Heal Your ANCESTORS

We cannot deny the importance of revisiting our past and healing the stuck energies of pain and dysfunctional patterns acquired from our ancestors if we want to move forward on the path of greater felicity and freedom, says Navni Chawla

- Navni Chawla

Have you saying that hurt -people, hurt heard the H people? Often, trauma or stored hurt is passed on from one generation to another. 

The question arises as to what is trauma. Gerald Fromm, PhD, director of the Erikson Institute for Education and Research, defines trauma as something that shortcircuits a person's capacity to use their mind to process things. It is the experience of being so overwhelmed emotionally that it shuts down the processing apparatus of the mind. It invokes a sense of helplessness, which causes the traumatised person to have difficulty regulating their emotions as well as stress.

Dr Sumaira Joshi, a psychologist at Rewire Clinic, West Delhi, explains, "The term generational trauma came out of the Holocaust. The impact of certain traumatising events that happen to a community gets passed down from one generation to another. The term intergenerational trauma refers to the transmission of traumatic effects from the directly traumatised generation to their offspring. Whereas, transgenerational trauma travels down the family tree to those who have not been exposed to the original traumatic event, like the grandchildren and the greatgrandchildren. The primary reason for them to exist is that the trauma was never really properly dealt with." However, there could be many reasons for transgenerational trauma to exist other than just horrific incidents like genocides. Also, it can be expressed in many different ways. Let's explore this further.

How does transgenerational trauma look like or feel like?

Trauma is experienced by different people in different forms. How it is expressed also depends on the cause of the trauma. It is also important to understand that transgenerational trauma can feel different in the same person at different life stages. For example, the impact of a traumatic incident will be felt differently in a person's childhood and adulthood.