Intergenerational Family Dynamics

Intergenerational family dynamics is an important factor in understanding yourself as well as understanding your family.  This includes developing an appreciation for intergenerational trauma in your family and how it affects you (see my articles:  Psychotherapy and Intergenerational Trauma and Overcoming Dysfunctional Ways of Relating in Your Family).

Intergenerational Family Dynamics

What is a Genogram?
One of the best ways for seeing and understanding intergenerational family dynamics is to draw a genogram.

A genogram is a diagram of your family for at least three generations.  It is a graphic representation with symbols for repetitive intergenerational dynamics in your family.

A Genogram is a Family Tree Where Repetitive Intergenerational Dynamics Are Added 

The diagram above shows an ordinary family tree.  To make a family tree into a genogram, symbols are added to reveal repetitive intergenerational dynamics (see below: Drawing Your Own Genogram).

One of the best books for understanding genograms is Genograms in Family Assessment by Monica McGoldrick and Randy Gerson.  This book is often used in social work graduate programs when graduate students study family dynamics.

This book also provides the symbols most used for showing family dynamics like estrangement, divorce, death, suicides, fused relationships, conflictual relationships and so on (due to the limitations of this blog, I'm unable to provide these symbols, but they are readily available online).  But you can make up your own symbols.

Understanding Intergenerational Family Dynamics From Genograms
A genogram is a useful tool when clients come to therapy to change longstanding dynamics that have played out in their family.

Genograms capture dysfunctional patterns, life changes, trauma and family triangles as well as successful and positive patterns for multigenerational families.

In Genograms in Family Assessment, one of the examples used to show intergenerational family dynamics is a genogram for Eugene O'Neill's family (see my article about O'Neill's play: Denial and Illusions in the Iceman Cometh).

These dynamics are also captured in O'Neill's most autobiographical play, Long Day's Journey Into Night.

The genogram for the O'Neill family is a graphic representation of repetitive intergenerational patterns, including alcohol abuse, drug abuse and other destructive patterns.

It also reveals a generational pattern of marital instability.  In addition, there is an intergenerational pattern of the oldest sons dying young in that family, which is depicted in that genogram.

There was also an intergenerational pattern of estrangement between fathers and sons in the O'Neill family as revealed in the book's genogram for the O'Neills, which is also captured in Long Day's Journey Into Night.

Why Use Genograms to Understand Intergenerational Family Dynamics?
As mentioned earlier, genograms are graphic representations of a family tree for at least three generations.  They include symbols between generations to show intergenerational patterns.

One of the values of using genograms in psychotherapy is that they provide a succinct picture which reveals how complex repetitive patterns evolve in a family over time.  This provides a more in-depth appreciation of why some individual and family patterns are so entrenched and difficult to change.

Drawing Your Own Genogram
A genogram is a tool.  There is no agreed-upon method for drawing a genogram.

You can start by drawing a family tree of both sides of your family and then choosing your own symbols to mark intergenerational patterns for major life events, behavioral patterns and other repetitive patterns.

You can also look at the book, Genograms For Family Assessment, where, aside from the O'Neill family, the authors provide genograms for other well-known families like the Roosevelts, Gandhi's family, Freud's family, Katherine Hepburn's family, the Bronte sisters, the Kennedy family and many others.

There are also some online programs that allow you to draw genograms.

When you have marked the intergenerational patterns in your genogram, you will have a better understanding of your family, a new appreciation of how these repetitive patterns occur over time, and why these patterns might be so difficult to overcome.

If you're in therapy or you're thinking about starting psychotherapy, bringing in your genogram to your psychotherapist will serve as a valuable shorthand to illustrate the dynamics in your family.

There are also some therapists who will draw a genogram in your therapy sessions, based on the information that you provide, to help both you and her to understand your own and your family's history.

Getting Help in Therapy
Whether you use a genogram or not, if you have been unable to resolve your problems on your own, you could benefit from seeking help from a skilled psychotherapist (see my article: The Benefits of Psychotherapy and How to Choose a Psychotherapist).

When you have worked through the problems that are holding you back, you can live a more fulfilling life unburdened by your history.

About Me
I am a licensed NYC psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR and Somatic Experiencing therapist (see my article: The Therapeutic Benefits of Integrative Psychotherapy).

I work with individual adults and couples.

To find out more about me, visit my website: Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.

What is Intergenerational Trauma?

The topic of my prior blog post was Psychotherapy: Healing Your Emotional Wounds.  In that blog post, I mentioned that when people have unresolved, unhealed trauma, they often pass on their fears and anxiety, unconsciously, to their children and that it's not unusual, under these circumstances to see transgenerational trauma.

Intergenerational Trauma

What is Intergenerational Trauma?
As the name implies, transgenerational trauma are emotional wounds that are passed on from one generation to the next, usually, in an unconscious manner. Most of the time, this passing on of trauma from one generation to the next occurs because there is little or no understanding about how trauma affects the self and others and the trauma has not been worked through by the person who originally experienced the trauma.

The following vignette, which is a composite of many cases with no identifiable information, illustrates how transgenerational trauma gets passed on:

Sonia:
Sonia, who was a woman in her mid-30s, came to therapy because she was extremely anxious and her anxiety was affecting her family.

When we went over her personal history, there were no overt signs of abuse or neglect. She grew up in a loving family in NYC. Based on Sonia's account, her parents were supportive and attentive to Sonia and her siblings. Sonia couldn't see any reason why she felt as anxious as she did: She had difficulty sleeping, she worried about almost everything, and she had a terrible sense of foreboding almost all of the time that something bad was going to happen.

Her husband encouraged Sonia to start psychotherapy because he felt that Sonia's anxiety was affecting their five year old daughter. Their daughter was already showing signs of being an anxious child, even though it was obvious that both Sonia and her husband were loving parents.

"My husband says that I make our daughter nervous," Sonia told me, "but I don't see how I do that. And I don't understand why I'm so nervous myself most of the time."

Based on her account, Sonia seemed like she was a very attentive mother who was emotionally attuned to her daughter. But, it was obvious that she was passing on her own anxiety to her daughter somehow.

When we went over Sonia's parents family history, I could see that both of them had experienced early trauma when they were growing up in their native country. Sonia's father lost his parents in a car accident when he was five, and he was raised by an aunt who was both physically and emotionally abusive towards him and his brothers. By the time he was 18, he left the aunt's household to be on his own. He lead a precarious existence until he came to NYC and met and married Sonia's mother. At that point, his life settled down and he had a more stable life, but he tended to be anxious and he worried a lot.

Sonia's mother, who grew up in the same country, lived through several dangerous hurricanes, one of which destroyed the family home. As a young girl, not only did she see the family home destroyed, she also witnessed the drowning of her beloved uncle when the family was attempting to cross a river during the severe flooding related to one of the hurricanes. From that time on, Sonia's mother had nightmares and panic attacks. She never obtained professional help for her anxiety, and she managed her panic attacks by taking anti-anxiety medication. But her nightmares never stopped.

As Sonia and I continued to work together, I discovered that Sonia's parents tended to be overprotective of her and the other children when they were growing up and, without being aware of it, they passed on her worries to Sonia and Sonia's siblings. Sonia grew up feeling that the world was not a safe place and anything that could go wrong would go wrong.

Until we began talking about it, Sonia never realized that her unnamed fears originated with her parents and she was now conveying her fears to her daughter. I provided Sonia with psychoeducation about the nature of transgenerational trauma. Gradually, we worked through Sonia's anxiety using a combination of EMDR and clinical hypnosis until she worked through her fears.

It was only after Sonia had worked through her anxiety and she realized what it felt like to be calm that she realized how anxious she had been all of this time. During that time, Sonia also took her daughter to see a psychotherapist who worked with children so that her daughter wouldn't grow up with the same anxiety that Sonia experienced.

Often, Without Realizing It, People Who Experience Trauma Pass on Their Fears to Their Children 
It's not unusual for people who experience trauma to inadvertently pass on their doubts and fears to their children. There have been many documented cases of this with Holocaust survivors, even in cases where the survivors never discuss what happened. Without realizing it, they convey their fears on an unconscious level to their children so the children often feel that the world is not a safe place.

Getting Help in Therapy
If you think that your trauma is affecting your loved ones or that you are the one who is affected by transgenerational trauma, you're not alone and you owe it to yourself to get help from a licensed psychotherapist who has expertise in dealing with trauma and transgenerational trauma.

About Me

I am licensed New York City psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, Somatic Experiencing therapist, and EMDR therapist.

I have helped many clients to overcome trauma and transgenerational trauma.

To find out more about me, visit my website: Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist

To set up a consultation, call me (917) 742-2624 during regular business hours or email me.

Also, see my article:  Psychotherapy: Healing Your Emotional Wounds