Summary:
This article reviews the idea of intergenerational trauma, what it is, and how it can affect clients in the present. This particle provides information on treatment plans available as well.
What is intergenerational trauma? This is a form of trauma stemming from things like war, systemic oppression, or abuse that gets passed down from generations. This can be parents who pass it down to their children, and children who pass it down to their children. This creates a cycle of untreated trauma or wounds that shape the psychology and emotions of a family. At Sequoia Recovery Center, we aim to help treat this trauma.
Getting Help for Trauma: Our Levels of Support
At Sequoia Recovery Center, we provide a continuum of care to ensure clients struggling with intergenerational trauma receive the help they need.
This starts with our residential program, an offering for those who have self-medicated with drugs or alcohol as a coping mechanism for intergenerational trauma. This starts with detox, from which clients can enjoy a full-time support system, residing with us.
We also provide multiple levels of outpatient care, making it easy to fit recovery and mental health treatment into a busier schedule. Our PHP and IOP treatments can be used as a starting point for those who have a safe home environment, or they can be a step-down for clients who have completed a residential program.
Therapy for Trauma
During these levels of care, our team provides therapies like EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing), a primary tool we use to help resolve trauma that is stored incorrectly in the brain. These sessions can help people reduce the emotional distress from intergenerational trauma without having to talk about the details.
Specialized Family Programs for Intergenerational Trauma
Our team understands that intergenerational trauma can lead to behaviors that function as symptoms, can interfere with good communication, and lead to emotional avoidance within the family unit.
As such, we provide specialized family programs to help the whole family system affected by intergenerational trauma through things like educational workshops, not just on trauma, but on the mechanics of addiction. Our therapists provide structured family therapy sessions where healthy boundaries can be set, and parents and children can help identify negative patterns of behavior and break them.
As clients prepare to leave any of our programs, we offer resources and referrals so that families and their loved ones can continue getting the support they need in overcoming intergenerational trauma and any subsequent addiction or mental health disorders.
Comprehensive Aftercare Planning
At Sequoia Recovery Center, we believe that the most important part of the rehab process is what happens after you leave our care. Knowing about intergenerational trauma is just the first step; the second is knowing how to manage these responses once you leave our facility.
That is why we help clients understand the importance of ongoing aftercare, support group meetings, and a sense of community. To help prepare for this, we provide each client with a written discharge plan, something that offers a list of
- Coping skills
- Local support groups (like AA, NA, or SMART Recovery)
- A schedule of respective therapies for those who are continuing with things like outpatient sessions
If current living environments aren’t yet safe for sustaining recovery, we work with clients to provide sober living facilities that can help prevent a relapse with supportive instruction.
Moreover, those who complete their programs will be invited to join our Sequoia Alumni Program, which hosts meetings and events. During these events, clients who have left our care have the opportunity to come back and participate in different events, reconnect with those who have gone through similar struggles and with whom they may have shared during things like group therapy sessions.
Finally, our team is there to help clients utilize things like medication-assisted treatment for ongoing medical support. This is a way to ensure that those who might struggle with things like co-occurring mental health disorders can get the treatment they need to manage symptoms of things like underlying depression, so that those symptoms don’t trigger a relapse.
Contact Our Team Today
At Sequoia Recovery Center, we know that many struggles with addiction and mental health are rooted in trauma, often unresolved trauma, and in some cases intergenerational trauma. Understanding that connection can help our clients get the long-term healing they deserve.
FAQ
What is Intergenerational Trauma?
Intergenerational trauma is a form of trauma that gets passed down through the generations, from the people who experienced the events of things like systemic oppression, abuse, or war to their children and all subsequent generations. This creates cycles where past events continue to shape the future of family members throughout the generations.
How Can Trauma Be Passed Down to Children?
With intergenerational trauma, even though a child may not have experienced the same events as their parents, they can learn maladaptive coping mechanisms by watching how their parents react to stress. These environmental pathways are some of the most common ways that trauma gets passed down, but there are also biological pathways; in some cases, trauma can actually alter how genes get expressed in subsequent generations. As such, if a mother who experienced war in their home country later has children, those children might have epigenetic changes that resulted from the trauma of war.
How do I Know if I Have Intergenerational Trauma?
Inherited trauma often results in chronic anxiety, a heightened fight or flight response, unexplained feelings of shame or guilt, and problems forming healthy relationships or trusting another individual. At our facility, we often see clients describing these feelings as if they were waiting for the other shoe to drop, always on guard against the next terrible thing.
Why is Intergenerational Trauma Bad?
Untreated intergenerational trauma can lead to several issues, such as silence in the family, chronic stress, and higher risks of addiction. Those with intergenerational trauma might turn to drugs or alcohol to try to avoid or ignore the emotional pain they have experienced throughout the family, especially if that trauma is rooted in silence.
Why is Silence a Factor in Family Trauma?
In some families, traumatic events are kept as a secret, and this level of silence prevents younger generations from navigating symptoms and older generations from healing. If, for example, Grandparents were subject to a severe traumatic event, but no one talks about it, their children and grandchildren might not know how to navigate things like withdrawal or anger, leading to internalized self-blame and subsequent confusion.
Does Intergenerational Trauma Affect Physical Health?
Absolutely, as chronic stress can be passed down through the generations, leading to higher risks of chronic pain, autoimmune disorders, and heart disease. That is why our team works to address the physical manifestation of unresolved trauma alongside emotional manifestations through things like a well-rounded, holistic approach. At Sequoia Recovery Center, we treat inherited trauma with therapies like EMDR or family therapy.
Can You Fix Intergenerational Trauma?
Awareness is the first step in breaking the cycle of intergenerational trauma, and from there, processing trauma in a safe, clinical environment can absolutely help fix current symptoms. At Sequoia Recovery Center, we aim to help families heal as a unit, improving communication, moving away from that fight or flight place to a place of healthy coping skills, good communication, and established boundaries.
