Stopping Generational Trauma Quotes

Our moral responsibility is not to stop the future, but to shape it...to channel our destiny in humane directions and to ease the trauma of transition.

The tradition of passing trauma from generation to generation like a family heirloom stops with you its final inheritor determined to lay it to rest

I’ve read that the currents of trauma run deep in families. They can be inherited, passed down the generations from one to the next, ruining lives as they go. Perhaps that’s what happened to my mother. But I won’t let it happen to me. Now that I understand where that trauma came from, I can see it for what it is. And by finding the courage to turn and face it, I have the opportunity to stop it in its tracks.

It’s often the wounds caused by our families that cut the deepest and leave the most apparent scars, but God can absolutely heal those wounds. Your family history doesn’t have to be your future. Ask Him to stop the dysfunction and create a new legacy, and then watch what He does. He is the road map that will guide you into a new land of promise and freedom if you trust Him enough to walk that path in obedience.

What makes earned secure attachment unique, however, is its correlation with parenting that promotes secure attachment in the next generation (Roisman et al., 2002). This research challenges the prevailing view that suboptimal attachment in the parent generation predicts the likelihood of providing less-than-optimal attachment experiences for the next generation. Instead, it suggests that human beings can transform the implicit memories and explicit narrative of the past by internalizing healthy adult attachment experiences until they achieve the benefits conferred by secure attachment. The fact that earned secure attachment transmits the ability to offer the same to the next generation is a hopeful sign. It implies that we can help our clients bring a stop to the intergenerational legacy of trauma in their families and create a new legacy through the intergenerational transmission of secure attachment.

Automation, globalization, and increased education requirements - compounded by failures in government and institutions - have given rise to a generation of disconnected and fearful people. The number of men who have dropped out of the labour force and stopped looking for work has quintupled since the 1950s. The result is a form of community trauma deeply felt in many rural areas: intergenerational poverty, long-term unemployment, degraded environments, disconnected social relationships, and destructive social norms.

Unresolved traumas can overwhelm families, communities, and even countries for generations and keep getting passed down to each subsequent generation. As you continue to shift, you become less emotionally reactive. You start to see these behaviors for what they are—ways of coping with pain. And you can stop taking them personally because you can see they didn’t originate with you.

And I would say that if we better understand how this pain—this trauma—is passed from generation to generation, we have a better chance of intentionally and effectively stopping it. This comes back to transmissibility—emotional contagion. The word transmissible is used to describe the ability of a trait (or skill, belief, etc.) to be passed on from one person to another. When children raised in a household that speaks only Spanish grow up and speak Spanish, they didn’t “inherit” Spanish. The capacity to make associations between sound and image is primarily genetic, but the specific ways we turn that genetic capacity into a language are not. There are no genes for Chinese or English or Spanish. But language is transmissible. Early in life, the language-related systems in our brain’s cortex are so spongelike that they change when we interact with people in ways that involve speech. By speaking with the baby, we change her brain. This allows her to learn her family’s language.

If somebody is terribly damaged, and has experienced great trauma as a child, so much so that a part of this child breaks off, so to speak, and never develops further than the incident and the only survival and coping skills available to that child at that time. Where does the responsibility lie? This man/child, woman/child is a sum of his/her experiences. Has the trauma stopped him/her from learning better ways or from wanting to learn better ways? Where does the conscience kick in? Where does the souls learning journey kick in? Are the fiend makers fiends of greater capacity than he, or is he less than their “monster made”? This is really serious stuff. What compulses and impulses this man/woman in this behaviour? Passed on behaviour patterns tend to worsen through the generations, unless a soul is born to them that has the capability to see beyond their levels of darkness, willing to forge a path into the light, using the experiences of suffering to enlighten and purify the way rather than the opposite.

So, understanding the way we pass things to the next generation is important. If we want to enrich the transmission of humane, compassionate values, beliefs, and practices, and minimize the transmission of hateful, destructive beliefs, we need to be very mindful of what we’re exposing our children to. Are they spending time with people who are different from them? Are they seeing diversity celebrated? Or are they being raised to fear and judge anyone who doesn’t think or look or speak like they do? Generational transmission of bias can be disrupted. We can stop passing hateful, destructive, and false beliefs to the next generation, but to do so we must be exceedingly intentional about all of the ways we influence our babies, toddlers, and young children.

Prophecies and ancient forces have tried to claim me. Generations of tradition have tried to steer me. Trauma and fear have tried to stop me. But today, right now? I'm exactly who I'm supposed to be. I smile. "Welcome home, Slayer.

For men, shame is the invisible twin to childhood trauma. It’s deeply rooted in the male psyche, part of the legacy of the patriarchy, and, from everything you’ve told me, embedded in your family’s pathology. A pathology, I might add, that has likely rolled from generation to generation,” George said. “So, let’s start there. Are you going to be the guy with the courage to stop the pattern and spare your children? Or the guy who sleepwalks through life and repeats his ancestors’ mistakes?

Unresolved trauma in the past can pass through generations, continuing to affect a family for a long time if left unchecked. Knowing your triggers can help you increase your chances of showing a positive response to your child’s emotions.