How to Stop the Cycle: Using EMDR for Generational Trauma & Inherited Stress

Dec 1

As the year draws to a close in December, a season often dedicated to family, reflection, and planning for the new year, many of us feel the familiar tension of repeating patterns. We look back and notice things we wish we could change.

Are you parenting, partnering, or responding to stress the way you swore you wouldn’t?

This feeling—the sense of fighting an invisible battle—is often the echo of the past, not just personal history. It’s a sign that you might be living out the script of Generational Trauma. The good news is that at Integrated Balance Psychotherapy in Spokane, WA, we have a powerful, evidence-based tool to rewrite that script: EMDR therapy.

Defining Generational Trauma: The Unseen Inheritance

Generational Trauma refers to the emotional and psychological burdens passed down through families—often unconsciously—across generations. It’s more than just poor coping skills or learned behaviors; it’s the lingering impact of events like wars, systemic poverty, cultural oppression, or even undiagnosed Complex Trauma and severe emotional neglect from decades past.

Ancestral Wounds: These are the historical injuries and unresolved pains of your parents, grandparents, and beyond. They didn't just disappear; they left ripples.
Epigenetics: Science now shows that severe stress can literally change gene expression. While the genes themselves aren't changed, the way they turn on and off can be altered, making descendants potentially more susceptible to anxiety, depression, or heightened stress responses. This is the biological reality of Inherited Stress.

This deep, long-standing pattern requires more than surface-level solutions. To initiate Family Trauma Healing, we must address where the pain truly lives.

How is Trauma Stored: It’s Not Just a Memory

When we experience trauma, especially chronic or relational trauma, the brain’s alarm system (the amygdala) takes over. The memories aren't filed away neatly like ordinary memories. Instead, they are stored in a raw, unprocessed, and emotionally charged state.

Neurobiology: The feelings, bodily sensations, images, and sounds associated with the original trauma remain "frozen" in the nervous system. When triggered by a current event—say, a conflict with your spouse or child—your brain doesn't just remember the past; it genuinely believes the past is happening right now. This is why you feel overwhelmed, shut down, or explosive in ways that seem disproportionate to the current situation.
Not Just Memory: This pain is housed in the body's alarm response, creating chronic physical symptoms like headaches, stomach issues, and constant hypervigilance. The goal of effective therapy must be to unfreeze and complete the processing of these stored experiences.

The EMDR Solution: Reprocessing the Past

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) is a highly effective psychotherapy approach that enables the brain to naturally process these distressing memories. EMDR doesn't require you to spend years reliving and narrating every detail of your past.

EMDR works by utilizing bilateral stimulation (usually eye movements or tapping) while you focus briefly on the traumatic memory. This process helps your brain move the frozen, maladaptively stored information from the emotional side of the brain to the logical side, where it can be fully processed and integrated.

While your brain does the heavy lifting, the process follows the established 8 Phases of EMDR:

History-Taking: Identifying the targets of trauma.
Preparation: Building coping skills and trust.
Assessment: Identifying the memory and associated negative beliefs.
Desensitization: The reprocessing phase using bilateral stimulation.
Installation: Strengthening positive beliefs.
Body Scan: Clearing any residual physical tension.
Closure: Returning to a state of calm.
Re-evaluation: Checking the progress in subsequent sessions.

This transformative method means you can "reprocess" the EMDR Generational Trauma without the decades of talk therapy, allowing you to quickly move from surviving your past to thriving in your present.

The Legacy of Healing

As the calendar turns toward a new year, we have the unique power to stop the transmission of pain. Healing the trauma that began generations ago is not only possible but is the greatest legacy you can leave your children and future descendants.

Choosing to do this work is choosing to embrace Breaking the Cycle. It means your future will be defined by resilience, not reaction. Dr. Kern and the team at Integrated Balance Psychotherapy specialize in this deep, meaningful work, offering comprehensive trauma care right here in Spokane.