Breaking Free Of The Grip Of Family Trauma
This article, Breaking Free From the Grip of Family Trauma, offers a glimpse into the courageous work of facing family trauma, learning to understand the way past experiences are influencing the way you experience life today, learning to feel self-compassion and its relationship to learning to trust again, allowing the beginnings of trusting again to support you in creating a support network, revising the way you see yourself in the role of victim, creatively expressing your truth, and learning to set, communicate, and maintain healthy boundaries.
Family Trauma Comes In Many Forms
“It is one thing to process memories of trauma, but it is an entirely different matter to confront the inner void—the holes of the soul that result from not having been wanted, not having been seen, and not having been allowed to speak the truth.” ”
Family trauma comes in many forms. It includes physical, sexual, or emotional abuse, physical or emotional neglect, significant loss such as when there is the death of a close family member or divorce, household dysfunction arising from substance abuse, mental illness, or domestic violence, witnessing violence, and natural disasters or serious accidents. These deeply distressing events can have lasting and profound impacts on individuals within the family.
Family trauma can arise from both the nuclear family as well as extended family. Families are not isolated units; they are intertwined support systems. A trauma to one part of the unit can significantly shift the overall family dynamic, including the extended family. Trauma can harm those involved with the family at the time of the traumatic incidents as well as those who are not present for the root traumatic incidents themselves. Generational trauma occurs when the effects of past traumas are passed down through generations, affecting the extended family unit over time.
Factors Influencing Extended Family Impact
The way trauma affects an extended family depends on various factors, such as:
Proximity: How closely the extended family members are connected and involved in the lives of those directly affected.
Personal Exposure: Whether extended family members witnessed the traumatic event or were exposed to it in other ways. Support Systems: The presence of safe and nurturing relationships with extended family, which can aid recovery.
Individual Resilience: Each family member's unique age, developmental level, past trauma history, and personal relationship to the traumatic event.
Mindful Recognition of How The Past Affects Us
Mindful recognition of the way the past is affecting us is an important first step in healing.
Mica came to see me because she was tired of letting her past affect her day to day living.
Mica shared that she wanted to move past the betrayals, abandonment, and broken promises between family members that occurred throughout her childhood. These incidents from her past continued to cause pain in her life and were the continued source for an unrelenting feeling of anxiety. The energy she exerts worrying leaves her feeling depleted and pessimistic which has caused her to sabotage serious romantic relationships and relationships with friends and to avoid taking reasonable risks to advance her career. She feels the choices made by people in her past are controlling her present. She wants to take back control of making choices in the present about the present and her future.
In our therapeutic coaching sessions, Mica came to recognize the link that trauma from her growing up has had to the anxiety, pessimism, and depression she experiences.
Know That Nothing Is Wrong With You For Feeling What You Feel
The next critical step is to realize that there is nothing wrong with you for feeling the way you feel. It is normal to have physical and emotional symptoms after trauma. Before fully healing, symptoms can continue to appear for years. The symptoms can include anxiety, depression, insomnia, flashbacks, eating disorders, irritability, fear, impatience and others.
Take time to sit with yourself and love yourself for wanting to do the work of healing from your past. As you feel that love for the person within, allow that love to help you to feel empowered and validated.
You are the only one who can heal you from the trauma. Others will support you and help you to process insights but the growth and the changes that lead to creating your future will be internal. While the work is internal, it need not occur in isolation.
Trauma creates feelings of shame and shame isolates you. Use the power of self-compassion and self-love to resist the feelings of shame and reach out for help.
Create a Support Network
Develop the courage to trust and create a support network. Know that you are not alone and that you can develop the courage to create a support network of friends, other family, or therapists to guide you. That courage to connect grows as you learn to have love and compassion for yourself.
It can help to be heard and to have that trauma acknowledged by the people who were also a part of the family system in which the trauma occurred. However, healing can not be dependent on those events happening. Often family members want to ignore the past and refuse to speak about traumatic issues. Some may want to argue that your truth is a lie. If family members seek to deny your truth or refuse to hear you or validate your experience, you will need to build a support team of friends, therapists, coaches, or others who are interested in helping you to heal. It is not unusual to find that you will need to go beyond your usual network to grow.
The Role of Victim
An important stage in the healing process is to get real about the way you relate to being in the role of the victim.
If you have experienced family trauma, you may find that the role of being the victim has given you the only relief you could find from the pain of the past. However, moving past the victim role will be necessary in order for you to grow, change, and build your healthy future.
You are deserving of love and care and being hurt was not something you deserved. You can further the process of healing by letting go of identifying with the role of victim. Instead, take control and hold yourself responsible for your actions and thoughts.
Express Your Truth
Express yourself when you feel most like hiding.
There will be times when you feel it will be easier to rebury the past. Healing can not occur when the past is ignored and buried before processing and healing. Encourage yourself to stay true to your truth and resist the temptation to hide your past. Acknowledge what has happened in conversations or through journaling or expressing yourself in the way that is naturally creative for you.
Consider writing in a journal or use another form of creative expression. Many survivors of trauma find that keeping a journal helps them gather their thoughts and work through issues. This will help you to make meaning out of the experience and learn from it.
Make, Communicate, and Maintain Healthy Boundaries
Learn to set, communicate, and maintain healthy boundaries. It is common, after divorce and other family traumas, to be afraid to open up and start new relationships. Trust takes time, so it’s important to give yourself space. Give yourself the time and space to really listen to your heart. Give yourself time to learn to balance intimacy and autonomy.
Learning to trust after trauma is challenging but possible. You may fear opening yourself to more trauma or new trauma from the same people or from new relationships. You will want to be very mindful in the continuing family relationships or the new relationships so you can process whether the fear of trauma is reasonable in the present. You will need to continue to do the work of healing by learning how to set clear boundaries that allow for healthy connection. You’re in control now and can set boundaries to prevent more traumas from happening. You will need to take responsibility for setting and maintaining these boundaries. You get to decide who enters your life who gets to know you and who stays in your life today.
Dr. Jodi Peary
Dr. Jodi Peary is a holistic psychologist, hypno-psychotherapist, yoga, meditation and mindfulness teacher, mediator, and former family lawyer. You can follow her on Instagram at @DrJodiPeary.
