Therapy for intergenerational trauma
You feel pain that did not start with you. Maybe your family lived through genocide, war, residential schools, slavery, or deep poverty, and even though the stories were never fully told, the effects show up in your body, your emotions, and your relationships. You might notice fear without clear cause, tension you cannot explain, or patterns you promised yourself you would never repeat. This is intergenerational trauma and it is real. You can interrupt the cycle, heal what you inherited, and pass something healthier to the next generation.
What is intergenerational trauma?
Trauma that travels through time
Intergenerational trauma refers to the lasting impact of trauma that moves from one generation to the next. Children absorb their caregivers’ unprocessed fear, grief, and beliefs through attachment, family behaviour, cultural stories, and even epigenetic changes that influence stress responses. This is not inherited PTSD but the transmission of patterns shaped by trauma. Research with descendants of Holocaust survivors, Indigenous communities, enslaved peoples, and families affected by war or displacement shows that trauma can influence stress sensitivity, emotional regulation, and worldview long after the original events.
How trauma gets transmitted
Trauma passes across generations through intertwined biological, relational, and cultural pathways. Epigenetic research shows that severe trauma can influence how stress-related genes are expressed in children and grandchildren. Equally important, traumatized caregivers may struggle with secure attachment, emotional availability, or consistent safety, which shapes how children learn to relate and cope. Family norms form around silence, fear, or survival, and cultural trauma reinforces shared narratives about danger or mistrust. These patterns repeat until someone receives support to process what previous generations could not.
Intergenerational trauma in Canada
Sources: McQuaid et al. (CMAJ Study), First Nations Information Governance Centre (FNIGC), and McGill University Refugee Research. This data confirms that trauma is not just an individual event but can be "biologically and socially transmitted" across generations through disrupted parenting and systemic oppression.
Types of intergenerational trauma
Indigenous and residential school trauma
Residential schools caused deep cultural and relational loss for Indigenous Peoples in Canada. Survivors were separated from family, culture, and language, and many endured abuse. Their children and grandchildren inherited attachment wounds, cultural disconnection, and unprocessed grief while continuing to face racism and systemic oppression.
Holocaust and genocide survivor descendants
Descendants of Holocaust and genocide survivors often show heightened stress sensitivity, anxiety, and inherited fear despite not living through the events. Research notes epigenetic changes and family patterns shaped by overprotection, silence, and catastrophic expectations, along with emerging resilience in later generations.
Slavery and racial trauma
The trauma of enslavement, family separation, and racism continues across generations. Descendants may carry chronic stress responses, identity wounds, health disparities, and emotional patterns shaped by ongoing discrimination and structural inequity.
War and refugee trauma
Children of war survivors and refugees often absorb parental fear, mistrust, and grief. They may feel responsible for parents’ wellbeing, navigate cultural pressures, and inherit trauma responses shaped by displacement, loss, and ongoing stress in their new environment.
Family violence and abuse
When childhood abuse remains unprocessed, patterns repeat in parenting. Survivors may struggle with emotional regulation, attachment, or boundaries, sometimes copying or overcorrecting past dynamics. Without support, trauma becomes the model for family behaviour across generations.
Poverty and systematic oppression
Chronic stress from poverty, instability, and discrimination shapes both parents and children. Families may pass on hypervigilance about resources, restricted opportunities, and beliefs about worth formed through systemic barriers, creating trauma that accumulates with each generation.
How intergenerational trauma affects you
Inherited anxiety and vigilance
Many people with intergenerational trauma feel persistent anxiety or a sense of danger with no clear cause. This heightened alertness often reflects stress responses shaped by earlier generations who lived through real threat. Epigenetic changes, family behaviour, and nervous system modelling all contribute to a body that reacts as if danger is still present, even when life is relatively safe.
Attachment patterns shaped by the past
Trauma in previous generations often affects how parents relate to their children. If caregivers were emotionally overwhelmed, distant, or unpredictable due to their own trauma, you may have developed insecure attachment. This can show up as fear of abandonment, difficulty trusting others, avoidance of intimacy, or repeating relational patterns you hoped to break. Understanding these roots allows you to create new ways of connecting.
Identity, belonging, and cultural disconnection
When trauma involved cultural loss, oppression, or forced assimilation, later generations often carry confusion about identity and belonging. You may feel distanced from language, traditions, or community, or sense grief for cultural losses you never directly experienced. This inherited disconnection can create longing for roots that feel essential yet difficult to access, shaped by wounds carried across generations.
How therapy heals intergenerational trauma
Breaking cycles and reclaiming your story
Intergenerational trauma therapy helps you heal inherited wounds by addressing your symptoms, family patterns, and cultural disconnection. Many people benefit from combining evidence based trauma therapy with culturally grounded practices that restore identity, safety, and resilience, including approaches like Two Eyed Seeing in Indigenous communities.
Why intergenerational trauma needs specialized treatment
Intergenerational trauma involves more than personal memories. You are healing the impact of family and cultural history, recognizing patterns passed down to you, and grieving losses you never directly lived. Effective treatment supports both your individual healing and the larger systems you come from, helping you break cycles so future generations inherit strength rather than pain.
Therapeutic approaches for intergenerational trauma
Intergenerational Trauma Treatment Model (ITTM)
ITTM focuses on healing caregivers first so they can support their children. It helps adults identify trauma-based beliefs they inherited and replace them with healthier patterns. As caregivers heal, the family system becomes safer and more stable, allowing children to recover and break long-standing cycles.
Culturally adapted trauma-focused therapies
Therapies such as CPT, EMDR, and trauma-focused CBT become more effective when adapted to family and cultural history. Treatment considers colonization, racism, displacement, or genocide, and integrates cultural values and identity. Healing happens on both individual and cultural levels when therapy honours the lived reality of the community.
Two-Eyed Seeing
Two-Eyed Seeing blends Western evidence-based therapies with Indigenous healing practices. Ceremony, connection to land, Elders’ guidance, and cultural traditions work alongside clinical approaches. This creates a more complete path to healing for people whose trauma is rooted in cultural and historical harm.
Family systems therapy
Family systems therapy helps uncover patterns passed from one generation to the next. It repairs attachment wounds, improves communication, and creates healthier roles within the family. When families understand how trauma shaped them, they can replace old patterns with new ways of relating.
Narrative therapy and cultural reclamation
Narrative therapy helps you explore stories about identity that were shaped by trauma. You learn to separate inherited pain from your own story and reclaim identities rooted in strength and resilience. For many communities, reconnecting with language, tradition, and culture restores what trauma and oppression disrupted.
Group and community-based healing
Group and community healing create spaces where shared trauma can be witnessed and supported. Healing circles, descendant groups, and community programs reduce isolation and help people understand their experiences in collective context. Community healing addresses both personal recovery and the systemic harms that created the trauma.
The healing journey
Understanding your family history
Treatment begins by exploring your family and cultural background to understand the trauma your ancestors lived through and how it shaped your experiences today. This context helps you see your reactions not as personal failings but as understandable responses to inherited pain, reducing shame and building compassion for yourself.
Identifying transmission patterns
You and your therapist map out how trauma was passed down through parenting styles, beliefs about safety and trust, emotional roles in the family, and cultural losses. Naming these patterns makes the invisible visible, giving you the awareness needed to choose which patterns to keep, change, or release.
Processing grief and loss
This phase involves grieving losses carried across generations, including lost safety, cultural knowledge, opportunities, and relationships. You also process anger, sadness, and unfair burdens you inherited. Validating these emotions allows you to move forward without carrying pain that never belonged to you.
Reclaiming identity and resilience
Healing includes reconnecting with cultural identity, ancestral wisdom, and strengths passed down through generations. You begin building a fuller sense of self rooted not only in inherited wounds but also in inherited resilience, choosing which traditions, values, and stories support your healing.
Breaking cycles and creating new patterns
You learn healthier ways of relating, parenting, setting boundaries, and expressing needs. This phase focuses on changing what you pass forward: interrupting trauma patterns and consciously choosing connection, safety, and emotional honesty for yourself and future generations.
Engaging in collective healing
Because intergenerational trauma is often rooted in collective harm, healing also involves connecting with community, culture, and social justice work. Collective acknowledgment and cultural revitalization help you feel less alone, while addressing systemic issues supports long-term healing for future generations.
Find a therapist who understands intergenerational trauma
Choosing the right therapist matters. Each province in Canada has its own regulations, which is why working with a recognized professional can make a real difference in your care. Stellocare takes the uncertainty out of the process by listing only verified therapists you can trust.
The right therapist for you
No therapists found with these specialties in Ontario.
Try selecting a different province.Resources for healing intergenerational trauma
Intergenerational trauma resources
Indigenous healing resources
Indigenous Services Canada - Mental Wellness provides culturally appropriate mental health resources. Thunderbird Partnership Foundation supports wellness in First Nations communities.
Truth and Reconciliation resources
National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation preserves survivor testimonies and educates about residential schools. Understanding this history is essential for healing intergenerational trauma in Indigenous communities and for all Canadians participating in reconciliation.
Racial trauma resources
Black Health Alliance addresses health inequities affecting Black Canadians. Canadian Mental Health Association offers resources on addressing systemic racism's mental health impacts. Therapists specializing in racial trauma understand how intergenerational oppression affects descendants of enslaved people and other racialized communities.
Practices for breaking trauma cycles
Learning your family history
- Talk with elders: When possible, interview older family members about their experiences. What did they live through? What wasn't discussed?
- Research historical context: Learn about events affecting your ancestors—residential schools, Holocaust, slavery, wars, displacement. Context explains family patterns.
- Create family timelines: Map traumatic events across generations. Visual representation helps you see intergenerational patterns clearly.
- Honor silence too: Some ancestors can't or won't discuss trauma. Respect boundaries while seeking understanding through other sources.
Reconnecting with culture
- Learn your language: If colonization or genocide disrupted language transmission, reclaiming it heals cultural wounds.
- Participate in cultural practices: Attend ceremonies, prepare traditional foods, practice customs. Cultural connection grounds identity.
- Connect with Elders: Elders carry knowledge and wisdom trauma tried to erase. Their guidance supports healing.
- Join cultural communities: Find groups celebrating your heritage. Shared identity combats isolation intergenerational trauma creates.
Conscious parenting
- Notice automatic patterns: When you react to your children, ask: "Is this mine, or am I repeating what was done to me?"
- Talk about family history: Age-appropriately share history with children. Help them understand patterns without overwhelming them.
- Create secure attachment: Be emotionally available, consistent, and responsive even when difficult. This breaks attachment transmission.
- Seek support: Parenting while healing trauma is hard. Join parenting groups, get therapy, ask for help. You don't have to do it alone.
Managing inherited anxiety
- Name what's happening: "This is ancestral fear, not present danger." Distinguishing past from present reduces anxiety's power.
- Practice grounding: When hypervigilance activates, ground in present reality. What's actually happening right now versus what you fear?
- Challenge catastrophic thinking: Notice when you expect worst outcomes. Is this realistic, or ancestral programming from when danger was constant?
- Build safety: Create genuinely safe environments and relationships. Let your nervous system learn safety is possible.
Honoring resilience
- Remember survival: Your ancestors survived impossible circumstances. Their resilience is in you alongside their trauma.
- Celebrate small victories: Every cycle you break, every pattern you transform, honors their suffering and creates healing.
- Share healing stories: As you heal, share your journey. Others need to know intergenerational trauma can be interrupted.
- Practice gratitude: For what ancestors gave you despite trauma—stories, values, love, strength, survival itself.
Common questions about intergenerational trauma therapy
Can trauma really be passed down genetically?
Not through DNA changes, but through epigenetics—chemical markers that affect how stress-related genes function. These can be influenced by trauma and passed to children. Trauma is also transmitted through parenting, attachment, family dynamics, and cultural history. It’s a mix of biology and environment, and research increasingly supports this.
Is it possible to heal trauma I didn't directly experience?
Yes. Therapy can help you understand how ancestral trauma shows up in your life, process inherited grief, change patterns you absorbed, and create healthier ways of relating. You can’t change what happened to your ancestors, but you can change how it affects you and what you pass forward.
Do I need to forgive those who caused my ancestors' trauma?
No. Forgiveness is optional, not required for healing. You can acknowledge harm, feel anger, and seek justice while still healing personally. Some people choose forgiveness; others do not. Both paths are valid.
Will learning about my family's trauma make things worse?
It can feel painful at first, but understanding family history usually brings clarity and relief over time. Your reactions start to make sense, shame decreases, and you gain more control over patterns. Therapists pace this work to keep it manageable.
What if my parents won't acknowledge trauma or get help?
Many trauma survivors minimize or avoid their own pain. You can still heal even if your parents never address theirs. Your progress can shift family dynamics, but their participation isn’t required. Your responsibility is your own healing, not theirs.
How do I talk to my children about intergenerational trauma?
Keep it honest and age-appropriate. Share family history gradually, highlight resilience as well as hardship, and create space for questions and feelings. The goal is openness and connection, not overwhelming details. Therapists can guide these conversations.
Should I seek a therapist from my same cultural background?
It can help, especially for trauma rooted in cultural oppression, but it isn’t required. What matters most is cultural competence, respect, and trauma expertise. A therapist who understands your community’s history makes the work smoother, whether or not they share your identity.
Can intergenerational trauma ever be completely healed?
Healing doesn’t erase history, but it can free you from repeating it. You can reduce symptoms, build healthier relationships, reclaim cultural identity, and live with agency rather than inherited patterns. The goal is transformation and freedom, not forgetting.
Related concerns
References
- Yehuda, R., & Lehrner, A. (2018). Intergenerational transmission of trauma effects: putative role of epigenetic mechanisms. World Psychiatry, 17(3), 243-257. Retrieved from https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6127768/
- Marsh, T. N., Coholic, D., Cote-Meek, S., & Najavits, L. M. (2015). Blending Aboriginal and Western healing methods to treat intergenerational trauma with substance use disorder. Harm Reduction Journal, 12, 14. Retrieved from https://harmreductionjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12954-015-0046-1
- Bombay, A., Matheson, K., & Anisman, H. (2014). The intergenerational effects of Indian Residential Schools: Implications for the concept of historical trauma. Transcultural Psychiatry, 51(3), 320-338.
- Pember, M. A. (2016). Intergenerational trauma: Understanding natives' inherited pain. Indian Country Today. Retrieved from https://trauma-informed.ca/what-is-trauma/indigenous-trauma-and-healing/
- University of Calgary. (2021). Trauma can be passed down through generations. Retrieved from https://ucalgary.ca/news/trauma-can-be-passed-down-through-generations
- Menzies, P. (2020). Intergenerational trauma and homeless Indigenous men. Canadian Journal of Urban Research, 29(1), 115-129. Retrieved from https://ojs.lib.uwo.ca/index.php/iipj/article/view/10936
- Veterans Affairs. (2016). Study finds epigenetic changes in children of Holocaust survivors. Retrieved from https://www.research.va.gov/currents/1016-3.cfm
- Yehuda, R., & Lehrner, A. (2024). How parents' trauma leaves biological traces in children. Scientific American. Retrieved from https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-parents-rsquo-trauma-leaves-biological-traces-in-children/
- Katzir, S., et al. (2025). From trauma to resilience: psychological and epigenetic adaptations in the third generation of Holocaust survivors. Scientific Reports, 15, 12085. Retrieved from https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-025-12085-5
- Kellermann, N. P. F. (2013). Epigenetic transmission of Holocaust trauma: can nightmares be inherited? Israel Journal of Psychiatry and Related Sciences, 50(1), 33-39. Retrieved from https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24029109/
- Bowers, M. E., & Yehuda, R. (2016). Intergenerational transmission of stress in humans. Neuropsychopharmacology, 41(1), 232-244. Retrieved from https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6720013/
- Menzies, P., & Lavallée, B. (2014). Journey to Healing: Aboriginal People with Addiction and Mental Health Issues. Centre for Addiction and Mental Health.
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Jess McKenzie
Canadian Certified Counsellor
Kate Wong
Registered Psychotherapist (ON)
Carol Ma
Registered Social Worker (ON)
Delia Petrescu
Registered Psychotherapist (ON)
Rania Hannawayya
Canadian Certified Counsellor
Adrienne Na
Registered Psychotherapist (Qualifying) (ON)
Carissa Cochrane
Canadian Certified Counsellor
Judith Klapak
Counselling Therapist (AB)
Lindsey Cepek
Registered Psychotherapist (Qualifying) (ON)
Caitlin Pelkey
Registered Psychotherapist (Qualifying) (ON)
Renée Dangerfield-Allen
Registered Social Worker (AB)
Katharine Heimbigner-Tenor
Registered Provisional Psychologist (AB)
Shani Ellis-Alman
Registered Social Worker (ON)
Rebecca Sun
Registered Clinical Counsellor (BC)
Pantea Ahmadian
Registered Psychotherapist (Qualifying) (ON)
Spencer Nageleisen
Registered Psychotherapist (ON)
Ilona Farry
Registered Psychotherapist (Qualifying) (ON)
Shiny Yang
Occupational Therapist (ON)
Kaycee Bevans
Registered Provisional Psychologist (AB)
Stefania Bonanno
Registered Social Worker (ON)
Jess McKenzie
Canadian Certified Counsellor
Kate Wong
Registered Psychotherapist (ON)
Carol Ma
Registered Social Worker (ON)
Delia Petrescu
Registered Psychotherapist (ON)
Rania Hannawayya
Canadian Certified Counsellor
Adrienne Na
Registered Psychotherapist (Qualifying) (ON)
Carissa Cochrane
Canadian Certified Counsellor
Judith Klapak
Counselling Therapist (AB)
Lindsey Cepek
Registered Psychotherapist (Qualifying) (ON)
Caitlin Pelkey
Registered Psychotherapist (Qualifying) (ON)
Renée Dangerfield-Allen
Registered Social Worker (AB)
Katharine Heimbigner-Tenor
Registered Provisional Psychologist (AB)
Shani Ellis-Alman
Registered Social Worker (ON)
Rebecca Sun
Registered Clinical Counsellor (BC)
Pantea Ahmadian
Registered Psychotherapist (Qualifying) (ON)
Spencer Nageleisen
Registered Psychotherapist (ON)
Ilona Farry
Registered Psychotherapist (Qualifying) (ON)
Shiny Yang
Occupational Therapist (ON)
Kaycee Bevans
Registered Provisional Psychologist (AB)
Stefania Bonanno
Registered Social Worker (ON)