Inherited Wounds: Understanding the Intergenerational Transmission of Trauma

We often think of trauma as an individual burden—a heavy backpack carried only by the person who experienced a frightening event. Frighteningly, however, research suggests that this burdensome backpack, full of traumatic and biological injury, can be passed down, sometimes unknowingly, to children and grandchildren. This phenomenon is known as the Intergenerational Transmission of Trauma (ITT).

Imagine carrying the weight of a war you never fought, hidden not in your memory, but in the very chemistry of your DNA. Emerging research has moved beyond metaphor to reveal a startling biological reality: the trauma experienced by a parent can leave a physical mark on the next generation. For instance, studies have found that combat veterans with PTSD may carry DNA methylation changes in their sperm, potentially passing the biological shadow of their battlefield trauma to children conceived long after the guns fell silent (1). Similarly, a mother’s own childhood experience of neglect can be traced to stronger connectivity between specific brain regions in her offspring—wiring her child for anxiety and hyper-vigilance before they even face their first distinct challenge (2).

However, this inheritance is not woven by biology alone; it is a complex tapestry where genetic “ghosts” intertwine with the harsh realities of the present environment. New perspectives suggest we must look away from single events and see the “cumulative effect,” where parenting stress, economic hardship, and environmental hazards operate additively to deepen the wound. From animal models showing that stress in infancy can ripple through behavior for several generations, to human studies linking low-income environments with cyclical gaps in achievement, we are learning that history lives in our bodies. Understanding these hidden mechanisms is the first step toward breaking the cycle and turning a legacy of survival into a future of recovery.

How Trauma Travels Through Time: Theories of Transmission

Trauma does not travel through a single path; it moves through a complex web of biology, psychology, and social environment. Throughout many of my articles on Psychology Fanatic this magnificent and horrible combination is mentioned in conjunction with the formation of disorders. Moreover, these are the building blocks of personality, attachment styles, and experiences of emotion (3). The trifecta of primary influences on disorders, emotions, and behaviors confuses the best focus for correcting treatments by blurring causes.

The factors shaping human behavior and emotion are even more difficult to grasp when considering research that suggests that experiences, especially those that invoke excessive stress, such as in personal trauma, is transmitted from one generation to the next. Let’s explore some of the primary modes of the multi generational transmission of stress and trauma from parent to child.

1. The Social and Psychological Environment

For many families, trauma is transmitted through the behavioral marks that early trauma has left. One cannot experience significant trauma without it impacting the way they think and feel. According, these experiential and behavioral adaptations carry the trauma forward, impacting those around the traumatized person.

Jeffrey Prager, Ph.D., a Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) wrote:

“Either as an unconscious re-creation of the past or as earnest effort to ward off the memories of the past’s painfulness, these can have the unintended effect of helping to create an outer reality that conforms to the dangers of the past and confirms it. The traumatic past continues to intrude on current-day perception and shapes interaction between oneself and others, between parents and their children” (4).

Notable Social Influences

While the behavioral and experiential adaptations are many, a few notable ones are worth identifying.

• The Conspiracy of Silence: Families often attempt to protect children by not speaking about the past. However, this “conspiracy of silence” can be destructive. Children are highly intuitive; they sense the “unspeakable secret” and the emotional heaviness in the home, often filling the void with their own frightening fantasies (5, 6).
• Parenting Styles: Trauma can disrupt the ability to parent. Survivors may oscillate between emotional withdrawal and overprotectiveness. Judith Herman, M.D., a psychiatrist, researcher, and Professor of Psychiatry (part-time) at Harvard Medical School, explains that the survivor’s “overriding fear is a repetition of the trauma” (7). For example, studies of Holocaust survivors found that some parents, driven by their own anxiety, struggled to let their children separate and become independent, fearing that any separation could result in final loss (8, 9, 10).
• Attachment: If a parent is frightened or traumatized, they may be unable to provide a secure base for their child. The child may absorb the parent’s distress or learn to suppress their own needs to avoid upsetting the fragile parent (11, 12). This is sometimes described as the child becoming a “container” for the parent’s unwanted pain.

“The traumatized parent, in his own frantic search for an object which can be experienced as something which joins together desperate parts of his own personality, turns the child into a container. Thus, instead of fulfilling the role of an internal protective skin, the parent fosters a permeable membrane between himself and the child, through which he transmits depressive and aggressive tendencies which cannot be contained in himself“

~Ilany Kogan (1995)

2. The Biological Blueprint: Epigenetics

One of the most fascinating areas of research is epigenetics. This field studies how environmental factors can change the way our genes work without altering the DNA sequence itself (13). Daniel Siegel, M.D., Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the School of Medicine of the University of California, Los Angeles, wrote:

“Each cell in our body contains the same library of genes. We biologically inherit these genes from our parents. The pattern of activation of genes, however, varies” (14).

The pattern of activation, altered by trauma and stress can also be transmitted.

Primary Modes of Epigenetic Transmission

• The Chemical “Switch”: Trauma can leave a chemical mark (methylation) on genes that regulate stress. For instance, studies have shown that women pregnant during the 9/11 attacks or the Tutsi genocide transmitted biological markers to their children that affected how those children processed stress (15).
• Germline Transmission: Research in animals suggests that stress can alter the sperm or oocytes (eggs), passing these changes to offspring at conception. For example, male mice conditioned to fear a specific smell passed that fear structure in the brain to their children and grandchildren, even though the offspring never experienced the shock themselves (16). The authors of this series of studies explain that the findings “provide a clear demonstration of an epigenetically mediated transgenerational biological inheritance through sperm of a behavioral trait and corresponding neuroanatomical brain changes that persist for two generations” (17).

“Severe stress exposure in a parent-the kind that can result in mental disorders such as depression, anxiety, or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)–is a risk factor for a number of adverse outcomes, including psychopathology, in offspring.”

 ~Mallory E. Bowers and Rachel Yehuda (2015)

3. Neuroendocrine Transmission

The body’s stress system, specifically the HPA axis (hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis), plays a major role. Researchers Dana N. Joseph and Shannon Whirledge explain that events that challenge an organism’s environment “activate the central stress response system, which is primarily mediated by the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis” (18). Research found that the stress system in significant trauma is altered. These alterations have been found to not only exist in the survivor, but also in their children.

• Cortisol Levels: Cortisol is a hormone that helps us manage stress. Interestingly, while we often associate stress with high cortisol, many trauma survivors (specifically those with PTSD) have chronically low cortisol levels because their systems have burned out or recalibrated (19). Studies of Holocaust survivors and their adult children found that both groups exhibited these same low cortisol levels, suggesting a biological vulnerability was passed down (20).
• Prenatal Programming: If a mother experiences extreme stress or trauma during pregnancy, stress hormones can cross the placenta. This can “program” the fetus’s developing brain to be hyper-reactive to threat, potentially leading to issues with attention and emotional regulation later in life (21, 22).

The Stress Connection

It is impossible to separate ITT from the transmission of stress. Trauma is, in essence, a system that has become stuck in a state of high stress or “survival mode”. A primary link between psychological events, social environments, and biological reactions is stress. Stress creates a biological response that cascades through the organism, leading to “distinct emotional action tendencies as well as raw feeling states that rapidly get linked to a variety of events in the world through classical conditioning and other basic learning mechanisms” (23).

• Allostatic Load: Chronic stress creates “allostatic load,” or wear and tear on the body. When a parent is operating under a high allostatic load, their ability to regulate themselves—and their children—diminishes (24).
• Shared Environments: Stress is also transmitted because families often share stressful environments (such as poverty or systemic racism). It can be difficult to disentangle what is biologically transmitted from what is a reaction to ongoing shared environmental stressors (25).
• Cumulative Effect: Maternal exposure to childhood trauma plus stress during pregnancy creates a cumulative effect, significantly increasing the risk of mental health problems in children (26).

Breaking the Cycle: Decreasing Susceptibility

Not every child of a trauma survivor develops symptoms. Resilience refers to the capacity to adapt positively despite adversity (27). The psychological component of resilience “enables people to maintain their mental health and well-being when faced with adversity–not necessarily only when recovering from trauma.” Resilience enables “people to remain effective at home and work, able to focus on relevant tasks and goals and carry them out” (28).

Because causes are cumulative and partially hidden in the biological makeup of the parent and child, it is typically not possible (or effective) to solely address the causes as a means of reducing intergenerational transmission of trauma. Instead of focusing on the causes, individuals, parents, and caregivers can facilitate the development of resilience as an effective strategy to reduce susceptibility. We are natural survivors. Life itself is a gigantic bundle of stress. Wellness is a product of overcoming these stresses. Sometimes it is achieved through avoidance, but more often wellness emerges from resiliently confronting, processing, and conquering challenges.

Elements that Decrease Susceptibility to the Intergenerational Transmission of Trauma

Positive Relationships

The presence of a nurturing, supportive caregiver can buffer a child against the effects of trauma. This concept, sometimes called “angels in the nursery,” refers to benevolent parental influences that protect against the “ghosts” of trauma (29, 30). T. Franklin Murphy wrote that life “grinds against our souls, leaving us raw and vulnerable. A protective network of others provides a shield, buffering the aversive effects of living in an unpredictable world” (31).

Daniel Siegel, a clinical professor of psychiatry at the UCLA School of Medicine, wrote:

“In our day to-day lives, the degree of social support we feel helps modulate our stress response. Holding the hand or seeing a photo of someone you love and trust can actually decrease your brain’s anticipatory anxiety, as well as its neural response to a painful shock” (32).

Jonathan Haidt, leading social psychologist and authority on moral psychology, suggests that building these social networks “before significant life challenges is worth its weight in gold” (33). Sadly, trauma often severs connections rather than build them. Survivors often detach, hide, and avoid the magic of human connection, missing out on one the greatest healing ointments for their souls. Along with the biological transmission of trauma, they also provide their children with broken methods of adaptation. The child suffers a double whammy of transmitted trauma and maladaptive coping mechanisms.

Differentiation

Children who are able to establish a sense of self distinct from their parents (differentiation) are less likely to absorb their parents’ traumatic legacy (34). In healthy development, the process of separation and individualization occurs in stages (35).

Daniel Lapsley, Ph.D., the ACE Collegiate Professor of Psychology at the University of Notre Dame, wrote:

“Separation-individuation is a fundamental organizing principle of human growth that has implications for adaptive functioning across the lifespan” (36) Separation and differentiation from parents during development fosters resilience, helping children discover strength in autonomy, freeing them from the binding chains of reliving the trauma of a previous generation.

See Separation-Individuation Theory of Child Development for more on this topic

Open Communication

Breaking the silence is protective. When families construct a coherent narrative about what happened, rather than keeping secrets, it helps children distinguish the past from the present (37).

Sophie Isobel and her colleagues wrote:

“Open dialogue of the past, where possible, is crucial to the prevention of transmission of trauma across generations. The relational context of creating narratives is thought to allow nonverbal trauma reactions to be semantically processed (38), which in itself may lead to a more coherent autobiographical and intergenerational narrative that protects against unprocessed trauma being intergeneration-ally transmitted” (39).

Social and Cultural Support

Connection to a wider community, cultural traditions, and spiritual beliefs can serve as a buffer. For example, maintaining a connection to family history and values helped grandchildren of Stalin’s Purge victims function better than those who were cut off from their history (40).

Application: Healing for Individuals, Groups, and Therapy

Understanding ITT transforms how we approach healing. Struggling with emotions, suffering from maladaptive behaviors, and experiencing the undertones of sorrow may appear as a consequence of choice. However, when we accept that all these life difficulties ay stem from a much wider and complex structure frees us from the guilt and invites a safer foundation for addressing these normal discomforts of life.

For Individuals:

• Self-Regulation: Healing often begins “bottom-up” by learning to regulate the body’s physical sensations before tackling the emotional story. Techniques like mindfulness and tracking bodily sensations help the nervous system learn that the danger is in the past (41).
• Narrative Work: Writing or speaking about the trauma helps move the experience from a fragmented, emotional memory to a coherent story that happened in the past, rather than a threat relived in the present (42, 43).

For Groups and Families:

• Breaking Silence: Interventions that allow families to create a “family tree” of trauma can help members understand their behaviors not as personal failings, but as legacies of history. This reduces shame and opens communication (44).
• Communal Healing: For groups affected by historical trauma (such as Indigenous populations), healing often requires community-based interventions that integrate traditional cultural practices with modern therapeutic models (45, 46).

For Therapy:

• Phased Treatment: Therapy often follows a phased approach: first establishing safety and stabilization (calming the body), then processing the traumatic memories, and finally reconnecting with daily life and relationships (47).
• Treating the Relationship: Because ITT damages the parent-child bond, therapy often needs to focus on the relationship (dyad), not just the individual. Supporting the attachment between parent and child is a key form of prevention (48).

By recognizing that trauma can be inherited, we validate the struggles of descendants who feel burdens they cannot explain. More importantly, we recognize that just as trauma can be transmitted, so too can resilience, healing, and the capacity to survive.

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