Generational Trauma Therapy
Helping you create something healthier than what you were taught.
Online Trauma Therapy Across Pennsylvania and Delaware
Do you feel like you're repeating your family's patterns?
Do you live by unspoken family rules you never agreed to?
You're living by rules you never agreed to. No one sat you down and explained them, but you follow them anyway.
Don't trust authority. Don't talk about feelings. Always stay alert. Don't tell other people about our business.
You notice the patterns. You see how your family operates. The unspoken agreements about what you talk about and what you don't. What's safe and what's dangerous. Who you trust and who you avoid.
These rules show up everywhere. In how you handle conflict. In how you measure your own worth. In how you react when someone crosses a line. In the way you respond to stress or bad news.
They affect your relationships, your work, the way you parent, and the choices you make without thinking.
You might not even realize you're following them until something happens that breaks the pattern. Then you feel it. It’s like you're stepping out of bounds.
Are you holding pain that started before you were born?
Deep down, you believe something is wrong with you. Not just that you made mistakes or had bad things happen to you. You feel broken at your core.
You tell yourself it was your fault. That you deserved what happened. That if you were different, better, stronger, it wouldn't have happened.
Even when you know logically it wasn't your fault, you can't shake the feeling that it was. That you're to blame. That you're not okay as a person.
You look at other people and wonder how they seem so normal. How they move through the world without carrying this weight. You feel like you're pretending to be like them, but you're not.
You've lost yourself somewhere along the way. You can't find what you like to do. You can't describe who you are. You don't recognize the person looking back at you in the mirror.
It's hard to believe you're worthy of good things. That you deserve to heal. That you're not broken beyond repair.
Does breaking free from your family’s pain feel like betrayal?
You want something different for yourself. But trying to change feels like uncharted territory.
When you try to call out patterns, do things differently, or talk about your own pain, you get pushback.
They tell you you're being dramatic. According to them, it wasn't that bad. You're making things up. You're turning your back on the family.
You're trying to stop what hurt you. But doing that can stir up conflict, defensiveness, or silence from your family members.
Some of them shut down. Some of them get angry. Some of them act like you're the problem for bringing it up in the first place.
So you stay stuck. Not because you want to, but because breaking free means facing all of that.
Are you terrified of passing this pain to your children?
You feel an overwhelming responsibility to break the cycle so your children don't suffer what previous generations did.
Even if you can't fully name what that was, you know it's there.
You watch your kids closely, maybe too closely. You're terrified that something in you, or something in your family, will harm them. It’s like you're fighting both the present and the past at the same time.
You hear your parents' words come out of your mouth and it stops you cold. You see yourself repeating patterns you swore you'd never repeat.
You want to do things differently, but how? The worry sits in the back of your mind: What if everything you're trying to do isn't enough?
You're doing what you can to protect them from what you went through. But the weight of that responsibility is crushing.
You're ready to break the cycle so the patterns stop with you.
It’s not too late.
Therapy for Generational Trauma
I specialize in treating generational trauma by using approaches that help you break free from inherited patterns, heal the wounds passed down through your family, and create a different path forward.
Healing from generational trauma means becoming the person you want to be, not the person survival made you. It means learning to apologize and take responsibility in ways your family never did. It means your children's feelings matter, and you show them that. It means parenting differently, responding differently, and building the kind of home you needed growing up. It means letting go of guilt that was never yours to carry. It means transforming yourself.
Types of Therapy
Uses gentle side to side movements (called bilateral stimulation) to help the brain file away painful memories so they feel less intense and less present in daily life.
EMDR Therapy
Internal Family Systems (IFS)
Helps you understand and work with different parts of yourself that developed to protect you during trauma, so you can heal from the inside out.
Somatic Experiencing
Helps you tune into physical sensations and body cues that may be holding onto trauma, so your body can begin to relax and reset.
Mindfulness
Teaches you how to pay attention to the present moment with more curiosity and less judgment, which can calm your body and quiet your thoughts.
How It Works
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We Connect
First, schedule a free consultation by clicking “Book Now” to see if it feels like a good fit. In our early sessions, I’ll get to know you as a person: your story, strengths, struggles, and what truly matters to you.
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We Develop a Plan
We’ll talk about what you want from therapy and come up with a clear plan for how to get there, together.
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We Work Together
We’ll check in regularly to see what’s helping and adjust along the way to keep you moving toward the life you want.
Generational Trauma FAQs
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Generational trauma (also called intergenerational, family, or transgenerational trauma) means pain and survival habits from the past get carried into the next generation. The children or grandkids may not have lived through the original events, but the fear, rules, and patterns can still show up in how a family talks, copes, and relates.
Examples include:
Abuse in the family (physical, emotional, or sexual)
Witnessing domestic violence at home
Experiencing racism and/or discrimination
War, genocide, or the Holocaust
Forced moves, family separation, or immigration due to danger
Community violence, police violence, or mass trauma
Addiction in the home, parental mental illness, or long periods of neglect
In everyday life, it can look like: staying silent to “keep the peace,” always being on alert, people-pleasing, trouble trusting, or using harsh self-talk you once heard from adults.
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Generational trauma often feels like carrying fears, roles, or sadness that connect to your family's past. You notice the same patterns playing out across generations. The harsh words your parent used were the same ones their parent used. The way conflict gets handled in your home is the same way it was handled in theirs. You're experiencing pain that also shaped the people who raised you.
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Generational trauma can be passed down through how parents and caregivers raise kids, the habits families repeat, the stories they tell about who they are and what happened, and how they deal with stress or pain. Family culture, community history, and big events, like moving, loss, or discrimination, can also shape what gets carried forward. Over time, these patterns guide how each generation handles feelings, relationships, and how they see the world.
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Yes. Healing means recognizing what got handed down and choosing to respond in new ways. Setting boundaries and creating emotional safety for your children honors your family by moving the story forward, not by staying stuck in old pain.
It means working through your own pain and understanding what your family went through. Processing the trauma helps you respond to your children from a place of healing instead of hurt.
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It comes out in how you handle conflict, how you respond to your children, difficulty trusting others, and getting triggered by things that remind you of your childhood. The old patterns influence your reactions, even when you want to respond differently. Therapy can help you spot these patterns and choose a different next step.