how toxic family environments impact childhood trauma (sage sessions #2)

So what role does your family environment play in the transmission of generational trauma? I'm a licensed clinical psychologist. Welcome to the Sage Sessions. I don't know, open to names down below. I am still working on my podcast and interviews, but right now I'm focusing in this current moment on showing up here every day with brief videos with important topics to help you unpack your life. Kind of a therapy starter pack, if you will. So let's just quickly remember, as of yesterday's video, when we're talking about transmission and trauma, we're talking about the psychological and physiological basic passing down of trauma through generations of people and how that affects our lives. And so this can happen, remember, through the physical and psychological transmissions of generations in terms of what they've experienced. And this happens through behavioral exposure, like direct exposure to, let's say, a traumatized parent or grandparent, through being directly exposed to their psychological world, how they show up, and through transmissions in utero, through people who are pregnant, through sperm, through eggs, through all of the things that often exist long before and separate from the actual trauma. Talking about things like that, which refers to the concept of epigenetics. But today's video is really about our own families. How might trauma transmit in our own families? So number one, it can show up in how people, or how they don't, communicate in our families. So do we avoid topics in this family? Do we overly talk about our trauma? Do we have lots of resentment? Are we emotionally neglectful or distant or loom large and loud in your face? Do we blow up? Do we have to walk on eggshells? Do we have this silent treatment and everything in between? So how we communicate can be a way that trauma gets transmitted. Why or how? For example, if the person is always talking about their trauma, or perhaps they are just, they have no emotional regulation skills, they blow at any moment, or they shut down. All of that, as a result of their own stories and traumas, is going to potentially affect subsequent generations, like their children and grandchildren and so on. Number two, in their parenting styles and how they show up. We know that parenting has significantly changed from the boomer generation, the silent generation, to Gen X parents, to millennial parents, and now Gen Z parents. So how we deal with things like communication, discipline, boundaries, love, all of those things can be impactful. For example, things like having your mother be extremely stressed, high maternal stress is associated with negative parenting outcomes, including increased punitiveness and aggression. What does that mean? That means that if your parent is traumatized and not healing or helped, that might impact how they respond to a baby's crying, to a child's tantrums or demands, and that that actually might increase negative outcomes around the parent not being able to control their aggression, their rage, things like that, their emotions. And that traumatized also parents might be emotionally unavailable or intense or inconsistent, and that might create, as we know, the root of attachment wounds for many kids. The next thing is the overall emotional climate. What is the temperature of your home? Things like unresolved trauma can affect how parents manage their big feelings. Once again, high levels of maternal stress. And why is it maternal stress? It doesn't need to be maternal. It's just that in most homes in this day and age, women and mothers are still, regardless of whether they work inside or outside the home, and both are jobs, and many parents do all the jobs, whether they're single or not, is that this affects how they manage stress, and women are most likely still the most in proximity with caregiving and childhood patterns in terms of parenting. And so what is the temperature of your home that can affect it? The things like roles. What roles do parents take? For example, I talk a lot about enmeshment and parentification, this part where there's no real separateness between you and a parent, and or where you are also, and they often go together, in parentification, you are expected to be the parent's best friend, their therapist, to mediate conflict between the other parents, like the parents fight and the 12-year-old is like mediating the argument, or the other parent is constantly oversharing and trauma dumping about the parent they're married to, or their ex, or whatever's going on. And so the roles can affect how a child is socialized and expected to show up in that home, but also in their adult life. Don't forget, we don't just leave these roles behind, they often become part of adulthood. For example, when we have parentification or enmeshment, we're much more likely to be compulsive caretakers, to be hyper-vigilant, to tiptoe around others' needs, because that is how we survived and were rewarded in childhood, and it can become who we think we are. This is my whole thing about hyper-vigilance, it becomes who we think we are. The next thing is how a parent with trauma models and or doesn't model or doesn't deal with coping mechanisms, stress, parenting, expectations, boundaries, substance use, anger, all of that. If a parent exhibits more unhealthy coping mechanisms or emotional instability as a result of their own unresolved trauma, kids may unconsciously do the same thing. We know that, you know, I've said, even when you're, when you grow up a certain way and you say, I'm never going to do that, when your own kids do it, your initial response can be what was done to you, for example. Like you might decide, I'm never going to spank my kids, but when they're acting out of control, your first urge might be to grab them and do that, because that is what was done to you. And so that's an example of how, if you're not aware and intentional, things like that can become domino effects of how you show up. And then lastly, of course, the root of all of this, attachment and trusting human beings. What does love look like? What does safety and trust and consistency look like? When a parent is living with unresolved trauma and wounding, there can be a lot of insecure attachment that they're displaying. So anxious attachment patterns, avoidant patterns, disorganized, secure. And deep inside the whole core of this is, can I trust you to be a safety, a source of safety for me and consistency as a child? So we know that as a result, that generational trauma, if it's not dealt with, can play out in all of these dynamics and set the stage for us to suffer in many ways as children. And so those are just some ways. I'm curious if you relate to any of these in your own family system, and maybe you could share down below if you want to, what is one thing that you really want to be, or you have been, or you were intentional about doing differently as a result of your own child in an attempt to break the cycle of trauma that you endured. That's it for today. Thank you so much for being here. I appreciate you so much. I'll start taking questions. I just filmed yesterday's video also today, but as I said in the last video, if you want to post succinct, short questions I can answer, I would love to answer them for you, specifically tied to the content I'm posting in each video. That would be great. Once again, please take very good care of yourselves. And I'll keep saying it, you are the only parent you will ever have, so don't forget to love on yourself, set healthy boundaries with yourself, and take good care of yourself. Thanks for being here. I'll see you tomorrow. Take care. Bye.