Healing My Intergenerational Trauma With EMDR Therapy
I had a topic picked out for today’s post, but after yesterday’s EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) session, it no longer seems fitting. Instead, I will share my experiences with you in hopes that it can help you process both your trauma and what you inherited from your parents and beyond.
During the session, I started out dealing with the sadness my inner nine-year-old carried from dealing with bouts of rheumatic fever. Although I had blocked out all memories of the sexual abuse that occurred until I was seven, I was a very traumatized child. Being forced to stay home from school on frequent occasions was extremely difficult for me. I read incessantly, but the sadness lingered, numbed by my avid reading.
During the session, I felt the sadness I had carried for so long dissipate. However, intergenerational trauma came up and hit me like a Mack truck. Both my mother, grandfather, and grandmother experienced separation from their siblings for several years as children. My mother is currently doing EMDR therapy to heal from that trauma. What I didn’t realize is that she passed that trauma down to me.
Waves of sadness came over me, and I started thinking about the fact that my grandfather and other members of his family had mental health issues. I wasn’t prepared for what hit me next. It occurred to me that the mental illnesses in my grandfather’s family and the dysfunction in his family happened because of centuries of colonialism and oppression of Armenians by Ottoman Turks. The horror and trauma of both of his grandfathers’ beheadings by the Turks during the Armenian genocide flooded me in a way it never had.
I knew I carried intergenerational trauma from that horrible time period, but I assumed it was just sadness and grief. Before last night, I wasn’t ready to face it, so I subconsciously numbed myself. I could only process a small part of it. Next week, I will continue dealing with it. I had thought that I no longer carried the trauma from the experiences of my maternal grandparents or mother. Apparently, I need more EMDR sessions focused on those intergenerational trauma experiences.
Intergenerational Healing and Journal Writing
I am writing in my journal about my feelings and any insights about how the trauma I inherited affects me. I am finding that I am much more affected than I realized. It’s both daunting and liberating. I get to be a cycle breaker in my family. However, it hurts like hell to do so. It’s not easy, and there are no quick fixes. There is no fast food healing from any kind of trauma, but there is the hard work of recovery, which leads to freedom.
If you want to begin healing from intergenerational trauma, I recommend journal writing. Write down every instance of trauma your parents, grandparents, and other generations experienced. Include cultural trauma in that list. Jot down how those experiences affected your life and your own trauma.
Know that any kind of trauma can be healed in recovery. You have what it takes to be a cycle breaker.
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