To protect your children from transgenerational trauma, you must be prepared to feel and process the pain of unprocessed trauma from previous generations, as it continues down until someone faces it.
Begin the process of self-exploration and family discussions by turning to yourself with compassion, acknowledging your feelings, recognizing that issues may not originate with you, and then daring to explore these topics with family, starting small.
Stop self-medicating with distractions like smartphones, busyness, alcohol, or sugar, as blocking feelings prevents you from understanding and addressing the underlying emotional pain or overwhelming sensations.
To set effective boundaries, first cultivate awareness of different boundary types (emotional, physical, time) and notice your body’s physical and emotional responses during interactions to understand your needs and set compassionate limits.
For lasting lifestyle change, understand the underlying role a behavior serves in your life (e.g., alcohol coping with stress) rather than just white-knuckling it, so you can address the root cause.
To truly understand yourself, delve into your family’s history and dynamics, as your upbringing is wired into you genetically and influences your responses, beliefs, and triggers.
Explore untold stories, secrets, and hidden events within your family history, as these may reveal the origins of present-day struggles or vulnerabilities that didn’t start with you.
Create a genogram of your family history to map out significant events, relationships, and what has been passed down through generations, as this can provide valuable information and understanding.
To truly know your family and understand its hidden aspects, you must engage in important, sometimes difficult, but always useful conversations, which requires dedicating sufficient time.
Reflect back what you observe in family interactions to help members understand each other from different perspectives, enabling them to meet and support each other more effectively.
To improve communication, ask family members to repeat back what they heard you say, as this process helps them make sense of it, slows down their response, and encourages a calmer, more reflective reply.
When having difficult conversations, engage in a collaborative activity like walking or cooking together to reduce intensity, and acknowledge your own feelings (e.g., nervousness) to foster a more aligned and open discussion.
To have honest conversations with parents, model the behavior by starting with small, less contentious topics and asking for their opinion, rather than immediately addressing the biggest issues.
When navigating different parenting styles with your own parents, acknowledge their strengths and your gratitude, then collaboratively discuss your differing approaches, asking for their opinion to foster connection rather than criticism.
While engaging in shared activities, ask your parents about their parents’ beliefs (e.g., about sex, money, upbringing) to uncover untold stories that may help you understand unvoiced disturbances within yourself.
Learn to engage in productive conflict within your family by being honest about your anger without using words as weapons, stepping away when needed, and then consciously repairing the rupture to heal and deepen understanding.
If family is a core value, consciously prioritize and create dedicated time to spend with them, especially for soulful and meaningful conversations that will have lasting impact.
Make time for fun activities with family members, beyond just discussing chores or responsibilities, to nurture and strengthen relationships that might otherwise suffer due to a focus on duties.
Dedicate 5-10 minutes daily to solitude, sitting with yourself without distraction to allow feelings to come up, as this self-awareness is crucial for understanding and changing relationships.
In small ways, like five minutes a day, practice focusing by turning your attention inward, breathing, observing what you feel, and naming your emotions, as this provides crucial information for your system.
To understand your feelings, engage in journaling or use voice memos to talk to yourself, as voicing thoughts can release unconscious insights and surprise you with previously unknown emotions.
Introduce slow, collaborative activities like a family puzzle to create a non-intense environment where difficult or tricky conversations can naturally emerge and be processed with more space and calm.
If you have the opportunity, create space to reflect and learn your family’s stories, as this process can help you feel the pain of past events, thrive, and ultimately feel safer.
Recognize that blocking your feelings with various distractions or coping mechanisms will keep your system stuck in a dysfunctional state, preventing improvement and growth.
To overcome isolation and rebuild trust in social connection, start with small actions like going out for 10 minutes with someone or taking a short walk, gradually increasing interaction.