Can trauma be transmitted?

Can the grandmother’s trauma be transmitted to her grandchild? The latest research findings clearly say yes.

Trauma can be transmitted from one generation to the next or even to the next but one within a family structure.

Epigenetics

Epigenetics is a subfield of genetics. It is responsible for how we live and what we experience, thus affecting certain genes positively or negatively.

An example:

A study from the USA found that women who were pregnant during the September 11, 2011 attack were exposed to an increased stress situation. Their children were still found to have elevated stress hormone levels one year after birth. Here there was already a transmission in the womb.

Parental attachment disorders

If both parents enter parenthood with trauma, they may have difficulty establishing a healthy, stable, and loving relationship with their child. Because one’s own unresolved traumatization does not allow it. These parents often act unpredictably, unreliably, or even overprotectively.

Family dynamics

Behavioral patterns such as not saying painful things or overreacting to seemingly terse situations are unconsciously adopted and passed on by children. This can create a dynamic of tension and aggression within the family that leads to withdrawal.

Systemic therapy is suitable here. With their approach of looking at the transferred trauma from a higher perspective and considering the whole system, in this case the family, in the treatment process. The individual pain is always placed in the context of the family or the system, and solutions are thus worked out.

Conclusion:

Systemic therapy is a highly efficient form of therapy that not only sees and helps the individual in his or her problems but can also dissolve long existing dysfunctional structures.