An Intergenerational Act of Alchemy
Originally published August 2022
In the two previous group healing sessions, the need for inner child healing has surfaced. Whether it was someone who was not pursuing their passion and purpose because they were shamed as a child for being “different,” or someone who was not standing in their power because they were silenced as a child and felt that they had to “walk on eggshells,” the root cause was an unhealed inner child and intergenerational trauma.
An unhealed inner child can affect every facet of our life, from our relationships to our health, whether it be physical, emotional, spiritual, or even financial. These are patterns that are laid down by our ancestors. And the effects impact us on the biological level.
There is ample research on the study of the effect of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACES) on health outcomes. Adverse experiences in childhood cause changes to our biology. They have been linked to over 40 conditions in adulthood, including cancer and heart disease (CDC, 2022). The scientific world is now catching up to what the spiritual world has known for centuries.
Intergenerational trauma shows up in our response to stress or when we are “triggered.” There are four responses: Fight, flight, freeze, and fawn. This is the way your sympathetic nervous system, the part that kicks in when it thinks you’re in danger, responds to stress, and you have no control over which way you respond.
Fighters yell, scream and get angry. Flyers leave the scene. They avoid conflict at all costs. Freezers go numb. Sometimes with the help of alcohol or drugs. Fawners people please to the point of exhausting themselves and completely abandoning their own needs. These were the ways that we learned to survive in childhood. But these patterns are no longer serving us or our loved ones.
When we are exposed to adverse childhood experiences, patterns are laid down in our brain that tell our nervous system “danger.” As adults, when we become triggered by someone or something, our nervous system responds in one of these four ways. These unconscious responses can cause damage to our relationships, and they are at the root of intergenerational trauma.
Taken a step further, epigenetics has emerged as a new research frontier. Epigenetics is the phenomenon of how trauma causes changes to our DNA. These changes then get passed to future generations (CDC, 2022).
Through healing, we embrace the path of peeling back the layers of individual and generational trauma. In doing so, we not only liberate ourselves to achieve peace, but we also act as “cycle breakers,” liberating our children, and therefore, humanity. For it is these children that will determine what the future holds.
