Intergenerational Trauma is not a new concept, it has been known and treated in Indigenous communities all of the world through plants, platica and practice. In my motherland of Mexica also known as Mexico, we may refer to this as un “Susto Heredado” or an inherited fear.
“El trauma intergeneracional (o “susto” transmitido) es la transferencia de traumas graves, estrés y ansiedad de una generación a otra, afectando a descendientes que no vivieron el evento original. Se manifiesta a través de síntomas de TEPT, depresión, cambios genéticos y comportamientos aprendidos, perpetuando el sufrimiento familiar o colectivo.” https://selecciones.com.mx/el-impacto-de-un-susto-en-el-cuerpo-riesgos-que-pocos-conocen/
I think of intergenerational trauma as an event or multiple continuous life events occurring in the bloodline that are so shocking, jarring, violent or life changing that they stay stuck in the body and creates un susto (a fear usually trapped in the Spirit, a Soul Wound). That susto of that life lived in constant survival creates an attachment to being safe in an accessible way and that attachment creates a belief about one´s self and one´s environment that creates a behavior, a way one responds to the environment when the surroundings don´t feel safe and maybe even when they are safe. This behavior-belief towards how to walk through the world is passed down through generations of descendants whether by pressure and control or sometimes by nuanced guilt, shame and obligation. These expectations to carry on generational family constructs are called Legacy Burdens and you can hear more about that on a Confetti All Around Podcast episode and I will write about them on this blog in the near future.
“Legacy Burdens are the feelings, beliefs, and behaviors that originate from the lives of your ancestors, they’re your family habits or rules that are passed down by various methods including dominant family narratives, cultural messages, and conditioning.” www.Lewis Psychology.com
“Intergenerational trauma, also known as transgenerational trauma or inherited trauma, refers to the transmission of trauma from one generation to another (Yehuda and Lehrner, 2018).”
Let´s make no mistake, oppressive colonial systems are for sure the main culprit in intergenerational trauma being passed down through a history of collective trauma, collective punishment, genocide, and forced colonial indoctrination through religion and gender constructs. I say forced because throughout history, though White colonial settlers tried to re-author it, the Indigenous native people of all the lands the British, Spanish and Americans colonized fought back in every instance, they resisted for generations with many learning to practice their customs and ceremonies in private or hidden in plain sight.
“Due to these painful and perhaps prolonged occurrences, you have naturally developed negative beliefs about yourself and the world. These beliefs and the energy accompanying them, are burdens that you internalize and carry within, both consciously and unconsciously, that dictate how connected, protected, and safe you feel-or don’t feel. “
– The Pain We Carry- Healing from Complex PTSD For People of Color by Natalie Y Gutierrez, LMFT
What we now call assimilation is after generations of ancestors being killed, enslaved or taken away from family for this Indigeneity. This violence was put into policy which created government standards and systems to systematically oppress Black and Brown people on their own land. Overtime one surrenders to assimilation as a form of survival. This comes at a cost though, a spiritual cost. This assimilation may have started 2 or 3 generations back as survival while then maybe shifting the perspective to a false optimism of “proximity to Whiteness as Safety” which in turn brings on internalized colonialsim, internalized racism or internalized misogyny. This means we start to carry that belief and turn against our own inherent being as told to us by colonialism. This perpetuates an inner grind culture of having to be enough whether through performance, education or appearance.
As a therapist we are taught to treat the person who is presenting with symptoms and support their symptoms to be functioning in everyday life. Every year I worked as a therapist I saw more clearly how we are trained to look at the person´s life choices and family system as the reason for their attachment, their depression, their trauma. Not often are we told to consider the overarching factor of why family´s bahave as they do and that is colonial systems and the way they impact everything we do yet historically never got blamed for any of it. It works well to let the regular folks battle it out while the elites have us believing we are broken or something is wrong with us.
When considering intergenerational trauma, consider that we are all born with our genetic coding that remembers seven generations of our ancestors lived experiences and survival skills as codes in our Epigenetics.
Our epigenetics are a marker that rests on top of our genes that work as the endurance baton of our ancestors before us. If our ancestors ran a lot, we may activate our running epigenetics one day while running from a band of bullies. If our ancestors danced a lot, we may feel joyful and energized after dancing out difficult news. Dance as traditional medicine. Our epigenetics what codes were used most often and certain life events can turn those events on.
Epigenetics is the study of how the environment and other factors can change the way that genes are expressed. Epigenetics impacts the generation that did not live through the event but carries the DNA of the ancestor with whom embodied their gifts and their trauma.
Epigenetics is an evolved protector, coder, hidden ancestor, and cellular memory that impacts our autonomic nervous system.
Living in those empowering gifts IS our Epigenetic POWER.
Survival protection is epigenetic activation and can be re-enacting trauma or re-directing trauma to solutions.
So when we think about Intergenerational Trauma and pair it with Epigenetics as a backpack sitting on our genes with the codes of survival and artistry, it can be healing to see ourselves presented with choice and sovernity.
I will use my own epigenetic lesson as an example. I grew up in a household where my dad´s yell would scare me so bad that I couldn´t even watch Beauty and the Beast because it would make me feel that same shudder in my tummy as when my dad would be hollering in the house. The impact of his yell vibrated all the way to the cells in my toes, almost leaving the cells themselves frozen like jello, that´s how deeply I felt this fear in his yell.
My dad was always ANGRY, or at least that is how we remember it. He was always complaining and criticizing us, he picked at us so much his voice became my inner voice and I hadn´t even realized it until I was 37. I see now that his anger was actually constant fear and uncertainty as he was the head of household for a family of 5, while he himself was raised his entire life in Merida, Yucatán, Mexico to parents whom did not finish grade school. He certainly had a lot of worry and responsibilities. We kids, however, didn´t know that. We were just kids.
As a child I was always so active and jovial. I would always be singing, dancing, humming, making jokes and very social with an ease that made my parents uncomfortable. If I wasn´t dancing I was meditating with art, belly on the floor, bag of markers poured out next to me, and I would get lost in imaginary worlds, coloring for hours. My dad would help me with my coloring by printing my banners and home made cards off Printshop (yeah look into PrintShop, the OG Canva, so cool). My dad, however, would never allow us to actually pursue art in school or even pay for an art class because he saw that as a waste of time. As an engineer himself he saw art as play (and whats wrong with that?!) and wanted to teach us that school was the most important accomplishment. After all, he and my mother left their lives and everyone behind in Mexico to give us kids an opportunity they dreamed for us. They reminded us of that often and it was expected of us as it was also expected of younger them to be grateful, to be helpful, and to be obedient as to not make life any more difficult for their parents. These were our inherited Legacy Burdens.
That is my intergenerational trauma. The susto of never being able to be myself, my future being told to me, and the sombering daily feeling of never being enough.
My grandmother Raquel, my father´s mother, was an artist and medicine woman everyday of her life and still now in Spirit. Her medium was a needle and thread and her art was not only functional but beautiful. She sewed clothes- traditional huipiles, batas, purses and more. She was a master at not only the sewing machine but the loom where she would weave hamacas for her family. She was a phenomenal cook and worked with plants from her gardens to make teas and tinctures. She carried other dones (gifts) which my cousins and i love to uncover which of her dones we have inherited and practice.
My father, while raised by his mother whom he adored, never did art. I have never seen him color or draw or have a hobby besides dancing. He does create through food which is always delicious. But my dad did not look down on art because he did not appreciate his mother´s craft, he saw her work as survival and to be frank, exploitation. My grandmother and most Inidgenous Maya are exploited for their hard work and low balled. There tireless work is expected from them and the pain my dad has felt seeing his mother cry from hunger and injustice shaped my father. He saw his parents as the circumstance of not being formally educated, not being in close proximity to whiteness, and not doing whatever it takes to get ahead. My grandmother, she died poor but you know what, she never lost herself, her heritage or her heart. Her legacy is one of many Mayas who if you look up their history in Yucatàn resisted colonization for hundreds of years.
My dad´s intergenerational trauma was rooted in lack of financial freedom. He was raised in a scarcity of having enough money, not having enough food or clothes. His daily occurring trauma was will they have enough to eat and that was something he did not want for his children.
While my father was raised knowing he was poor, he felt he did not have enough- a lack of resource, I was raised feeling like I was not enough- a lack of myself as a resource.
While this is an emotional intergenerational trauma, like Author and Therapist Natalie Gutierrez, LMFT states, this burden dictated how I saw myself in the world which made me more prone to shrinking, people pleasing, soul wounding and unsure of myself.
We are living through intergenerational trauma everyday in such gruesome violent ways we may overlook the very real impact colonial greed and narcissism has impact the collective. From the multiple ongoing genocides that have been occurring in the Gaza and Africa, Cuba being a toy in a sick man´s personal ego stroke, to the United States kidnapping and imprisoning children and adults without due process and with inhumane living conditions and treatment. There are reports of rape and abuse in I.C.E Detention facilities that are reminiscent of the days of colonial boarding schools and the mass killing of Indigenous Natives. The United States is creating Intergenerational Trauma everyday that will impact us ass a community and a collective for generations.
Confronting, protesting and blocking oppressive and purposefully disenfranschizing systems is one way we can begin to address the impact of intergenerational trauma as a community while loving ourselves with so much grace and some ancestral guidance is the personal way to start healing intergenerational trauma from within.
More on that on the Confetti All Around Podcast!
I am hosting a special group that centers our intergenerational trauma through the lens of Marianismo Mother Wounds. We start April 4th and would love to host you! more info https://rootedinreflection.podia.com/the-rose-mapping-my-bloom-online-group-feb-mar-2026
