Generational Trauma

Added: 2026-05-22

[00:00:00]Much of the shadow work and emotion work we do uh can be described as breaking generational trauma, generational trauma cycles.

[00:00:11]Um we inherit a lot of uh unhealthy conditioning, let's say.

[00:00:21]Emotional repression patterns, patterns of dissociation, patterns of self-neglect, patterns of neglect of others, poor coping mechanisms, or or mixtures of coping mechanisms.

[00:00:41]Some are more healthy than others. Some are pretty violently destructive.

[00:00:50]And we inherit like you know, like patterns of these things that are uh heterogeneous, like so many mixed components.

[00:01:04]Again, like with coping mechanisms, some are healthy even even if they're coping mechanisms and some can be really really unhealthy, but they're all mixed together.

[00:01:14]And we may feel emotions to some degree and then to to some degree we're actually intellectualizing emotion.

[00:01:23]And then sometimes we repress emotion.

[00:01:26]We can get emotionally frozen.

[00:01:28]All these things are again hobbled together somehow.

[00:01:33]And and they also change. They change based on conditions.

[00:01:39]Certain expressions come forward more in certain conditions.

[00:01:43]And they change as we evolve and they change as we wake up. All this stuff is always in flux, of course.

[00:01:50]Uh with that said, we tend to inherit patterns of behavior, repression, dissociation, communication, emoting from our parents or from whatever system we grew up in, which is often our biological parents, but not always.

[00:02:10]And or a combination of different parents, role models, influences, abusers, all of it.

[00:02:21]And then we carry that into our adult life.

[00:02:24]So, it's no wonder we're confused, mixed up, right?

[00:02:29]Um but we do sense that there is a kind of momentum to that drama, right? There's something that is tenacious, sticks around, stays unconscious, sometimes becomes conscious through intention, sometimes becomes conscious only through retrospect and seeing that we've caused harm or undermined ourselves or something like that.

[00:02:52]Um yeah, and the and the modern or contemporary term for that is generational trauma.

[00:02:59]Uh and in the Q&A we were just in, I was just in, it came up in one form.

[00:03:07]Um and there was an interesting discussion, which I think is valuable to unpack a little bit, about the [clears throat] benefits and drawbacks of recognizing generational trauma, identifying the generational trauma, and so forth.

[00:03:26]Um I guess I'll start with a simple conclusion just out of my own experience and seeing this play out in many people and seeing people move through generational trauma and um realize uh live uh liberation from it.

[00:03:44]It's possible, for sure.

[00:03:47]And what ultimately causes that to happen, what I find ultimately causes that to happen is actually disidentifying from it.

[00:03:57]Seeing that what really causes the the generational aspect of trauma what keeps it going, what perpetuates it >> [clears throat] >> is largely, if not completely, the identification with it.

[00:04:21]And there's a simplicity to that dropping away at some point.

[00:04:32]Maybe I could describe it as um the weight and heaviness of your past is just gone.

[00:04:43]It's just not there anymore.

[00:04:45]And it doesn't feel like your past even.

[00:04:48]And but I also want to say it doesn't feel like It also doesn't quite feel like it's not your past either. There's no There's no resistance to it and there's no need to dissociate from it.

[00:05:03]Um The risk of talking in this way or the risk of saying what I just said is that there are also many people and systems and groups that try to do that way too early.

[00:05:19]Try to just tell themselves, "Ah, it's not real. It's not happening. It's just That's my past. It doesn't affect me."

[00:05:26]And yet it's leaking out sideways all over the place.

[00:05:32]Right?

[00:05:33]Um So ignore trauma and ignore generational trauma to your peril and to your ongoing suffering.

[00:05:46]Uh and also know that at some point you will completely let it go.

[00:05:54]To where it's really not yours anymore at all.

[00:05:57]That sounds like liberation from it, doesn't it? That is you see really that it's not yours.

[00:06:03]Never was. Doesn't define you.

[00:06:06]But, to see that you really have to see through the identity structure.

[00:06:11]Really, I think.

[00:06:13]In my experience.

[00:06:15]You can do a hell of a lot of work and you can get very, very clear with good work and live a life of ease, peace, connectedness.

[00:06:26]But, there there will still be some remaining suffering if the identity structure is still intact.

[00:06:31]You'll feel it trying to reify itself.

[00:06:33]You'll feel it resurging.

[00:06:35]You'll feel strain You'll feel a kind of baseline strain.

[00:06:40]There will always be some shadow that's true shadow, like you just not seeing that it's affecting you or how it's affecting you, but you feel it's gravitational effect or something.

[00:06:52]So, this is why I think good shadow work um, goes hand-in-hand with good insight work.

[00:07:00]At some point they really do converge, I think.

[00:07:03]If if we're talking about the ultimate goal being liberation.

[00:07:09]As Alma pointed to this morning.

[00:07:13]That's available to you.

[00:07:14]That's what we're doing here. That's what this is about. It's what everything I do is about in this setting.

[00:07:21]What the talks are for, what the workshops are for. It's all pointing to that.

[00:07:25]And it's possible for every single person here.

[00:07:29]In this lifetime.

[00:07:32]But, I'm I'm seeing more and more and just more clearly that it requires a convergence of good, thorough shadow work and insight work into the nature of identity.