What is wrong with me? Why do I think the way I do? Why do I fix the uncertain things? Why can’t I just get over things and move on? How can I make my life easier? How can we fix this relationship? These are just some questions that often lead someone to therapy. Asking these questions, trying to discover the answer to these questions, and having the desire to grow and improve yourself is always the first step. What if the answer to these questions lead you to uncover events that occurred before you were even born? More and more research indicates that the experiences of your mother, father, and even grandparents directly influence thought patterns, phobias, hypervigilance, symptoms of anxiety and depression, and even overall health. In addition, what you were taught and how you were taught matters. In short, our families contribute to the development of certain patterns of thinking, feeling, behaving, and relating.
Being able to understand your family dynamic is crucial when attempting to achieve symptom relief or, more importantly, change a family or individual problem. When using transgenerational or systemic models, a therapist focuses on your early childhood within your family of origin that influences how you relate to others as adults. An effective assessment tool is a genogram, which brings to light family dynamics, secrets, strengths, weaknesses, as well as conflicts and generational cycles that tend to repeat. When completing a genogram, a family or an individual can visually see on paper many unresolved conflict patterns across generations, as well as the relationships and rules within family members. This method emphasizes insight in working through unresolved conflict. A lot of internal and relationship conflicts began before we were born.
Therefore, when we develop insight into why a person reacts to certain events, situations, and relationships, we can develop different skills, which will result in different outcomes. Transgenerational trauma can be healed with in the present if one is willing to look beyond, develop an insight, and change the cycle.
For example, a young woman, to protect anonymity we will call her Jessica, comes into therapy because she is struggling with being on her own and facing the difficulties of adult life. On the surface, one might perceive someone who wants to be cared for by her parents who struggles with self-esteem issues and lack of confidence in her choices. However, as we create a genogram and discuss her family or origin history, we uncover many other factors that explain why she is struggling with these issues. These factors did not begin with her. She is the oldest of her siblings, first generation born in the United States, and the first of her entire family to attend college. She was raised in a very strict home, where even as a legal adult she was required to follow rules and always obey her parents.
On her mother’s side, there was a history of abuse, sexism, rigid gender roles, and ‘machismo’ values. Machismo according to Merriam-Webster’s dictionary definition is "a strong sense of masculine pride... [with] the supreme valuation of characteristics culturally associated with the masculine and a denigration of characteristics associated with the feminine." In her culture, Hispanic men are encouraged to hold most of the responsibilities to provide, protect, and defend their families. Machismo has been something that has been part of the Latin and Hispanic family for centuries. Men have been the ones to be designated as the heads of the households. In Jessica’s parents, grandparents, and relatives, the men are the ones making the first and last decision. Therefore, it makes sense that Jessica would struggle with being on her own, because she is accustomed to deferring to men make decisions and solve problems.
When discussing some of the abuse she experienced, dysfunctional family dynamics, and rigid gender roles, she begins to discover why her mother enforced strict rules. Her mother, fearing her daughter would endure the same abuse she experienced, kept Jessica very close, limiting her ability to make her own decisions, instilling a sense of fear, and undermining her self-esteem and confidence. The family roles can also reveal the generational cycles and family dynamics. Women in some Hispanic or Latin families may be encouraged to act submissively. It may not be uncommon, but actually expected for some women to first ask the men in their families about their opinions on an issue first rather trying to understand, voice, or act on their own opinions. Because of this, the women before her had never been able to fully stand on their own two feet as they were raised to depend on men. Furthermore, in her family, there is no history of women pursuing higher education. Instead, women in her familial line were required to follow their fathers and brothers demands, get married once of age, only to continue being dominated by men. Unfortunately, because this pattern has been engraved over many generations, women in her family were unconsciously influenced by this pattern of behavior and gender roles. From this perspective, it is understandable that Jessica struggles with her own independence, confidence in her choices, and conflict resolution. It is also clear that these problems are not just her own, but something that has been passed own.
Genograms can provide a significant amount of information. By discussing a family’s history, you can create an understanding of your family’s historical trauma, identify patterns and cycles, gender roles, strengths and weaknesses, and even assess risk. This therapeutic tool can help answer the questions stated above and more importantly can help you realize that many patterns of behavior been inherited and reinforced during childhood. The family system creates an environment that contributes to the development of an one’s identity, personality, emotional temperament, beliefs, and preferences. By discovering and creating a better understanding of unresolved problems generational changes can be made that result in symptom relief and healing within the generational cycles.
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