How far back can we trace intergenerational trauma?
To me, it is an endless circle, turning around with the rise and collapse of empires and societies.
The only reason we are able to be emotionally present to our children right now is that we are not in survival mode. We have a safe society holding us, that was built on the blood and sweat of ancestors who didn't have the luxury to be emotionally present to their children.
In my culture anyway, the fact that we were conquered, the fact that the way of the culture of the land is so close in our history... It is quite clear that most women here share the same overfunctionning tendancies. My grandmother had 11 children. Her husband was gone all of winter in the woods for work and only came back in the spring, when they'd work the land. They didn't have a lot of money, it was survival. My grandmother had to take care of the children, the animals, tend the fire, cook, clean, make the clothes...children were loved, but above all they were cheap labor. The oldest did not attend school, she had to raise her brothers and sisters. My mother was one of the youngest, there wasn't a lot of space left for love when she was born. It was competition for attention, and work, work, work. Because what they planted is what they ate. No culture, no food. Because a dead cow will hurt the survival of your family, you tend to that cow as a priority, it is how, in the end, you are tending to your children, ensuring they eat well. And maybe, just maybe, one of them will make it to school and becomes a lawyer or a doctor.
If you think about it, imagine a collapse of our society and being without food for three days : you will enter survival mode. Not sure how much time you will have to take care of your children emotional needs. You will want to put food in their mouth first.
Nature is brutal. It is easy to look at it from our standpoint and say : ha it's because they didn't love their children enough. But it is hard for us to imagine how it was for them to live in a world where it was survival of the fittest. We talk a lot about the communities, how they would be together and party on Friday nights, dreaming about how good it must have been. But it was hard, and cruel. There was communities : communities struggling for survival. Being closed to your neighbors family was the difference between life and death during hard winters.
I don't care much where BPD and NPD comes from anymore, I mostly care about how it affected me, and where it left me, and what I should do about it knowing how fragile the balance of our society is. I don't want to raise "weak" children either who are only turned inward. They should also worry about the good they put out in the world, not just how the world affects them and their emotional ego.
We are lucky that we live in a society that even allows healing to begin with... I don't think people in the sweat shops of developing countries are emotionally aware and healthy...
We are in a period of healing intergenerational trauma, with psychologists and experts... Only because our societies can afford it... Because our ancestors couldn't and spend their lives trying to survive.
It's human history to carry trauma and seek to heal it, to make it easier for the next generation. Until a generation wants to take it all for themselves because they are used to richness. Then there is a collapse, and it starts all over again.
The best thing I can do is look at myself and try to raise resilient, strong children that have the tools necessary to survive whatever struggles life will bring to them. Being emotionally present is important, but I don't blame my grandmother for not having been able to do it. Truth be told : in the conditions she was in, I'd not have done better than her. I also don't blame my mother anymore for what it's worth. She did try her best, and still does. It's just that I have to protect my children too, from the struggles of my generation (mental health crisis).
