How Trauma Transfers Through Generations

In my practice, I often work with two or three generations in the same room. For example, grandparents, their children, and their grandchildren. And it’s fascinating what I always see in these sessions.

The same patterns. In three different generations.

For instance, an angry parent in every generation — someone who raged at their children the way they were raged at.

Anxiety showing up like clockwork — grandmother had it, mother has it, daughter’s already developing it.

And sometimes it’s not just emotional. I’ve sat with families where the same cancer shows up in family members across three or four generations. The same autoimmune condition. The same chronic pain.

You might think, “Well, that’s just genetics.” But it’s more than that.

There are two terms I want you to know — because understanding them could change how you see yourself, your health, and your relationships.

Intergenerational Trauma

When painful experiences aren’t processed and healed, they get passed down — through parenting styles, family rules, emotional patterns, nervous system responses, and even the unspoken things no one in your family talks about.

It’s not just “my mom was anxious so I learned to be anxious.” It’s the way your entire system — your body, your emotions, your reflexes — got shaped by pain that started long before you were born.

Epigenetics

When someone goes through extreme or prolonged stress, it can leave chemical tags on their genes — tiny markers that tell the body which genes to turn on and which to silence.

The genes themselves don’t change, but the tags alter how they express themselves. And it doesn’t just affect the person who went through the trauma. It gets passed down. Inherited. Copied into the next generation’s blueprint.

Think of your genes like the hard drive of a computer. You’re born with it. It doesn’t change. But epigenetics? That’s the software — determining which programs run and which stay closed.

Trauma acts like a hacker that breaks into the system and switches on programs that were never meant to run — chronic stress, hypervigilance, inflammation, anxiety, depression.

Your grandparents go through something devastating (war, famine, poverty). Their body activates a survival program to cope.

Instead of shutting down when the threat passes, it stays running. Gets copied into the next generation’s operating system. And the next.

Now you’re walking around with software you didn’t install, didn’t choose, and don’t even know is there — draining your energy, hijacking your reactions, and crashing your relationships.

It shows up in your physical health.

Descendants of people who survived extreme hardship carry higher rates of heart disease, diabetes, and chronic inflammation.

That unexplained fatigue, the gut issues, the tension your body holds even when nothing is “wrong” — your body may be running a stress program that was installed before you took your first breath.

It shows up in your mental health.

Anxiety that doesn’t match your life. A nervous system always scanning for danger even when you’re safe.

Many of my clients say the same thing: “I don’t know why I feel this way. Nothing bad is happening.” That’s because the alarm system they inherited was set by someone else’s experience.

It shows up in your behavior and relationships.

Let’s say poverty ran deep in your family. Your grandparents survived scarcity. Your parents grew up hearing “we can’t afford that.” Now here you are — financially stable, good income — and yet you hoard. You overbuy “just in case.” You feel panic at the thought of spending on yourself.

Nothing in your present life says you need to scrimp and save. But your nervous system is still running your grandmother’s survival software.

In relationships, that same scarcity wiring shows up as never feeling like there’s enough love, enough attention, enough reassurance.

You’re not being “needy” or “closed off.” You’re replaying a program that was never yours to begin with.

Here’s what gives me hope.

These programs can be switched off. You can’t swap out the hard drive — but you can update the software.

1. Learn your family story — the real one. What did your parents grow up with? What did they never talk about? You can’t uninstall a program you don’t know is running.

2. Regulate your nervous system — daily. Slow deep breathing, grounding exercises, mindful body awareness — these aren’t “nice extras.” They’re how you start closing background programs and sending new instructions to your genes.

3. Choose a different response — even when it feels unnatural. When you feel the urge to hoard, shut down, or react with intensity that doesn’t match the moment — pause. Say to yourself: This is old. This isn’t mine. I’m safe now. Every time you choose differently, you’re writing new code to pass forward.

You didn’t choose this operating system. But you can upgrade it. And that’s legacy work.