You need to be around people all the timeĬonversely, the need to be around people all the time could be an inherited need to feel safe in a group, Hammond said. This can manifest as trust issues in romantic relationships if you've learned from your family to be suspicious of those looking after you, because romantic feelings are similar to those that babies have in relation to their carers, Hammond said. Since then, the term has been used to describe inherited trauma from enslaved people, including African Americans, as well as wars and natural disasters. The concept of intergenerational trauma was first described in the context of the children of Holocaust victims after Canadian psychiatrists noticed they were overrepresented in referrals to psychiatry clinics in the mid-sixties, two decades after the end of World War II. Intergenerational trauma is also thought to have what is known as an epigenetic component, where past generations' experiences affect how certain genes are expressed in their children and grandchildren, with more research needed to confirm this. A person's environment or circumstance may lead them to behave in a certain way, which their child may mirror, with the cycle continuing for generations, he said. Intergenerational trauma, also known as multigenerational, transgenerational, or historical trauma, is where the effects of events experienced by a person's parents, grandparents, and ancestors are passed down through the repetition of behaviors and relationship dynamics, Hendrix Hammond, a psychotherapist based in London, told Business Insider. You're probably aware that your parents help shape who you are, but that effect runs deeper for those experiencing what is known as intergenerational trauma. Account icon An icon in the shape of a person's head and shoulders.

Intergenerational trauma case study