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"Family dysfunction rolls down from generation to generation, like a fire in the woods, taking down everything in its path until one generation has the courage to turn and face the flames. That person brings peace to their ancestors and spares the children that will follow.” - Terry Real, family therapist, author
Generational trauma was the backdrop of my childhood, but I never recognized it as such until much later. Growing up, it was just the stuff of family stories and history.
My mother, having been born in Poland during WW2, experienced living in German refugee camps until being brought over by relatives to the United States. As a young child during the long boat voyage to the US, she relied on self-survival when her mother - the only other family member traveling with her and who would come to be diagnosed with schizophrenia - suffered a psychotic episode and spent the duration in the infirmary. Both parents grew up not having their biological fathers in their lives - though for different reasons. One step-father was physically and emotionally abusive and the other gruff and aloof leading the two to have only distant and, until later years, begrudging emotional ties with each other.
These and other relational and emotional traumas that have existed and preceded within the family narrative were rarely talked about and only matter-of-factly and without elaboration when the topics arose. Much of the sometimes chaotic and mostly repressed dynamics between my parents and their parents/step parents along with the histories that came before were simply absorbed as part of the mostly unspoken family fabric.
Both parents eschew therapy - speaking of it with high disdain and a refusal to be “psychoanalyzed” - so much of those traumas not only remain unprocessed but unacknowledged as being traumas that needed to be processed. Though they were brandished as weapons for why no one else’s traumas could ever compare or be valid.
Distressing emotions or experiences were not addressed except as quickly and superficially as possible and then moved on from. Any attempt as an adult to productively address ongoing family conflict or express personal experience within the family system that was contrary to the preferred narrative was summarily rejected and branded disrespectful, untrue or exaggerated by "oversensitivity."
And thus the perpetuation of dysfunctional family dynamics gets carried on and staunchly maintained.
Parents, like mine, who are uncomfortable with their own feelings and never learned to process them, are entirely unable to guide their children in processing or regulating theirs. It is a devastatingly harmful deficiency stemming from their own traumas along with those they inherited which is then compounded by prevailing cultural ignorance on emotional and relational dynamics.
Multigenerational transmission is a component within the eight core concepts of Bowen’s Family Systems Theory - the foundational body of work and theory underlying family therapy - that describes how family dynamics are passed down through generations. It is both the conscious conveyance of values and information as well as unconscious transmission of behavioral patterns and emotional projections onto children by parents.
“Bowen’s theory suggests that unresolved issues in one relationship will be transposed to other relationships and create similar relational patterns.” (1)
Poor emotional processing and dysfunctional relationship dynamics that developed as coping mechanisms and survival skills are some of the ways that the traumas and stressors previous generations experienced get carried on through the lineage and manifest themselves.
“We inherit pain. When it is not coped with, it gets passed again.” -Merissa Nathan Gerson, Professor of Communications at Tulane University and inherited trauma consultant
Source: @psychotherapy.central
A core construct within the multigenerational transmission process is Differentiation of Self (DoS) which is the “degree to which human functioning depends on the convictions and expectations of others. People with a poorly differentiated self make their functioning conditional on the acceptance of others.” (2)
In other words, differentiation of self is the ability to separate one’s own thoughts and feelings from those of others, especially those that we are in close relationships with - as in between parents and children and within a family unit overall. Beyond emotional separation, it is the ability to maintain one’s own identity while navigating relational tensions and being able to make clear decisions despite conflicting and charged dynamics.
Simply put, it relates to the level of emotional maturity one has.
To frame it another way, an undifferentiated person is one who is highly codependent while a differentiated person one has the emotional maturity to be able to balance emotional closeness and intimacy while maintaining independence and not lose their sense of self.
“An emotionally immature caregiver is one who cannot adequately regulate their emotional triggers. Instead, they need others to manage their emotions for them. In families like this, children become the emotional depositories of their parents’ unhealed pain.” - Dr Mariel Buqué (3)
The concept of DoS and the multigenerational process are both foundational components of the Family Systems Theory “which argues that the functioning of an individual should be considered from the perspective of the mutual interactions existing within their family system as a whole. The degree of differentiation displayed by the parents establishes the specific emotional interdependence within an entire family system.” (2)
Research has found that there are significant similarities in the level of self-differentiation within the family system. Meaning that the degree of self-differentiation, or emotional maturity, a parent achieves and what their child achieves will be highly correlated. This was also found to have a slightly varied impact between and among the sexes of the parents and children.
“When a mother achieves a greater balance in her emotional and intellectual functioning and improves her capacity to build relations with others based on optimal intimacy, similar changes can be observed in her children [of both sexes]. However, when analogous changes occur within the paternal level of differentiation, similar changes appear only in daughters.” (2)
So, the overall level of emotional maturity - and growth in that maturity - that mothers achieve will have a tendency to be passed along to both her sons and daughters similarly, while the level of emotional maturity of fathers has the highest correlation of similar transmission to daughters.
Given that girls are socialized to cater to the emotional states of others, and especially within patriarchal society to men, while boys are socialized to cut off their feelings particularly between them and other men, this finding makes sense.
Essentially, children by and large develop to meet the emotional maturity level of their parents. Those parents, in turn, were as emotionally mature as their parents, and so on and so on. This manifests itself in behavioral and relational patterns carried forward from generation to generation.
The silent treatment used by one mother to control, punish and manipulate or the emotional bullying tactics by a father to coerce compliance are passed along as the lived and ingrained examples of relational interaction and behavioral control allowed and condoned to be used by parents with their children.
How they were parented becomes the unconsciously programmed operating system for how to parent their own children - even if they themselves were harmed by those parenting practices.
However, those of us who come to realize that our parents are emotionally immature and that, as a result, we have lacked emotional maturity ourselves based upon what was modeled and taught to us, can then begin to work to change and break those generational cycles. We can consciously and progressively learn the skills of emotional maturity and identify the behaviors, in ourselves and others, that do not serve us or our families of creation.
Recognizing what those harmful patterns are and where the dysfunctional relationships have existed within the family tapestry is key to being able to break the cycle - an ongoing exploration process that a previous educational series article delves into in more detail.
Doing our own personal inventory of our emotional maturity and level of differentiation is also part of the process.
Emotional maturity is not a static state. It is not something that we simply collect and achieve like levels in a video game that then remains constant and continually progresses. From a baseline, it can manifest on a spectrum depending on context, situation and the people involved.
When with our families of choice where we have been consciously employing different relational tactics than what we were raised with, the ability to maintain a generally consistent level of self awareness may be more achievable. There can be an elevated baseline or set point we have identified to hold ourselves to above what we experienced with our parents and family of origin.
Interactions with our families of origin or others associated with them may trigger the defensive behaviors or levels of emotional reactivity that are more reflective of earlier ingrained patterns we have been working to overcome.
As estranged family members, we walked away to extricate ourselves not only from the harmful dynamics of our family environments and relationships but also from the versions of ourselves that are manifestations of trauma responses developed in order to survive within them.
The more we delve into our own healing and examine what those trauma responses were, the more we are able to recognize when we fall into them and can self correct. Or are able to be more receptive when our inevitable regressions into emotional immaturity and reactivity are pointed out to us. Maintaining our own accountability and self awareness is central when endeavoring to make conscious choices to not replicate what we walked away from.
Some days we may be better at doing that than others.
For many of us though, it was impossible to be able to delve into that healing and self examination while immersed in what was so deeply hurting us.
As estranged family members, we can have empathy, respect and even admiration for what our parents and the generations before them endured. At the same time, we can recognize that, without conscious effort to change, there are unacceptable and unabating levels of harm and dysfunction that cannot be tolerated if there is to be meaningful repair and redirection for ourselves and our families of choice/creation.
The “fire in the woods” that is generational family dysfunction resulting from unhealed emotional wounds has to be extinguished so as not to continue its destruction for generations to come. Our families of origin can either be part of that process, or if unable to do so, may have to be left to burn out on their own while we focus on tending to regrowth.
Whether we will be successful is yet to be determined, but in stepping away, we have decided not to allow ourselves or our own children to be immolated in those generational fires.
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[Please note: This article is in reflection on the annual September observance of Intergeneration Month. The educational columnist is not a licensed mental health professional. The articles under this series are written from a peer to peer perspective.]
Sources:
Agllias, Kylie. Family Estrangement: A matter of perspective. 2017. Routledge
Jozefczyk, A. (2023). Multigenerational transmission of differentiation of self - Toward a more in-depth understanding of Bowen’s theory concept. Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, 49, 634-63. DOI: 10.1111/jmft.12645
Buqué, Mariel. (2024). Break the Cycle: A guide to healing intergenerational trauma. Dutton, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
Millacci, Tiffany. (2023) “7 Trauma responses and how to recognize them.” PositivePsychology.com. https://positivepsychology.com/trauma-response/
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