Knowledge is Power: Terms to know related to relationship and generational trauma.
A few weeks ago, I shared a post on instagram about “Terms my clients learn to help them name, validate, and better understand their pain. - So they can learn what they need to heal.”
From the feedback I received, I thought I’d elaborate more on this topic and give you some great resources and tips to get started on your healing journey.
They say ignorance is bliss, but I think knowledge is power for healing when it comes to these topics.
Healing generational trauma and relationship wounds we experienced from our caregivers, partners, or closest relationships can be extremely difficult to identify, name, and heal. For starters, what we are born into becomes our norm. Although something might not “feel good” or “right”, we often don’t know it can or should be any different. Then we continue to repeat those patterns of love and relationships in our adult relationships with friends, family, lovers, and even our children… So here are a few terms and resources to explore these topics more if they resonate with you in any way. My goal is to elaborate on these more individually, in the future. For now, here’s a little starter.
As always, if you have any questions or would like to see how I can support you more with your relationship healing journey, please don’t hesitate to reach out.
Mother Hunger.
A deep maternal- attachment wound girls experience from their mother due to a lack of protection, nurturance, and guidance. Includes a significant lack of emotional attunement, nurturance, and healthy love. Girls often feel significant abandonment, insecure attachment style, and a missing piece in their being. Kelly McDaniel explains in her book that this Motherhunger relationship is defined by a lack of emotional attunement, due to the mother’s inability to provide emotional availability and recognize her child’s emotional needs. She explains there is a spectrum with the severity of this relationship, some being more emotionally neglectful, coming across as cold, disconnected, emotionally distance and minimizing a daughter's emotions/pain - and others much more severe with emotional and physical neglect/harm/abuse. If you’ve ever struggled with feeling invalidated and like your mother isn’t emotionally available, I’d encourage you to look her book up. I’ve included it HERE.
The next few terms have a lot of overlap. I’ve included a list of books at the end of this list, that I believe will help support you with your healing if you feel anything explained below resonates with you. I like to remind people that dealing and healing from narcissistic, immature, and gaslighting parents/relationships, is a journey. It’s not easy and I recommend reaching out to professional support, this doesn't have to be me. Most of us need to be reminded we “aren’t imagining things” when challenging family dysfunction related to narcissistic and emotionally immature individuals.
Parentified children:
When a child is made responsible for family needs, for what should be the responsibility of the caregiver. This can include emotional, physical, household, or financial. It’s a role reversal where the child becomes responsible for the parent and family. It increases stress, anxiety, and places inappropriate emotional burdens on a child. This can create confusion in child/parent roles and a loss of childhood.
Narcissistic Abuse:
Emotional abuse that uses manipulation, gaslighting, blame shifting, aggressive, and controling behaviors. Individuals who are narcissistic or who have narcissistic tendencies have self-centered personalities, lack empathy/insight, delusional sense of reality/self, and severe mood shifts.Growing up with a narcissistic caregiver or being in relationship with one can feel confusing, isolating, a sense of walking on egg shells, and can significantly impact a person's self-esteem, identity, and decision making.
Gaslighting:
A form of psychological manipulation and emotional abuse where one person, the gaslighter, makes another person question their own sanity, memory, perception of reality, and instincts. The goal is often to gain power and control over a person or situation, often leading the one being gas lit to feel confused, anxious, and dependent on the abuser. It can manifest as persistent lying, denying events, trivializing feelings, or even accusing the victim of being overly emotional/sensitive or a feeling of "crazy.”
Emotionally Immature Parents:
Parents who prioritize their own feelings and needs over their children's and present with a lack of emotional regulation, empathy, and self-awareness. They are often self-centered, emotionally unavailable/neglectful, and an inability to manage conflict, leading to dismissive, inconsistent, or overly critical behavior towards their children. This dynamic can leave children feeling unseen, unworthy, or responsible for their parents' emotional well-being.
Inner Child Wounds:
Unresolved and unhealed emotional trauma experienced during childhood that can continue to impact an individual's life in adulthood. These wounds can arise from various experiences, including: neglect, abandonment, abuse, betrayal, and humiliation. They can impact an individuals self-worth, relationships, and attachment styles.
Insecure Attachment:
Healthy attachment is our ability to have securely attached relationships where we engage in healthy trust, vulnerability, and letting people in/out; however, insecure attachment causes us to have significant fear of abandonment, trust, vulnerability, and letting people in/out. This shows up in unhealthy patterns of behaviors in our relationships. We develop our attachment in childhood from our caregivers, but it impacts us all through adulthood unless we work on it. Our first caregivers ability to be emotionally attuned to our needs and provide us with a safe/nurturing environment sets our foundation.
Attachment styles is a huge topic and extremely important! I’ll definitely follow-up with more in the future, but what I think is most important right now, is to know your attachment style doesn’t have to label and define you. Even if we grow up in childhood trauma and believe we have developed an insecure attachment, we can become securely attached.
Generational Trauma:
When the effects of trauma are passed down from generation to generation. You might not have been there for a significant trauma your grandmother experienced, but you might feel it due to her detachment, emotional neglect, and harsh punishment was given to her children, which impacts them and then impacts you - that is if no one intentionally changed and transformed the story. This can also look like children repeating unhealthy behaviors from one generation to the next, because that’s what they learned. It’s hard to do something different you were never taught. The generations before us impact us significantly. There is a ripple effect of trauma, and if we don’t stop and do hard work, the ones after us will continue to experience it.
Resources/Books I recommend:
Emotionally Immature Parents
Emotionally Immature Parents Guided Journal
Securely Attached Guided Workbook
Raising Securely Attached Children
If you have any questions or resources on this topic you’d love to share, leave a comment or send a message! Knowledge is power for healing.
And as always, if I can support you along your healing journey, I’d love to connect and see if we’d be a good fit to work together.
Thanks for your time.
With Love,
Jessica
- Securely Her