What is Survivor Guilt in Family Dynamics?

Survivor guilt in family dynamics usually involves surviving one of the following when other family members have not:

• A traumatic incident
• A difficult or traumatic upbringing
• Achieving a better quality of life than other family members

Survivor Guilt 

Incidents such as the above often lead the "survivor" to feel a sense of remorse, guilt, worthlessness, undeserving as well as responsible for the fate of other family members who weren't as fortunate.

Survivor guilt is often irrational because these individuals usually weren't at fault for the other family members either not surviving or not doing as well as they did.

Key Aspects of Survival Guilt

• Traumatic Loss: A family member dies or suffers serious consequences and the person who experiences survival guilt did not. This might include:

• A car accident
• A natural disaster
• A medical problem

• Generational Trauma: Prior generations suffered under traumatic circumstances and the person who is from a younger generation, who didn't suffer, feels guilty for surviving or not having it "easier" than the previous generation (see my article: What is Intergenerational Trauma?):

• Family violence
• War
• Poverty and/or oppression
• Systemic violence
• Other atrocities, including the Holocaust and other forms of genocide

• Parental Guilt: A parent can experience survivor guilt that they passed on a gene to their child and the child has medical problems as a result. They can feel guilty even though they had no control over passing on this gene.

• Everyday Situations: If one family member achieves success while other family members are not as fortunate, the one who achieves success can feel guilty that they are fortunate while the others are not.  

How Does Survivor Guilt Manifest in Families?

Survival guilt can have a big impact on family relationships including:

• Social Withdrawal: The individual who has been more fortunate might isolate themselves from family activities as a way to avoid dealing with their guilt.

• Overprotectiveness: In order to avoid another loss, the individual who has been more fortunate might become overly protective of the other family members.

Survivor Guilt, Shame and Self Blame

• Shame and Self Blame: These individuals might dwell on how they could have done things differently to help family members--even if, objectively, there was nothing else they could have done (see my article: Self Blame and the Internal Critic).

• Difficulty Feeling Joy: They might believe they don't deserve to experience joy, happiness or success because they feel guilty that they are more fortunate than other family members.

• Atoning Behavior: In order to atone for their good fortune when other family members have suffered, these individuals might be overly giving so they can atone for their good fortune. This is another maladaptive coping strategy.

Clinical Vignettes

The following clinical vignettes are  composites of many different cases with all identifying information changed to protect confidentiality:

Alan

When Alan was 15, he and his 13 year old brother, Tom, went surfing at the beach during the off season, even though there were red flags posted warning swimmers to stay out of the water due to rough waves from a fast approaching hurricane. Since it was the off season, there were no lifeguards at the beach, but Alan and Tom had fun surfing under similar circumstances before, so they disregarded the warnings.  After a while, Alan took a break to rest on the shore and Tom stayed in the water.  After Alan dried himself off, he turned to call Tom to tell him to come out of the water, but Tom was nowhere to be seen. He jumped back into the water to try to find Tom to no avail and he became frantic. When a police car approached, they called a rescue team who found Tom's lifeless body an hour later. Alan was devastated with sadness and guilt. No one in the family blamed him for Tom's death, but as Tom's older brother, Alan felt responsible. His shame and self blame was so great that he became overly protective of his other younger siblings. Later on in life, he felt guilty that he had career success because Tom never had this opportunity. Alan often engaged in self sabotage and self destructive behavior including excessive drinking. One day his doctor warned him about the connection between excessive drinking and his high blood pressure. Then, he providing Alan with a referral for trauma therapy (see my article: How Can Trauma Therapy Help You to Overcome Unresolved Trauma?).

Linda

Even though her grandmother never discussed her experiences during the holocaust, Linda knew her grandmother spent time as a young child in a concentration camp in Poland. By the time Linda was born, her grandmother was doing well financially, but she lived like she was poor. Specifically, the grandmother hoarded food because she feared anything could happen where she might not have enough to eat. In addition, when she ate, the grandmother always ate sparingly and saved scraps of food for another day. As a result both Linda and her mother surmised that, as a child, the grandmother probably had very little to eat in the Treblinka concentration camp and now, as an adult, she was always afraid food would become scarce again. The impact on Linda was that she couldn't enjoy food in her grandmother's presence--even foods she normally enjoyed.  Her mother had a similar problem. As time went on, Linda realized she had a problem and she sought help in trauma therapy to prevent her problem from getting worse.

Sara

When she was a child, Sara heard many stories from her father about his family's severe poverty when he waa a child. Her father told her there were many days he and his siblings had nothing to eat. Even though they were hungry, they would tell their parents they weren't because they didn't want their parents to feel bad. Although Sara's parents were doing well financially by the time she was born, she always felt guilty whenever they bought her a gift or new clothes. She felt she didn't deserve to have more than her father had when he was a child. Later on in life when Sara had a successful career, she felt that no matter how much she tried to do for her parents, especially her father, she couldn't do enough. She felt guilty about her financial success and, as a way to assuage her guilt, she bought her parents many gifts--even though they told her they didn't need them.  One day her mother took Sara aside during a family gathering and told Sara she understood why she was buying them so many gifts but, she said, no matter how many gifts she bought them, she couldn't undo her father's childhood poverty. She told Sara that both she and the father wanted her to enjoy her life and they could see how guilt was eating away at her. She suggested Sara get help from a licensed mental health professional who did trauma therapy.

How Can Trauma Therapy Help With Survivor Guilt?

Trauma therapy is an umbrella term that include following types of therapy:

• EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing)

Survivor Guilt and Trauma Therapy

• Somatic Experiencing

• Parts Work (IFS and Ego States Therapy)

• AEDP (Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Therapy)

These therapies were developed specifically to help clients to overcome trauma by:

• Processing the Trauma: To work through the trauma in a safe and structured way

• Developing Self Compassion: Helping clients to give themselves compassion to heal

Survivor Guilt and Self Compassion

• Challenging Negative Beliefs: To identity and challenge negative beliefs

• Developing Genuinely Positive Beliefs: Beliefs that are sincere and realistic about  themselves and others

• Grieving Losses: Grieving what has been lost is essential to healing from trauma (see my article: The Many Layers of Grief).

• Finding a New Purpose: Honoring their losses and channeling their guilt into meaningful behavior like volunteering

Getting Help in Trauma Therapy

If you are struggling with unresolved problems, you're not alone. Help is available.

Getting Help in Trauma Therapy

Rather than struggling on your own, seek help from a licensed mental health professional who is trained as a trauma therapist.

Overcoming unresolved trauma can help you to live a more meaningful life.

About Me

I am a licensed New York psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR, AEDP, EFT (for couples), Somatic Experiencing, Parts Work Therapist (IFS and Ego States Therapy) and Certified Sex Therapist.

As a trauma therapist, I have helped many individual adults and couples to heal.

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.

How Can Intergenerational Trauma Affect Your Ability to Make Decisions?

In the current article I'm discussing how trauma can affect decision-making. 

Intergenerational Trauma and Fear of Making Decisions

What Are Some of the Psychological Factors For Fear of Making Decisions?

If you have this problem with making decisions, it's important to start with compassion.

Developing Self Awareness and Compassion

It's important to look beyond the surface with compassion so you won't be so hard on yourself.

In general, every person who has problems making decisions is unique and has their own set of psychological factors related to decision-making.

Here are some of the most common factors:

• Pessimism and Fear of Change: A negative or pessimistic perspective can lead to only focusing on the potential downside to every possible decision.

• Insecurity: Personal insecurities can lead to someone having difficulty with potential decisions.

• A Problem Solving Identity: Some people like to see themselves as problem solvers for themselves and for others. This helps them to feel useful and needed. However, it can also become a crutch to avoid making decisions.

• Cognitive Dissonance: Some people experience an internal conflict when faced with solutions that challenge their beliefs. This can lead to their challenging every possible solution offered to them to maintain a sense of internal consistency (see my article: Understanding the Negative Impact of Cognitive Dissonance).

Clinical Vignette

The following clinical vignette, which is a composite of many cases, illustrates how a particular type of trauma, intergenerational trauma, an affect making decisions:

Liz

When her boyfriend, Ray, recommended that she seek help in therapy, Liz wasn't open to the idea at first. But when he talked to her about the many times she approached her problems with pessimism and fear of change, she realized she had a problem, so she sought help in therapy.

Anxiety and Fear of Change

When her therapist asked Liz about her family history, Liz revealed that both of her parents had problems making decisions because they usually feared the worst possible outcome.  

Both of Liz's parents experienced intergenerational related to severe poverty. So, even though her parents were now financially secure, whenever they had to make any decision about money, they approached the decision making process with pessimism, anxiety and dread (see my article: What is Intergenerational Trauma?).

The smallest financial decision created so much anxiety that they would find a problem with any possible decision. This lead to procrastination so they made decisions at the last possible moment. This often lead to poor choices in many cases because they weren't able to think about the choices calmly so they made last minute decisions in haste.

Even as a young child, Liz understood that her parents' anxiety and dread were misplaced. She knew that, unlike earlier generations, both of her parents were in high paying professions and they could relax more about money. 

But even though Liz understood it logically, on an emotional level, she took in her parents' fears and anxiety on an unconscious level.  

This created problems between Liz and Ray because whenever they were faced with certain decisions related to spending money, like whether to buy new furniture or whether they could afford to go on vacation, Liz had so much anxiety that she couldn't make a decision.

Logically, Liz knew she and Ray could afford the furniture and a vacation, but whenever he proposed various options, she found reasons to reject everything he proposed.  She couldn't understand why she couldn't reconcile her logical thoughts with her emotions.

After hearing about her family history, Liz's therapist provided her with psychoeducation about intergenerational trauma. 

Although Liz wasn't happy to hear that she was traumatized, her therapist's explanation made sense to her, especially when she heard about the symptoms. 

Some of the symptoms of intergenerational trauma resonated with her, including:

• Persistent anxiety

• Hypervigilance (a constant state of high alert or feeling a sense of threat)

• Problems with emotional regulation

• Shame
  

• Guilt
  

Liz's therapist worked with her to prepare her to do trauma therapy. Since Liz's anxiety was so high, she needed several months of preparation and stabilization before they could start processing her trauma in trauma therapy.

Part of the preparation involved developing self compassion and better coping skills.

When her therapist assessed Liz was ready to work through her trauma, they did a combination of IFS Parts Work Therapy, Somatic Experiencing and EMDR Therapy over a period of several months.

Whenever they discovered an emotional block in the trauma therapy, her therapist used Imaginal Interweaves to help Liz overcome the block (see my article: What Are Imaginal Interweaves in Trauma Therapy?).

Even though the work took over a year until Liz worked through her trauma, she felt incremental relief along the way.

Overcoming Anxiety and Fear of Change

Over time, Liz experienced her emotions as being more in synch with her logical understanding. She was able to modify her emotions and behavior to make decisions without anxiety, pessimism or fear of change.

Whenever she considered possible solutions to problems, she was able to consider each options and make a decision without finding problems with every solution.

Trauma therapy enabled Liz to free herself from a history of intergenerational trauma.

Conclusion

If you have unresolved trauma, a good place to start is developing self awareness and compassion.

Most people don't want to create problems for themselves and others when they're trying to solve problems or make decisions, so there's usually a coherent reason. 

If the reason isn't apparent, it's often unconscious (see my article: Making the Unconscious Conscious).

Getting Help in Therapy

A skilled mental health professional who is trained as a trauma therapist can help you to identify the psychological factors involved and work through the problems (see my article: What is a Trauma Therapist?).

If the problems are related to trauma, seeking help from a psychotherapist who is a trauma therapist can help you to overcome the trauma so you can lead a more fulfilling life free from your history of trauma.

About Me

I am a licensed New York psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR, AEDP, EFT (for couples), Parts Work (IFS and Ego States Therapy), Somatic Experiencing and Certified Sex Therapist.

As a trauma therapist, I have helped many individual adults and couples to work through trauma.

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.

Healing Attachment Trauma in Trauma Therapy

Attachment trauma, which involves attachment wounds, can occur at any time of life. 

Healing Attachment Trauma in Trauma Therapy 

Attachment trauma often occurs when there are significant disruptions in close relationships.

Examples of Attachment Wounds Which Are Part of Attachment Trauma

Attachment wounds include but are not limited to:

• Early loss or abandonment in childhood

• Death of a parent in childhood

• Lack of affection during childhood

• Being separated during infancy or any time in childhood from parents or primary caregivers

• Physical or emotional abuse, childhood emotional neglect or sexual abuse

• A caregiver who is the source of overwhelming emotional distress for a child

• Infidelity in a relationship including extramarital affairs and financial infidelity

• A caregiver who has a substance abuse problem

• A caregiver with mental health issues or who is emotionally unstable

• A caregiver with an anxious, avoidant or disorganized attachment style

• A caregiver with poor emotional, physical or sexual boundaries

• A caregiver who treats a child like a friend (see my article: Why Your Child Can't Be Your Friend)

• A caregiver who is controlling to the point where a child has difficulty individuating (being their own person)

• Divorce in the family during childhood

• Intergenerational trauma

• Betrayal in a romantic relationship, family relationship or friendship

• Lack of support from a partner, spouse or significant other during a significant event or transition

What Are Signs and Symptoms of Attachment Trauma?

The signs and symptoms of attachment trauma include but are not limited to:

• A pattern of difficulties in relationships with friends, family members, significant others and work relationships

A Pattern of Difficulties in Relationships

• A tendency to experience humiliation, shame and/or guilt

• Hyper-reactivity to stress (see my article: Responding Instead of Reacting)

• Hyperarousal

• A tendency to be anxious, avoidant or disorganized in romantic relationships including healthy relationships (see my article: How Your Attachment Style Affects Your Relationship)

• Enmeshed relationships with family members, friends or significant others

• Poor interpersonal boundaries 

Mental Health and Substance Abuse Issues Related to Attachment Trauma

Mental health and substance abuse issues related to attachment trauma include but are not limited to:

• Depression

• Anxiety
  

• Trauma and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

• Complex trauma

• Alcohol misuse

Attachment Trauma and Alcohol Misuse

• Drug misuse or addiction

• Compulsive gambling

• Overspending

• Overeating

• Out of control sexual behavior (OCSB)
  

Healing Attachment Trauma in Trauma Therapy

There are many different types of trauma therapy, which all come under the umbrella of experiential therapy including:

• Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR)

• Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy (AEDP)

• Parts Work Therapy including Ego States Therapy and Internal Family Systems Therapy

• Somatic Experiencing Therapy
  

How Will You Know When You're on the Path to Healing an Attachment Trauma?

There is no quick fix for healing attachment trauma, but Experiential Therapy, like EMDR, AEDP, Somatic Experiencing and Parts Work tend to be more effective than regular talk therapy for healing trauma (see my article: Why Experiential Therapy is More Effective Than Talk Therapy to Overcome Trauma).

Since you might not have experienced emotionally supportive relationships when you were a child, you will probably need time to develop a therapeutic rapport with your trauma therapist, so it's good to be aware of this as you start trauma therapy (see my article: Can You Learn to Trust Your Therapist If You Weren't Able to Trust Your Family?).

Signs that might be part of your path to healing an attachment trauma include but are not limited to:

• You're beginning to respond instead of react to stress

• You're starting to feel safer in your body

• You're getting better at setting boundaries

• You're becoming more aware of when you feel ashamed, guilty or humiliated when there's no objective reason to feel that way

• You're beginning to feel less anxious

• You're becoming aware that your depression is beginning to lift

• You're starting to make healthier choices in relationships

• You're feeling less anxious, avoidant or disorganized in a healthy relationship

• You're cutting back or you have stopped drinking excessively

• You're cutting back or you have stopped misusing drugs

• You're feeling less inclined to gamble compulsively

• You're less inclined to overspend

• You're less inclined to overeat during times of stress 

• You no longer feel comfortable in enmeshed relationships

• You're prioritizing self care

Getting Help in Trauma Therapy

If you're struggling with attachment trauma, you're not alone.

Healing Attachment Trauma in Trauma Therapy

A skilled trauma therapist can help you to overcome unresolved trauma.

Rather than struggling on your own, seek help from a licensed mental health professional who is a trauma therapist.

Trauma therapy can help you to free yourself from your traumatic past so you can lead a more fulfilling life.

About Me

I am a licensed New York City psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR, AEDP, EFT, Somatic Experiencing and Sex Therapist (see my article: What is a Trauma Therapist?).

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.

Have You Internalized Your Parents' Anxiety and Emotional Insecurities?

Children internalize their parents' emotional experiences.   In my prior article, I provided a clinical vignette where the client feared taking risks because she grew up with parents who were anxious and risk averse (see my article: Balancing Fear of Failure vs. Future Regret).  In this article, I'm focusing on how anxiety and emotional insecurities are internalized intergenerational at a young age and continue into adulthood.

Have You Internalized Your Parents' Anxiety and Emotional Insecurities?

One of the advantages of attending psychotherapy is that you and your psychotherapist can work on separating your parents' emotions and experiences and yours and, if the therapy is successful, you won't pass on these traits to your children (see my article: Intergenerational Family Dynamics and Your Unresolved Trauma Can Have Emotional Repercussions For Your Children).

Since young children see the world through their parents' eyes, they usually internalize their parents' emotions and view of the world.  This can be an intergenerational pattern where these emotions and  views are passed down from one generation to the next for many generations.

When there has been psychological trauma in an older generation, this is often passed on to subsequent generations--even if the relatives from the generation with direct experience of the trauma never discuss it (see my article: Psychotherapy and Intergenerational Trauma).

For instance, grandchildren of Holocaust survivors will often say that neither their grandparents nor there parents ever discussed the Holocaust, so they don't understand how they internalized their grandparents' traumatic experiences.  But traumatic experiences don't have to be discussed for internalization because the internalization occurs on an unconscious level.

Fictional Clinical Vignette: Internalizing Your Parents' Anxiety and Emotional Insecurities
The following fictional clinical vignette illustrates how anxiety and emotional insecurities are passed down and internalized intergenerationally:

Tania
Tania came to therapy after struggling with anxiety and emotional insecurities about money for her entire life.

Prior to coming to therapy, Tania had always felt that she could handle her problems on her own.  When her friends told her that they were starting psychotherapy, Tania couldn't understand why they needed to get help in therapy.  It didn't make sense to her because she considered her friends to be "strong" and her view of psychotherapy was that only people who are "weak" need to go to therapy (see my article: Common Myths About Psychotherapy: Going to Therapy Means You're "Weak").

When she was in her 20s, Tania believed that she would be in a successful career and own a home by the time she was in her mid-30s.  But, although she had a successful career and she was in a relationship with a man that she loved, she couldn't bring herself to make an investment in a home.

When she turned 38, she was doing well financially, but she feared making such a major investment as buying a home.  Being only two years away from turning 40, she envisioned the years stretching out before her and remaining in a rental apartment with no prospect for change.

Her romantic partner, Dan, who lived with Tania, told her that he wanted them to buy an apartment together in the next couple of years, but Tania was too afraid to do it.

Tania also told her psychotherapist that her financial advisor told her that she could afford to buy an apartment and encouraged her to make the investment, but she was too afraid--even though she knew logically that she could afford it.

When Tania and her psychotherapist talked about her family background, Tania revealed that her parents were first-generation Americans and her grandparents struggled financially to come to the United States.

Even though Tania's parents eventually overcame the poverty they endured as children, they never got over those experiences.  Her father worked three jobs in order to make ends meet and, eventually, he started his own business, which was successful.  But, despite their hard-earned financial success, her parents never overcame their fear that everything they worked for could go up in smoke and they could become poor again.  They continued to live very frugally due to their emotional insecurities.

Tania's psychotherapist provided Tania with psychoeducation about intergenerational trauma.  She also told Tania that it appeared that Tania internalized her grandparents' and parents' anxiety and insecurities and that they could work towards helping her to separate her experience from her grandparents' and parents' experiences.

Although it made sense to Tania that she internalized her family's experiences, she didn't feel hopeful that her feelings would ever change.  These feelings were so ingrained in her that she couldn't believe she could ever feel differently.

Her psychotherapist talked to Tania about starting with Somatic Experiencing to "uncouple" her grandparents' and parents' experiences from her own.  She explained to Tania that, although she was close to her parents and grandparents, she needed to begin to separate her emotions and beliefs rather than remain entangled in her family's beliefs and emotions.

Tania acknowledged that she knew objectively that she could afford to buy her own apartment rather than continuing to rent.  She also knew that it would be a wise financial decision for her when she looked at it logically.  But when she thought about buying an apartment, she also felt dread that she would be making a mistake.  Tania told her psychotherapist that she couldn't understand how she could know one thing logically but feel something else emotionally.

Using Somatic Experiencing, Tania's psychotherapist asked her to begin by allowing herself to feel the excitement and anticipated happiness of buying an apartment with Dan.  She asked Tania to put her anxiety and insecurities aside for the moment and whenever Tania felt these feelings were about to intrude, she should continue to put them aside.

At first, it was difficult for Tania to keep her anxiety separate from her excitement.  She would start to feel the excitement and joy of buying a place with Dan, which she really wanted, but then her anxiety would intrude.  She followed her psychotherapist's suggestions about how to put her anxiety aside for now and, eventually, she was able to identify a sense of happiness and that she felt it in her chest.

Tania and her psychotherapist stayed with the sense of happiness that Tania felt in her chest and worked towards expanding that feeling.  She was eventually able to associate the feeling of happiness in her chest with various images, colors and a sense of physical warmth.  She felt that these feelings, sensations and images were her own and not related to her family's experiences, so she was able to uncouple her experience from her family's.

After a few months, Tania's psychotherapist recommended that they use EMDR therapy to work on the anxiety and insecurities.

As they set up the EMDR therapy protocol, Tania said that her negative belief about herself was, "I'm powerless."  She explained to her therapist that her feelings of powerlessness involved a fear that she would, in some undefined way, lose everything if she and Dan bought an apartment together.

Using EMDR therapy, they worked for several months on current memories and childhood memories that were involved with Tania's anxiety and insecurities.

After a while, Tania had a strong felt sense that she was different from her family and that their experiences weren't her experiences.  Rather than feeling powerless, she felt empowered.  At that point, she realized that what she knew logically came together with how she felt on an emotional level.

Shortly after completing EMDR therapy, Tania and Dan began looking for an apartment.  She remained in therapy to deal with the normal stress of apartment hunting, but she no longer had an irrational fear of buying an apartment.

She continued to be close to her family, but she also felt like an autonomous adult who was no longer affected by her family's intergenerational trauma.

Conclusion
Children tend to internalize their parents' experiences at a young age.  If their parents are emotionally secure people, the chances are that the children will also grow up to feel secure.

But if the parents are anxious and insecure, as illustrated in the clinical vignette above, the children will most likely feel anxious and insecure.  These experiences are often passed down from one generation to the next.  This is usually an unconscious process, even if the older generation never speaks about their traumatic experiences.

Getting Help in Therapy
Intergenerational trauma doesn't have to be a "life sentence" of traumatic experiences passed down from one generation to the next.

Trauma therapy can be an effective way of overcoming trauma.

Trauma therapy can help to break the trauma cycle.

Rather than suffering on your own, you owe it to yourself to get help from a licensed mental health professional (see my article: The Benefits of Psychotherapy).

A skilled psychotherapist can help you to overcome your anxiety and insecurities so that you can lead a more fulfilled life (see my article: How to Choose a Psychotherapist).

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, and I have helped many clients to overcome psychological trauma.

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.

Your Unresolved Trauma Can Affect Your Children

In a previous article, Overcoming Your Emotional Blind Spots, I began a discussion about how your unresolved trauma can affect your loved ones, including your children.  In this article, I'm exploring this further by delving deeper into the affect of parents' unresolved trauma on their children (see my article: Untreated Emotional Trauma is a Serious Issue With Negative Consequences and Overcoming Childhood Trauma That Affects Adult Relationships).

Your Unresolved Trauma Can Affect Your Child

Most parents want the best for their children and would never intentionally overlook a problem that their children are having.  But having an emotional blind spot usually means that the problem is out of your awareness so that you don't see it.  And if you don't see it for yourself, you often won't see it when it involves your children.

When the blind spot involves unresolved trauma, there's an even greater chance that the problem will go undetected.

A Fictionalized Vignette About How a Parent's Unresolved Trauma Can Affect a Child
The following fictionalized vignette is based on a composite of many different cases with all identifying information changed:

Jane
After years of enduring a chaotic family environment, Jane was relieved to move out of her parents' home when she went away to college.  Her family home was a tense, volatile place where Jane never knew when one of her parents would explode.

Your Unresolved Trauma Can Affect Your Child

Jane was dimly aware that her parents had narrowly escaped from a repressive regime in their native country, but she didn't know what really happened because they refused to talk about it.  Their attitude was that, unlike many of their relatives, they were fortunate enough to leave their country and  they wanted to leave behind everything that happened to them.

Even though her parents' traumatic experiences were never spoken about or even acknowledged, Jane sensed that her parents' emotional volatility was related to their unspoken experiences, but she didn't know how or why.  And since her parents' attitude was that they "left it behind" them and they refused to talk about it, there was no way for Jane to bring this up.

Instead of discussing it, without their realizing it, her parents' earlier experiences came out in other unintended ways, including their constant warnings that the "world isn't a safe place."

Not only were they overly protective of her, from an objective point of view, but they would become hysterical with worry over minor issues, including Jane coming home a little late when she saw her friends.  They were highly anxious people and assumed that she had been kidnapped or murdered.

Aside from their anxiety and volatility, Jane's father would often drink too much.  This exacerbated the volatile situation at home because he would become loud and even angrier than usual.  He and Jane's mother would argue more when he was drunk (see my article: People Who Have Alcohol Problems Often Don't Get the Help They Need).

But whenever Jane tried to talk to her mother about the father's alcoholism, Jane's mother made excuses for him and told Jane that Jane couldn't possibly understand what she and Jane's father had been through in their native country, and the father drank to "take the edge off."

After trying to talk to her mother about it several times, Jane gave up.  She realized that, even though her mother didn't like the father's drinking, her mother felt too conflicted about it to address it with him.   She knew it was  futile to try to talk to her mother about it, so she began to "tune out" whenever her father was drunk, and it didn't bother her as much (see my article: Growing Up Feeling Invisible and Emotionally Invalidated).

Jane felt compassionate towards her parents, even if she wasn't really aware of what happened to them.  But after she graduated college, she moved in with her college roommates, and she only saw her parents occasionally because it was too hard for her to be around them.

When Jane got married and had a baby, she was determined to be different than her parents.  She loved her daughter a lot, and she made conscious decisions that were completely different from what her parents did with her, and she felt proud of herself.

Your Unresolved Trauma Can Affect Your Child

When her marriage began to fall apart, Jane was determined that her daughter, Alice, would not experience the kind of volatility at home that Jane experienced as a child.  She refused to argue with her husband in front of her daughter.

And when she and her husband decided to get a divorce, they spoke to their daughter, who was in her mid-teens by then, together.  They assured her that they both loved her and would always remain in her life.  But Alice took the divorce hard, she began acting out at home, and her grades plummeted at school.

At the recommendation of Alice's guidance counselor, Jane brought Alice to therapy so Alice could work out her anger and sadness about her parents' divorce.

Initially, Alice was uncooperative in therapy, but as she developed more of a rapport with her therapist, she opened up more and began to like going to therapy.

As part of Alice's therapy, both Jane and her ex-husband met with the therapist and Alice once a month.  They were pleased with the progress that Alice was making in therapy and they both wanted the best for their daughter.

During the sixth month of therapy, Alice's therapist requested Jane to come to one of Alice's therapy sessions without her ex-husband.  This surprised Jane, and she wondered about it.  But she decided to wait to ask questions until after she had heard what this was about.

As soon as Jane entered the therapist's office, where Alice was already waiting for her, she sensed that Alice was very tense and uncomfortable.  She avoided making eye contact with Jane when Jane came into the room, which concerned Jane.

There was an awkward silence initially, and then Alice began to speak with an anxious voice.  At first, Jane couldn't understand what Alice was trying to tell her.  It was as if she heard Alice saying words, but she couldn't understand what she was trying to say.

Jane could see that Alice looked very frustrated by Jane's confusion, and Alice turned to her therapist in exasperation.  Then, Alice's therapist told Jane, "Jane, your daughter is telling you that she has a drinking problem."

Jane was stunned and speechless.  Her eyes darted from the therapist to Alice and then back to the therapist (see my article: Dynamics of Adult Children of Dysfunctional Families).

Alice began to cry and then she yelled at Jane, "Mom, I've been trying to tell you for the last year that I have a drinking problem, but it's like you just tune out!  You're not hearing me!  And you're still not hearing me!" (see my article: Ambivalence and Codependence in the Mother-Daughter Relationship).

The therapy session felt unreal for Jane.  It was as if she was having a bad dream and that any moment she would wake up from this dream.

She kept thinking to herself:  This isn't real.  I just have to open my eyes, and this will be over.   But why can't I open my eyes? (see my article: Overcoming Your Denial About Family Problems).

Then, she realized that Alice's therapist was telling Jane about a alcohol rehabilitation center for adolescence that she was recommending for Alice.  She offered to make the referral and could have Alice in treatment by the next day.

Alice explained to Jane that she had recently told her father about her drinking problem, and he was able to hear it.  But Alice was angry that Jane wasn't there for her about this.  Alice needed help and she needed her mother to be there for her now more than ever.

At that point, Jane felt like she was going through the motions.  She felt like a robot.  She consented for Alice's therapist to make the referral and drove Alice to the rehab.

Driving home from the rehab, Jane had to pull over because she felt overwhelmed with emotion.  Alone and frightened, she couldn't stop crying.  She couldn't understand how this all happened to her daughter--she thought she did everything right.

During a family visit to Alice's rehab, Jane met with Alice and her rehab counselor.  Alice had calmed down since the day Jane met with her and her therapist.  She was now able to calmly recount the times when she tried to tell Jane that she was drinking, but Jane seemed to almost go into a trance.

Although it was confusing and emotionally painful for her to listen to this, Jane listened attentively.  She felt guilty and ashamed. She would never have hurt her daughter intentionally, so she couldn't understand why she had not heard her daughter's cries for help (see my article: Healing Mother-Daughter Relationships).

The rehab counselor also explained the possible genetic link between Jane's father's alcoholism and Alice's problems with alcohol.  She told Jane that Alice was depressed and she was "self medicating" with alcohol (see my article:  Adolescent Depression).

When she met with the other visiting families in the rehab, she heard similar stories to her own--many mothers and fathers who had emotional blind spots and didn't hear their children's cries for help.

At that point, Jane realized that she wasn't alone, but she wanted to understand why she had this blind spot and what she could do about it, so she began attending her own individual therapy (see my article:  Psychotherapy to Overcome Your Past Childhood Trauma).

During the course of her individual therapy, Jane learned about intergenerational trauma and how it can affect one generation after the next in unconscious ways.

She realized that she was directly affected by her parents' unresolved trauma without realizing it, and that Alice was affected by her unresolved trauma.

Jane also realized that she coped with her parent's volatility and her father's alcoholism by shutting down or, to use a psychological term, dissociating.

She learned that this was her unconscious defense mechanism as a child to cope with an unbearable traumatic situation and that it worked for her at the time.  But this same unconscious defense mechanism was counterproductive later on in life with her daughter.

As Jane began to work on her own unresolved traumatic childhood experiences in therapy, she began to feel like a weight was being lifted from her.  She also started remembering times when Alice approached her to try to talk about her drinking problem.

These memories, which, until recently were dissociated in Jane's mind, were very painful to remember.  As part of her treatment, Jane apologized to Alice, who was much more forgiving of Jane after she heard about Jane's experiences as a child.

Until then, Jane had never spoken to Alice about these experiences because she didn't want to burden Alice.  But Jane wanted Alice to understand that these were longstanding unconscious problems and that she didn't know that they were affecting her ability to be completely present with Alice.

Jane also worked on self compassion for not being as good a mother as she hoped that she would be.  She developed compassion for herself as an adult as well as for the struggling child she had been in her family home (see my article: Psychotherapy and Compassionate Self Acceptance).

Conclusion
Unresolved emotional trauma often has a way of getting played out from one generation to the next in ways that are unconscious to everyone involved.

It's not unusual to trace back this intergenerational trauma for many years, even though it might be very hard to detect by people who don't have psychological training.

This is one of the major reasons why it's important to get treated for unresolved trauma before it has an impact on your children, their children and generations to follow.

Getting Help in Therapy
We know so much more about psychological trauma and intergenerational trauma and how it can be transmitted to one generation after the next (see my article: The Benefits of Psychotherapy).

Trauma therapists are also uniquely trained to help clients with unresolved trauma to overcome the effects of the trauma (see my article: How to Choose a Psychotherapist).

Rather than continuing to suffer with the effects of unresolved trauma, you can get help from a licensed psychotherapist who is a trauma therapist so you and your family can live more fulfilling lives.

About Me
I am a licensed NYC psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR and Somatic Experiencing therapist who works with individual adults and couples.

As a trauma therapist, I have helped many clients to overcome single event traumas as well as longstanding unresolved trauma.

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.