Curious about: Can a family tree help to free me of the burden of past trauma?
Do you carry heightened anxiety in situations and it just make sense to you?
Do certain things trigger you into a particular feeling or behaviour without a known cause?
Do you wonder, is this really my issue?
Intergenerational trauma and how it can impact us without you knowing.
What Is Intergenerational Trauma?
Intergenerational trauma is where a legacy burden is passed down the family tree. This can be done intentionally or unintentionally and is routed in protection – to try to reduce the harm on future generations by passing on protective behaviours or knowledge of danger.
What Is Legacy Burden
A legacy burden is a belief, a feeling, or a sensation within the body that hasn’t been developed in your own life but from generations before you – your parents, grandparents, great grand parents etc.
The protective behaviour or knowledge of danger may become a family habit or rule, one that feels totally normal within your family system and therefore something you may nit be aware of. These are passed down through family narratives or stories, cultural massaging and conditioning of behaviours.
Epigenetic research suggests that intergenerational trauma can impact your gene for things like depression, anxiety, addiction, PTSD etc meaning that these may be passed down genetically making you more susceptible to them depending on your life experiences.
Creating A Family Tree To Understand Yourself
If you are interested in discovering your legacy burden, you can do this through creating a genograph, or family tree.
Draw out your generation, your parents, grand parents and is possible great grandparents generations including those who are alive and who have died, and family members that you might know of but have never met. This gives you a full view of your family. Use a square for male and circle for female
Add details of any trauma, mental health or physical health problems, including addiction, depression, anxiety etc and also any other known trauma such as domestic abuse, sexual abuse, poverty, etc.
Highlight anything that stands out for you such as links to how you experience life, any generational or intergenerational repeating patterns.
Identify a vulnerability from your family tree that you experience and turn your attention to yourself and your life experiences.
a. Pay attention to how this vulnerability sits within you – how does it present itself in your life, how does it affect how you deal with life experiences etc.
b. Notice how this vulnerability sits within your body, can you feel it in your chest, your stomach, your arms or shoulders? Is it heavy or light, smooth or jagged, does it present as a colour or a smell? (These are just ideas, take the time to be with yourself and just notice what is there for you).
What percentage of this feeling or vulnerability actually belongs to you and what percentage belongs to your parents or others in your family tree?
Would the part or you that has been carrying this burden of behaviour or experience be willing to let go of the percentage that belongs to someone else.
Take a moment to acknowledge this, can you feel a shift in acknowledging this is not fully your burden to carry?
What Am I Meant To Feel?
It’s ok to feel what ever you feel whether this is something or nothing. Become aware that you have just taken this time for yourself, to become curious and creative in your approach to looking after yourself and getting to know who you really are.
If you would like support in this technique or wider approaches to understanding yourself, feel free to look over my website and get in touch to see how we can work together.
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