Weemie
Diamond Member
Intergenerational trauma is a tough one. My great-grandfather escaped Poland before the Holocaust and died in the 70s, after losing all of his extended family who did not manage to do the same. He was the town drunk, abused my grandmother, who developed NPD. She abused my mom, who developed personality instability, post-partum psychosis and major depression. These issues prevented her from being able to care for me properly in infancy, which resulted in me developing RAD and eventually PTSD and SZPD -- over 50 years later.
All of this can be linearly traced from one person, to the next, all the way down to me - and that's one generation removed from your own family's trauma. My great uncle (grandma's brother) was in Korea, and the exact same thing happened to his family and is also very evident and linked specifically to his treatment of his family which resulted in mental illness and trauma for them, and so on and so forth. My other great-uncle became fully schizophrenic in adolescence (and we now know that schizophrenia has both heritable and environmental causative factors).
War and combat have particular impacts on our neurology and as you've discovered, they can actually result in epigenetic changes as well (as can other forms of trauma). But war, genocide, etc can create very extensive and long-lasting harm that reverberates generations later. It is more likely to result in forms of PTSD that co-occur with toxic and abusive behaviors. There is benefit to having gratitude for not enduring genocide first-hand, but in learning to be non-judgmental toward myself I have rules when it comes to expressing gratitude.
That it shouldn't be used to invalidate the actual harms I've experienced. By separating the two (gratitude for having a good relationship with my mom, being able to chill out all day most days, generally have a good/peaceful life now plus I have also endured significant trauma from human trafficking) and refusing to allow one to cancel out the other, it actually lets me focus on the things I am grateful for (and when necessary, to focus on the traumatic circumstances and hold space for both).
Additionally, edited to add: my own trauma is not a result of war or genocide but rather human trafficking (which did have a basis in violent armed conflict, but via a civilian organized crime group) -- and even within this first generation of having endured it, this has had impacts on all of my family members who dealt with me in the aftermath as well as who had direct exposure to my traffickers and subsequently having to deal with that.
Even though I was the only one trafficked, my mom wound up hospitalized because of it, and her mental illness deeply intersects with it. So even though you didn't experience war/genocide directly, it still has direct impacts on you as a family member. This type of trauma impacts the entire family, not just the people who endured it (and there is a good argument to be made for similar issues in families impacted by other forms of trauma as well - but this, because it is actual intra/inter-communal violence, is slightly different. It affects the entire community, the whole family, the gestalt.)
All of this can be linearly traced from one person, to the next, all the way down to me - and that's one generation removed from your own family's trauma. My great uncle (grandma's brother) was in Korea, and the exact same thing happened to his family and is also very evident and linked specifically to his treatment of his family which resulted in mental illness and trauma for them, and so on and so forth. My other great-uncle became fully schizophrenic in adolescence (and we now know that schizophrenia has both heritable and environmental causative factors).
War and combat have particular impacts on our neurology and as you've discovered, they can actually result in epigenetic changes as well (as can other forms of trauma). But war, genocide, etc can create very extensive and long-lasting harm that reverberates generations later. It is more likely to result in forms of PTSD that co-occur with toxic and abusive behaviors. There is benefit to having gratitude for not enduring genocide first-hand, but in learning to be non-judgmental toward myself I have rules when it comes to expressing gratitude.
That it shouldn't be used to invalidate the actual harms I've experienced. By separating the two (gratitude for having a good relationship with my mom, being able to chill out all day most days, generally have a good/peaceful life now plus I have also endured significant trauma from human trafficking) and refusing to allow one to cancel out the other, it actually lets me focus on the things I am grateful for (and when necessary, to focus on the traumatic circumstances and hold space for both).
Additionally, edited to add: my own trauma is not a result of war or genocide but rather human trafficking (which did have a basis in violent armed conflict, but via a civilian organized crime group) -- and even within this first generation of having endured it, this has had impacts on all of my family members who dealt with me in the aftermath as well as who had direct exposure to my traffickers and subsequently having to deal with that.
Even though I was the only one trafficked, my mom wound up hospitalized because of it, and her mental illness deeply intersects with it. So even though you didn't experience war/genocide directly, it still has direct impacts on you as a family member. This type of trauma impacts the entire family, not just the people who endured it (and there is a good argument to be made for similar issues in families impacted by other forms of trauma as well - but this, because it is actual intra/inter-communal violence, is slightly different. It affects the entire community, the whole family, the gestalt.)
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