It’s a sad truth that not every baby is blessed with parents who give them a healthy childhood. Sometimes, even parents with great intentions can leave their offspring with serious trauma due to addiction, their unhealed trauma, distorted or harmful (even if well-meant) beliefs, or mental health issues, among other things.
Now many adults are choosing to break those cycles and not pass trauma — that in some cases has run through many generations — on to their children. The question is, how? What steps does one take to keep from either revisiting the same damage on their kids, or replacing it with different trauma?
One Redditor asked women about the choices they’ve made to break generational trauma cycles. Here are some of their best answers.
Therapy
Therapy is perhaps the most obvious answer, and it was certainly one of the most common. Make sure that you’re seeking a therapist who works with family and childhood trauma, and it may be relevant to check their other specialties (for instance, if your trauma involved a parent’s substance abuse or how they dealt with gender roles).
Good therapy can effectively process past hurts and prevent or reduce overreactions or harmful behavior when those memories are triggered. A good therapist can also specifically help address ways to prevent your hurts from being taken out on your child.
Avoiding Intoxicating Substances
This tends to mainly come up when there’s a family history of substance abuse but it could be relevant for many types of trauma. If you know a parent’s addiction struggles caused harm to you, then it’s a clear step to not engage in those same behaviors yourself — which doesn’t mean it’s easy.
If you’ve decided breaking the cycle for you involves avoiding substances, you can enlist help. You can seek counseling, join groups of others avoiding substances (even if you don’t have an active or known addiction yourself) or join support groups for people who have family members with addictions.
You can also remind friends not to invite you to events that will center around alcohol or other substances.
Self-Help & Education
This can start with support groups and books. Redditors recommend Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents by psychologist Lindsay Gibson and books on child development and healthy parenting.
One Redditor even said they took university courses in psychology to develop an understanding that would help move forward from their experience. Many others cited seeking higher education in general, whether to create physical distance, open more life opportunities, or improve their understanding.
Physical & Emotional Distance
Many Redditors say that one of the most important things they did before having children of their own is to move far away from the family members that caused their trauma. Going no-contact is also high on the list.
For many people, breaking cycles of generational trauma involves preventing their kids from being around the same individuals, especially when a parent can’t count on those individuals to make efforts to do the work and self-reflection to improve their behavior.
Question Everything
We humans take so much for granted. If it was a rule in our childhood, whether it was a prohibition on taking food into the living room, an edict on how long skirts and shorts must be, a standard for how one talks to adults, or dietary strictures, it’s easy to assume this is the way everyone lives.
Some moms say that questioning everything they were brought up with so they can keep the good and discard the bad is their best tool. For some, this involved leaving the religious sect of their parents, revisiting their political views, or closely investigating the social norms their parents imposed.
Careful Partnering
Those who suffer childhood abuse often end up with partners who are also abusive. This can be for a variety of reasons, including that the physical, mental, or emotional abuse has been normalized to the victim and that abusers tend to be pretty skilled at finding victims who are susceptible to their methods.
Regardless of the reason, for many adults, breaking the cycle includes recognizing the types of abuse they suffered and making careful and conscious choices to seek partners with whom they feel safe.
(IMPORTANT: If you find yourself in an abusive relationship, you can always reach out for help. In the U.S., the National Domestic Violence Hotline is accessible at 800-799-7233 or by texting “BEGIN” to 88788.)
Seek Support
Some folks say they’re finding help through groups like the ACA (Adult Children of Alcoholics), therapy support groups, or even online groups. You can often find support groups on social media or message boards to anonymously commune with other individuals with similar experiences.
For some, bonding with siblings over shared trauma experiences is also helpful, although others have seen siblings fall into the same behavior patterns they’re fighting to escape.
Others have found support through mental health treatment, including EMDR programs.
Conscious Self-Control & Correction
One mom said she is especially cautious about negative self-talk. She doesn’t let her daughter hear her insult her own body or see her treat herself critically. She and other parents also discuss that a significant difference between their parenting style and their parents is acknowledging and apologizing to their children when they make mistakes.
Many adults describe being gaslit by their parents, who they say would pretend that anything negative or harmful didn’t happen. They’re frustrated, more than anything, at parents who couldn’t admit a mistake, and they’re determined not to put their children through similar experiences.
Delaying Or Avoiding Becoming Parents
While some adults work on healing their trauma to be better parents, others feel that they will never make it to that place of personal mental health. They say they prefer to simply not have children, so that they don’t have to constantly monitor whether the same behaviors are resurfacing.
Others say they would still like to have kids, but they’re putting it off until they’ve finished healing. They’re using some of the other methods mentioned here — therapy, self-help, etc — and delaying parenthood until they’re sure that they’re ready.
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