Why EFIT for intergenerational trauma?
November 16, 2022
Told and Untold Stories. As Rachel Yehuda and other experts in the field would tell us, and what we know about trauma more generally, is that the impacts of trauma, including intergenerational trauma, are likely to be most damaging if the trauma is interpersonal in nature. Studies show that the impacts of trauma – passed from generation to generation – through a combination of epigenetics, parenting, and other contextual factors look much the same, regardless of whether offspring have been provided with any details of the event (or events). This phenomenon is poignantly described in the book by Rabbi Tirzah Firestone, Wounds into Wisdom: Healing Intergenerational Jewish Trauma, “Now, after his death, his children found photographs hidden away in his files: shocking images that he had taken inside the death camp: vermin-infested barracks; stacked, decaying corpses; abandoned Nazi warplanes. These horrifying pictures had been concealed from us and from conscious conversation for thirty-six years. But the impact of his experience could not be hidden. The emotional charge behind Dad’s buried images and untold stories had come through loud and clear (p. 13-14).”
Tracing the Impacts. In describing these impacts, various studies and clinical data point to much the same types of symptoms that we see among war veterans, first responders and those who have suffered various types of developmental trauma but the risk is much greater for the development of a set of symptoms such as PTSD (three times greater one such study by Yehuda and her colleagues demonstrated) if the impacts of intergenerational trauma also are at play. Reactions may vary by generation but often include shame, increased anxiety and guilt, a heightened sense of vulnerability and helplessness, poor self-image and low self-esteem, depression, suicidality, substance abuse, dissociation, hypervigilance, intrusive thoughts, difficulty with relationships and attachment to others, difficulty in regulating emotion, heightened anxiety, and a propensity to reflexively react to stress.
Transforming Trauma: Agency and Identity. Emotionally Focused Individual Therapy (EFIT) -- an attachment-based experiential humanistic approach that is relational in nature – is well positioned to dampen the impacts of these historical scars and begin to shift the trajectory of transmission. For those of you who are familiar with EFT as a potent couple intervention, you will know that we use a ‘tried and true’ set of interventions and a clear and well-defined three-stage map to bring individuals closer to themselves and their partners. These same interventions are used in EFIT to choregraph corrective emotional experiences, what we sometimes describe as ‘emotional epiphanies.’ When we take clients into some of the key experiences, ‘defining identity dilemmas,’ that have shaped the way they feel about themselves, the way they manage their internal emotional worlds, and the way they dance with key others, and move them with and through the emotions that were previously disavowed for all kinds of good reasons, our clients begin to see themselves and others differently. Shame shifts to self-compassion. As self-compassion grows, so too does compassion for others, including parents, grandparents, and their ancestors. As the impacts of trauma are disentangled from other aspects of their history, clients turn closer to rather than further away from the rich historical and cultural factors that have shaped their identity. Perspective broadens. Self and relationships expand. Affect regulation strategies that were once reflexive, and narrow become broad and flexible. The echoes of the past that once haunted and blocked our clients from living fully become allies in integration as the tapestry of history becomes woven into a rich and full life.
Register Now for “The Promise Of EFIT and Treating Intergenerational Trauma” live training.