Generational Trauma: The Norm

How much of what you carry is truly yours—and how much was passed down?

In this episode of Reaching Minds, we dive into generational trauma—the patterns, pain, and survival behaviors that move through families often without being named. What was once necessary to survive can quietly become what keeps us stuck.

We explore how trauma becomes normalized, how silence and resilience can coexist, and why “this is just how we are” can be one of the most limiting beliefs we inherit. This conversation isn’t about blaming the past—it’s about recognizing it, understanding it, and choosing differently moving forward.

Healing doesn’t mean dismissing where you come from. It means deciding what continues with you—and what stops here.

If you’ve ever questioned your patterns, your reactions, or the emotional weight you carry, this episode invites you to look deeper with compassion and clarity.

It’s time to break cycles, challenge what’s been normalized, and redefine what healing looks like for the next generation.

Follow @reachingminds for more conversations that create mirrors, redefine stereotypes, and break stigmas.

Transcript

No Title

SPEAKER_00 0:12

Hey, it's your girl Brianna Williams, LAPC, and I am excited to be back with you for our very last episode of the miniseries, uh, Therapy. Nah, we don't do that. Um, it's been a pleasure having this conversation with you guys um regarding the different barriers to therapeutic treatment. Um, we talked about stigma, we talked about fade, we talked about family secrets. Um, and if you're just tuning in, go ahead and and watch those episodes back. Um, like, share, comment, all these different things. And if you haven't yet, go follow follow reach your minds on Instagram at Reach Your Minds. You know what? Go ahead and do that right now. All right, cool. Thanks for following. So I want to bring us up to another conversation today, and I hope that like even after this last series, after this last episode, um, I hope that you guys continue to have the conversations. Um, whether it's with me by DMing me or uh commenting under the post, right? Or um you guys talk to your family and your friends. And I hope through this, some of you guys will actually seek out a therapist and and continue these conversations and get more in-depth with some of the things that that are happening in your life. Um, but I want to bring up something that that piggybacks off of family secrets, which is generational trauma. Right? I was I was reflecting it, and this this term came to my mind, generational trauma. And I I really sat with it and was like, dang, like this is something that has been normalized as a culture, and often we're desensitized to it. Um, it's just something that that is because of who we are, and we just kind of took it and just and just lived with it. Um, but I want to talk about that. I want to dive into it a little bit um for these next 15 minutes, 10-15 minutes, and and go from there. And so let's let's jump in. If you guys don't know me by now, I always say this, I love definitions, and um I looked up generational trauma, and it said that generational trauma is the transmission of the emotional, psychological, and behavioral effects of trauma passed down from generation to generation. Now, this stuck out to me generation to generation, like like it really is something that even though it didn't happen directly to me, it still affects me. And that's the thing. Like, this is not even my trauma. This is not even my trauma, but those because those before me didn't heal or process, I inherited it. And it's like, dang, man, y'all could have gave me a car, a house, some money, like you know how we do, right? Like, you could have got you could have gave me something else, but no. You gave me trauma. You gave me the effects of trauma. The thing is about generational trauma, is it's not just one traumatic event, right? It's not really about the event, but it's about the repeated patterns and unhealthy coping mechanisms formed after the event or events for some people that create generational trauma. I want you real quick to think about like what are some ideas or some beliefs you may have, or even things you do, no questions asked. It's just a given. Like, there's just natural instinct, it's first thought, like, that's just it. It's just you never had to question it. It's just it just felt familiar. I want you to think about that. It's not, you're not probably gonna think about everything in this in this little podcast, right? But I'll give you some that you'll probably be like, all right, I feel you. Like, why why don't why don't we automatically ask for ask for help? Uh, some of us. I ain't gonna speak for everybody, but I know me, and that's something I'm working on, is that automatically asking for help is the struggle. Like, I will sit here, have 15 bags in a case of water, and take it all in the house, even if somebody right there they could have came out and helped me. I'm struggling. I got I got five bags on this arm, 10 bags on this arm, one around my neck, something in my mouth carrying the case of water, like all these different things we're struggling, right? But that was something that was that was modeled as strength, right? When you when you got to figure it out on your own, when you got to do it by yourself, there was some sense of accomplishment, there was some sense of pride in being able to be, you know, that strong, independent black woman, right? That we that we always talk about. Or just just to be that that bull. Like that that's something that we brag about, right? However, like I had to think about the people that came before us, right? And I'm pretty sure that where this came from about not asking for help was because there was a time where they had nobody to look to to ask for help. Like we got to remember our history, right? Like coming from slavery and things like that, being separated by your being separated from your family, not knowing who is who, and and being isolated and things like that, and being in a in a in a place where you you can't trust the people around you, right? And so you had to figure it out. Or how about this? Another example is the hyper-vigilant person that notices every movement in a room, right? They they they come in the room, they know every exit, they know how they're gonna get out. They know if something was to happen, I'm gonna go under this table right here and crawl over here. They know every exit. And that's why, and that's because they were taught that they had to be aware of their surroundings. Right? They had to be aware of their surroundings. But then I think about I think about the people before us. And some of them they probably grew up in places where it wasn't safe walking down your block. They grew up in in the midst of of gun violence and even grieved those who became victims to it. Or maybe some of some of our ancestors fought in war and it came back with PTSD that was unprocessed, unaddressed, and unhealed. And then this is my favorite example, and I think this is why that we here, this is why we're here, is that we don't do therapy. Or we don't go to the doctors regularly, we don't do all that, right? We just we just deal with it in our own, right? We we talk to our friends, we talk to to the pastor, we talk to our loved ones, um, we'll go and we do a little remedy, you know, we'll we'll go ahead and we mix up some concoction and put the uh onion under our feet or whatever like that, whatever those things are, right? We do all that stuff, right? Because it's just like we ain't going unless unless we really about to die. Unless it's really that dire, right? And I had to think about our ancestors. And I and I and I said, man, they probably didn't have the financial means to be going to the doctors and stuff like that. They probably didn't have the resources. They probably wasn't even getting serviced. Or they probably experienced harm within the healthcare systems. They probably were violating, had bad experiences, and so now they don't really trust the systems. Or they have anxiety when it comes to doctors. These have become norms in our culture. They become norms to our culture due to those before us not unpacking the why and truly facing what happened. Now we have a bunch of limitations and specific qualifications that deem us as black or of the minority race. Y'all, we identify by the wounds of our ancestors, and that's generational trauma. We didn't experience those things, but we uphold them. What one generation had to do to survive can become what the next generation struggles to and learn if we don't break the cycle. For so long, this has been a cycle, and I'm about to break it down for you. The previous generation, right? They experienced loss or racism or grief or violence, poverty, abuse, addiction, and whatever else happens, right? Which goes unprocessed, they don't get help for it, they don't talk about it, they don't address it. It it just gets put in this in this box right here, and we we shut it out and we we keep going. And so then this is where negative core beliefs begin to manifest. Which is negative core belief sounds like this I'm alone. It sounds like I can't trust anyone, or I am not safe, I don't have value, and that in turn affects how we cope, or how we parent, and if you're not a parent, how we even interact with the next generation, and this creates patterns of hypervigilance, hyperindependence, chronic anxiety, emotional suppression, perfectionism, emotional reactivity, and then this just repeats, and it gets passed down to the next generation. Here we go baggage on baggage on baggage drop the load. But we can live, and this is where it starts. It starts with our awareness of our bodies and our thoughts, and this is something that you may have to do daily, is like these questions here of like what is what is guiding the things that I do? Am I doing this out of anxiety, out of loyalty to the culture? Um is my body constantly tensing up and my heart racing on a daily? What are your thoughts saying when you're going through the hustle and bustle of life? Is there more worry than peace throughout your day? And after you begin to start becoming aware, unpack the why and dive into what happened, even if it didn't happen directly to you. Even if you don't know exactly what happened, but you can free yourself of the burdens that others put on you when you just begin to be aware, to redress it and face it, to talk about it. And so I challenge you, I challenge you, have open conversations with your families and friends and your community. Right? We talk about all this stuff, and we have all these jokes and things like that, and some of these jokes are some of these um of these things that we've been talking about are a part of our jokes, right? They're so normalized. They're so normalized. But let's talk about how we're fixing it, let's talk about how we're creating change, let's talk about how we are trying to heal. Let's do the things our ancestors couldn't, wouldn't, and told that they shouldn't do. And this starts by developing new healthy coping strategies. That's how we break the cycle. So let's be real so we can heal. Y'all, we got work to do, and I hope that these last four weeks has taught you that you can do that. You can heal, you can thrive, you can live. And yes, you can go to therapy. Thanks, y'all, for having this conversation. I'm Breonna Williams, LPC. I'm out.