Breaking The Cycle

The transmission of childhood trauma from one generation to the next seems incredibly unlikely on the surface. After all, who better than a victim of childhood abuse to understand the grave impact of harmful parenting? Despite that, familial trauma repeats, as parents who underwent abuse as children tend to be at a higher risk of engaging in similar negative parenting (Greene et al., 2020). From parents struggling with emotional and physical burnout (Le Vigoroux et al., 2023) to children with low self-esteem and at a higher risk of developing mental disorders (Ricks et al., 2022) a perpetuating cycle like this harms all of the individuals involved and must be broken. Social psychology and neuroscience perspectives offer the foundation for understanding the maintenance of said cycle and consequently, how it can be broken.

Through a social psychology lens, the perpetuation of abuse can be attributed to the creation of a “new normal”. When raised believing love and affection look a certain way, the view of what a truly healthy relationship looks like can become distorted. In many cases, childhood abuse occurs under the veneer of love and “doing what’s right for you”. As such, the idea of violence as a form of love being constantly reinforced in a child can create maladaptive versions of what love is supposed to look like (Riggs, 2010). Children learn from their caretaker, and if they are subjected to high levels of abuse, they may internalize it as a normal part of childhood. Not only does it not seem foreign to them, it may also model their future behaviour, leading to victims of childhood abuse engaging in some form of the negative parenting they faced (Greene et al., 2020). 

Unresolved pain from traumatic experiences as a child is also a significant factor that explains why negative parenting is often seen in victims of abuse. Parenting, being such a mentally and physically taxing aspect of one’s life, requires high levels of emotional stability. In most cases, victims of childhood abuse have difficulty with communication and emotional regulation (Riggs, 2010). As a result, childhood abuse survivors might struggle to cope with the trying emotions that parenting can lead to. Mild frustration that is not managed in a healthy manner can often manifest as an outburst of anger that is damaging to the child (Lavi et al., 2021) . For this reason, unresolved pain can be attributed as one of the root causes of the intergenerational transmission of trauma. 

Not only does childhood trauma change a person socially, it can also affect their genes and consequently their neurobiology. This effect can be understood through the concept of epigenetics, which is the study of how behaviour and the environment can change the expression of genes. Essentially, this approach to understanding trauma looks into how long-term abuse can affect the body’s systems, changing certain gene expressions and, in turn, altering the body and the mind’s reactivity to stressful situations. A key system in this sequence of events is the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis. Chronic stress, commonly seen in cases of long-term childhood abuse, can overactivate the HPA axis (Thumfart et al., 2022). Consequently, stress sensitivity increases, making individuals more prone to having difficulties coping with stressful events while also leading to epigenetic changes. These changes occur in the form of DNA methylation and histone modification, which refer to alterations in the expression of a gene. These alterations further reinforce the overactivation of the HPA axis (Jiang et al, 2019) and are thought to contribute to the long-term decrease in emotion regulation capacities as a consequence of childhood abuse. This could play a role in explaining why victims of childhood abuse find it so hard to break the cycle. Essentially, social experiences can become biologically embedded, affecting future social experiences.

It’s terrifying to hear that the effects of a childhood you might not want to remember can follow you around for the rest of your life. But it is important to remember that this is an overly deterministic way of looking at this concept. These kinds of effects do not always happen to people who’ve suffered through a traumatic childhood and, more importantly, can be reversed if they do happen. Neuroplasticity and resilience factors play a huge role in understanding how these cycles are broken. While biological changes may seem fixed, epigenetic changes are reversible and building resilience to aid in stress management can also aid recovery. A large component of ensuring that said trauma is not passed down to future generations is awareness. The realization that the conditions these victims were raised in were not healthy is the first and most important step in healing from trauma, as it helps to rectify the distorted image of healthy relationships that the victims have (Zeine et al., 20224). Only once you realize you have been hurt can you ensure that you do not hurt. On top of that, therapy and mind-body interventions can help with stress regulation, as these help stabilize the HPA axis (central in most epigenetic mechanisms). Some mind-body interventions that have proved effective in trauma healing include meditation and yoga, which have been found to reduce trauma symptoms by relieving stress and improving mood (Kim et al., 2013). Stress regulation and ability to cope with frustrating circumstances go a long way in ensuring that the cycle is broken. 

Ultimately, the effects of childhood trauma are governed by a dynamic interaction of social and neurobiological mechanisms. While early experiences leave lasting impacts, they do not determine our future. With the right interventions, coping mechanisms can be guided in a more healthy direction. Patterns can be rewritten, cycles can be broken and trauma does not have to be inevitable.