The Generational Trauma Curse - by Marlene Perez

Mental health services benefit your quality of life, yet they are often inaccessible and stigmatized. As a result, many people can go unnoticed or untreated, with chronic mental conditions affecting how they feel, think, or behave. Moreover, mental health is so critical to your well-being and survival that it can chemically imprint on your DNA, allowing psychological issues, such as traumas, to carry through generations. Such trauma(s) passed down through generations is known as generational trauma (also referred to as intergenerational trauma). Generational trauma occurs when years of unresolved mental issues are overlooked, creating an endless cycle of unhealthy cognitive behaviors and illness in one's family history.

As a daughter of Mexican parents who migrated to the United States, my family struggled through years of poverty and displacement before they arrived here. My father, in particular, was orphaned and raised by his great-grandmother. As a result, he often spent his childhood walking to school without shoes and offering to carry strangers' grocery bags for some change. Poverty can have a significant influence on one's mental state, leading to extreme levels of stress, depression, and anxiety. Yet, when you don't have the luxury of seeking mental health services, people are often left to live in a constant state of survival that involves suppressing their emotions and memories. Physical abuse was another factor that played into my parents' childhoods. In the Mexican culture, because mental health is stigmatized, parents often don't know how to regulate their frustration when parenting their children, so they turn to unhealthy disciplinary actions that involve corporal punishment. This type of punishment was equally damaging and scarring to both my parents. When my parents arrived in the United States with nothing but the clothes on their backs in their young adulthoods, they faced language, financial, and cultural barriers that often left them displaced.

Now, how may this have impacted my life? My parents raised my siblings and me around the fears and traumas they faced throughout their childhoods and young adulthoods. When I decided early in my youth to seek mental health services, I realized I was diagnosed with high depression and anxiety and had difficulty communicating my emotions. Therapy helped me notice that all the issues that stemmed from my childhood came from how my parents raised me. For example, I realized my fear of finances stemmed from witnessing my parents struggle with money. However, one advantage I had that my parents and grandparents didn't have was the accessibility to resources like therapy and an education system emphasizing mental health and its importance. Specifically, I took a psychology class in high school and learned about generational trauma. In this course, I acknowledged how unresolved mental issues could affect your body and be carried down to your loved ones. It was eye-opening when I witnessed the effects of generational trauma throughout my family history. Now, I can educate my parents on mental health, and my siblings and I can break the cycle of these traumas.