Generational Trauma Stops Here

Promise

After this page you can explain what generational trauma means, what research shows and does not show about it, and four concrete habits I use to stop passing it on.

In my words (the original essay, unchanged)

Two true things

My parents loved me. I believe that completely.

They also hurt me. I believe that completely too.

These two things are not contradictions. They are what I mean by generational trauma: pain that moves from one body to the next, not because the people carrying it are cruel, but because they never had the language or the tools to put it down. My mother was beaten as a child. My father grew up performing for a grandfather who measured love in achievements and money. Neither of them ever sat with a therapist. Neither of them ever heard the words “that was not your fault.” So they did to me what had been done to them, imperfectly and with love, and I spent four decades unpacking it.

I have a daughter now. She is eighteen months old. She is, without question, the most important thing in my life: the reason everything else I am doing has to succeed, and the reason I cannot afford to pretend I have not inherited something I need to put down.

What the research does and does not say

The idea has a history. In a 2018 review in World Psychiatry, Rachel Yehuda and Amy Lehrner trace the concept of intergenerational trauma in psychiatry to reports, from the 1960s onwards, on the children of Holocaust survivors. Later studies found that the adult children of survivors with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) were themselves at higher risk of PTSD, and some showed differences in their stress-hormone biology.

You may have read that trauma is “written into your DNA”. The same review is careful here. In humans, studies have not yet shown that the effects of trauma are inherited through epigenetic changes (chemical marks that change how genes are used, not the genes themselves); the strongest evidence for that comes from animal studies, and the authors describe the human case as a hypothesis still to be tested. They also stress that such effects are not fixed: they can change when a person’s environment changes.

The more ordinary route is easier to see. A study funded by the US National Institute of Mental Health followed 541 mothers and their children in Singapore. Mothers who had been neglected or abused as children tended to have worse mental health during or after pregnancy, and that, in turn, was linked to more anxiety and depression in their children at seven and a half. The researchers suggest that supporting mothers at those times may be one way to break the chain.

That is why the practical part matters more to me than the label. If what passes down travels at least partly through a parent’s own mental health and the way they parent, then that is where it can stop.

Breaking the cycle, in concrete terms

Here is what I mean by breaking the cycle, in concrete terms, because I am tired of reading abstract things about generational trauma that do not tell you what to actually do:

I name my emotions out loud. When I am anxious, I say “I am anxious right now.” Not to burden her (she is a baby; she does not understand) but to rewire myself, because I grew up in a house where emotion had no name and no space. There is some laboratory evidence behind the habit: in a brain-imaging study, Lieberman and colleagues (2007) found that putting feelings into words reduced the amygdala’s response to negative emotional images (the amygdala is a part of the brain involved in emotional reactions). It was a small, short-term experiment with 30 adults, not proof of lasting change.

I apologise when I am wrong. No adult in my childhood ever said sorry to me: not for the big things, not for the small ones. An apology requires you to believe the other person’s experience is real.

I protect my own health like it is her future. Because it is. My stability is her emotional baseline. When I manage my condition well, she gets the version of me who can be present.

I am in therapy. I say this without shame. My father would have said it was weakness. I say: the conversation I am having now is the one they never had, and it stops here.

WHAT I AM PUTTING DOWN
(read from the top)

 MY PARENTS' CHILDHOODS
   a mother beaten;
   love measured in
   achievements and money
        |
        v
 MY CHILDHOOD
   emotion had no name;
   no adult said sorry
        |
        v
 ME, NOW
   name it out loud
   apologise when wrong
   protect my health
   go to therapy
        |
        v
 MY DAUGHTER
   a father who
   chose to stop

Still in it

None of this is finished. I am still in it. But my daughter will grow up knowing that her father looked at the thing he inherited, called it by its real name, and chose to stop.

The takeaway: loving someone and hurting them can both be true. The research on intergenerational trauma is real but still developing: in humans, the idea that trauma is passed on through changes to our DNA remains a hypothesis, not a finding. A better-documented route is the ordinary one, the way a parent’s own pain affects their mental health and their parenting, and that is a route we can change. Name what you feel. Apologise when you are wrong. Protect your health. Get help. That is how I am choosing to stop it.

That is the only legacy worth building.

If you are in crisis anywhere in France, including La Réunion, you can call the national suicide prevention line on 3114, free and open 24 hours a day, seven days a week (ARS La Réunion). If a child is in danger or at risk, call 119 (Allô Enfance en Danger), free and open around the clock. In an emergency, call 15 or 112.

Related reading: On Starting Over: What Complex PTSD Taught Me About Resilience, The Forensic Auditor: How Documentation Became My Therapy, Bipolar I at Work, Four Anchors and My Mental Health Journey. For support: Resources, and all the mental health articles.

I am a writer and educator in La Réunion. I am a father, a trauma survivor, and a work in progress.

This is a personal account, not medical or psychological advice. If the effects of your own childhood are weighing on you, talk to your doctor or a therapist, or call one of the lines above.

Fact check, 28 October 2026

Checked the sources already linked in the essay: Yehuda and Lehrner (2018, World Psychiatry), the NIMH science update on the Singapore study (541 mothers), and Lieberman and colleagues (2007, 30 adults). Helplines checked: 3114 (suicide prevention, France), 119 (Allô Enfance en Danger), 15 and 112. No corrections needed.