How many people’s trauma can you heal?
Our family past is often a burden. And part of our strength too.
Digging it up and using the information constructively might be a useful tool for self development.
I started therapy in 2021, a few months after I lost my father. I should have started years before, I always new I needed it but I never prioritized it, telling myself that I had to do other things first or I couldn’t afford it and commit to it financially. In part I was trying to delay the inevitable truths that come along with the procedure.
When I started dealing with the past I wasn’t quite ready for this huge amount of realizations that came right at me. Slowly but steadily, they still keep coming (it’s a never-ending process), and they usually come at a moment I least expect them: on the way to work, in the shower, while cooking. Here it is, a slap on the face, wondering “how on earth have I never thought about this before?”.
Even if you are not in therapy, you probably already know a few things about the process: among other things, you try to uncover childhood trauma, realize it, talk about it, come to terms with it. Be aware of patterns you follow and recognizing the narratives you have taken on from other people, mostly your parents (these are the more profound ones for me). Even when I’m dealing with a present fact that seems trivial, somehow I end up realizing there is something deep-rooted in the past, mostly up to my adolescence.
Anyway, long story short, I decided to sort things out as much as I can. I knew that I also had to deal with my parents’ past too. Their experiences and the relationships with their parents shaped them, so inevitably these affected me. Ok, it’s me and my two parents. Three people to deal with.
A few days ago, I was returning home after hiking in Lake Doxa (in Corinthia, Greece) and I was listening to a podcast about healing generational trauma. The guest was Dr. Mariel Buqué, who is a trauma psychologist, and among other interesting things she said something that struck me: the intergenerational trauma can extend up to seven generations back. Up to our 128 fifth-grandparents. If we add up all our great-grandparents, our grandparents, our parents and ourselves, there are 255 stories living in us! Shit! I could barely handle three people, now there are 252 more?
Lake Doxa, Greece
There are beautiful hikes on the mountains around the lake. A place to clear your head and do some forest bathing
It’s an overwhelming amount of emotions, wounds and history to deal with. My mind cannot fully absorb this vastness of our background, but at the same time, it does make sense. If trauma can extend horizontally to form the collective trauma, why not also extend vertically to our direct past? We are too busy and distracted in the modern world to feel connected with our roots, but this doesn’t negate them.
I only know a few things about my great-grandparents and I am aware that it’s impossible to track down even the slightest information about anyone before them in my family tree. It would be fascinating and maybe also terrifying to discover their stories. But most of us have to accept the fact that there is a lot of vagueness in our family past. I guess that technology will allow the future generations to have a clearer view on their past, with better access to their ancestors’ experiences, giving them the potential to identify and navigate through their generational trauma in a more efficient way.
Of course, it’s not only trauma and pain, there is always a silver lining. Dr Buqué mentioned that within us there are also seven generations of wisdom. And that’s comforting. 255 stories of knowledge, resilience, love and creation strengthening us.
A simple example of that wisdom is humming as a way to relax our nervous system. Apparently there is something comforting to it, an innate natural ability to wind ourselves down. When I heard about humming in the podcast, I realized that I have been doing that since I was a child. When I’m in pain or ill, I often feel the need to take a breath and exhale with a long humming. No one ever taught me that, I just do it. My mind inevitably went to my grandmother, who I remember doing the household chores, humming all day tunes that didn’t exist. She just made them up. I guess no one taught her that too. Somehow she had the wisdom to use this as a tool to calm herself. And hearing her was calming for me too.
One more thing that Dr Buqué mentioned, and I found so much hope in it, was that when we look at another human in fact we should see “a living, embodied history of seven generations of their family members”. We tend to see just another person. But if we take into account that this person has a huge background to deal with, like we do, maybe we could interact with each other with more compassion and understanding. It would be a mature practice that could upgrade our relationships.