Working with Intergenerational Trauma and Epigenetics in Therapy
Sara Sloan, LMFT, CST, IRT contributed to Zocdoc’s article, “What is Intergenerational Trauma,” originally published on October 20th, 2024. Below is Sloan’s new content and article summary.
Intergenerational Trauma is something you’ve probably heard about recently in the news. There have been more studies in the last year, that show directly how parents’ trauma is able to leave biological traces in their children. In particular, research has shown how the father’s trauma is passed on to the child through the sperm. Meanwhile, scientists have found that a mother’s trauma is associated with changes in mitochondrial bioenergetics.
This is important in therapy, because there are rare occasions where you’ll find a classic trauma response in a client with no past trauma or memory attached, as well as nothing medically to explain it. It could show up as anxiety or unexplained fear, or it might look like depression, or re-occuring nightmares. This can happen in lineages of those who have had parents, grandparents, or even great-grandparents that survived a war or genocide.
If we think back to the original rat study, female rats were given the smell of roses, before receiving an electric shock. This happened a number of times, until the smell of roses elicited a fear response in the rats, even without the electric shock. These same rat’s children and grand children continued to show physiological signs of fear and anxiety with the smell of roses, even though none of the following generations had experienced the smell of roses paired with an electric shock.
We see heightened anxiety and a direct link to changes in cortisol for children with one or both parents who had experienced the Holocaust. You can see the same thing happening in those with Native Lineages that experienced the Indian Boarding Schools. These changes in epigenetics affect following generations mental and physical health due to events that happened before they were born.
New research shows that psychedelics may be one way to help reverse epigenetic trauma. One study completed on ayahuasca, found it works directly on the Sigma-1 receptor (SIGMAR1), which helps regulate traumatic memories and cellular stress associated with PTSD. Ayahuasca showed notable results by providing a decrease in the methylation of SIGMAR1, which translates to higher gene expression. These changes improve PTSD and anxiety by strengthening cellular stress resilience, reducing neuroinflammation, and stabilizing fear circuitry, while enhancing the neuroplasticity needed for trauma reconstruction.
Other ways we’ve leaned to work with lineage trauma that doesn’t have a core memory attached is through hypnotherapy, ketamine assisted therapy, EMDR, and somatic experiencing. In therapy, you can focus on the feelings to help process them, even if you’re unsure where they’d originated.
