiatry, 133(3):302-5. Krugman, S. (1987). Trauma in the family: Perspectives on the intergenerational transmission of violence. In B. A. van der Kolk (Ed.), Psychological Trauma (pp. 127–51). Marilyn, C. (1999). The Intergenerational Transmission of Mourning: Personal, Familial and Cultural Factors. O’Loughlin, M. (2010). Ghostly presences in children’s lives: Toward a psychoanalysis of the social. In O’Loughlin, M. & Johnson, R. (Eds.). Imagining children otherwise: Theoretical and critical perspectives on childhood subjectivity. New York: Peter Lang Publishing. Psychoanalytic Approach to the Problems of Impaired Infant – Mother Relationships. J Am Acad Child Psychiatry, 14(3):387-421. Salma,F., Andelson, E., and Shapiro, V. (1975). Ghosts in the Nursery: A Read More