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What is generational trauma/what does it mean to you

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Lilac98

Policy Enforcement
I've just been thinking about this and I'm wondering what exactly is it, how does it affect people and what does it mean to people. Like grandads dad treated him weirdly according to mum. She said he never said anything about abuse but once when someone needed an electrician and grandad was one his dad recommended him but reffered to him as some electrician he knew of rather than his son and told him to pretend they weren't related. Mum thinks grandads dad's dad was probably not that nice either but she doesn't know. Is that generational trauma? I'm a bit confused about it.

Also mum and grandad both got told they weren't good enough and mum always gets anxious about everything and it makes me anxious.
 
I definitely believe my "family" has carried generational trauma. My maternal grandmother (and apparently several of her siblings) was molested by a few different men (uncles, mother's boyfriends, etc), never dealt with it, learned to sweep it under the rug ("it's just part of being a girl"). So, then, when each of her four children were molested by different family members (namely, her own brothers) and other babysitters), she claims to not have noticed/have no idea. So, of course, they didn't get any help. [Although, I've recently learned that she will flat-out lie and deny obvious sexual abuse even going on in her own house, claiming: "I don't believe it 'til I see it".) Then each of her four children, never got help or even validation for their traumas, and each dove headfirst into their own oblivion/vices (drugs, alcohol, yet more men, etc). and proceeded to have a bunch of kids, totaling 16+. So, while that drugged out generation is numbing their own pain and not keeping an eye on their kids, EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THOSE GRANDCHILDREN, including yours truly, with the small exception of three kids, has been CSA/R'd. So far, I'm the only one who refuses to shut up and accept this "way of life". I live in therapy, I live in self-awareness, I call out these cousins and uncles who turn out to be predators.

And my precious daughter is the most happy, carefree, innocent child I have ever come across.
 
Never understood what it really means and way too unwell to put energy in that. So it will just be a guess.
My mother was raped by her twin (yeah it's really awful) and next gen my brother sexually abused me
In contrary she reacted fast and a decisive way to protect me to the point her reaction seemed me paranoid (my father who did nothing wasn't allowed anymore to do some things while he never did anything that could be read as incestuous)
 
@GreySouled Your post really spoke to me. It is very similar to my family story. Maternal grandmother molested by an employee of her dad’s. Swept under the rug, hidden. She marries an alcoholic. Her sisters also marry alcoholics—all of them beaten. So many grandchildren became addicts or narcissists and abuse rampant. Paternal grandmother not abused as a child but raised by her sister. Grows up to marry first an abusive alcoholic who she had a daughter with, then a sociopathic pedophile who raped her daughter over years. That grandpa was the most charming man I knew, didn’t know about his pedophilia until after he died.

The theme in my family seems to be uncovering abuse decades after it happened.

I also married a narcissist. Two of my three children are addicts and school drop-outs and they aren’t even 18 yet. I love the heck out them but I don’t know how to help them, especially when their dad is a “dry addict,” beat his IV drug use without rehab or therapy. My youngest is happy, carefree, and innocent like yours.

Breaking these cycles is a monumental task and requires lots of support—which is the last thing narcissistic abusers want their supply to have. Very hard for me to push back against isolation. One day, one hour, one minute at a time.
 
@GreySouled @Givrali @OliveJewel I'm pretty sure g abused my mum as a child. She said she doesn't remember being abused but she remembers being his favourite and that she'd always go to him for hugs and attention cause nanny has never been affectionate, but then she remembers feeling uncomfortable around him and knowing to avoid him but doesn't remember why or what changed.
 
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