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 Part One:  Generational Trauma Isn’t What You Think It Is

 
written by Jodi Sherland in collaboration with Chatgpt

How emotional misunderstanding — not parental abuse — is fueling a damaging cycle of estrangement
 
Trauma is not what we’ve been taught.
Most people define trauma as an experience that happened to them — abuse, neglect, violence. But trauma isn’t the event itself. It’s the emotional rupture that happens when a person can’t process an experience because they don’t understand what emotions are, or they misattribute the source of their pain.

This misattribution is key. Most of us have been trained to associate our emotional pain with past events — particularly from childhood. We’re told, repeatedly, that the pain we feel now is caused by what our parents did then. The modern mental health narrative reinforces this: “You feel broken because of your upbringing. Your parents were toxic. That’s why you struggle.”

But this story is incomplete — and dangerously disempowering.
 
The Misunderstood Parent
Yes, parents can cause pain. But most don’t realize they’re doing it. Many are operating from survival mode — running on adaptations and emotional deficits they inherited from their own upbringing. In other words, they’re still stuck in their own childhood wounding, often without a developed self.

They may discipline harshly, avoid emotional presence, or fixate on control — not because they’re abusive, but because they lack impulse control, autonomy, or emotional regulation. These are all signs of arrested development.

Most parents who hurt their kids emotionally are not malicious. They are unaware. They are trying to meet unmet needs from their own past. They are often re-creating familiar pain cycles because they never learned another way.

They may even speak about the pain they experienced as children, while unknowingly replicating those same dynamics in their parenting — because they haven’t developed the tools or internal structure to break the pattern.
 
The Paradox of the “Better” Generation
Many parents from recent generations did try to break the cycle. They were explicitly taught not to spank their children. They prioritized gentleness, nurturing, and emotional expression. They gave their kids what they never received — and believed this would prevent harm.

And in many cases, it did. Children of this generation often developed what their parents couldn’t:

A strong sense of self
Emotional regulation
Impulse control
Autonomy
But here’s the tragedy: Even though these parents succeeded in giving their children the conditions for healthy development, they often couldn’t maintain a healthy relationship with those children — because they themselves never developed a relationship with themselves.

You cannot have a stable relationship with another person — especially a growing child — if you have no stable relationship with yourself.

This is the hidden cost of personality disorders or emotional immaturity. The parent may deeply love the child, but the child will feel unsafe, unseen, or overwhelmed by the parent’s dysregulation.

And once the child develops enough awareness, their instinct is to cut contact.
Why?
Because they believe the parent is causing their emotional pain — just as they were taught.
 
The Disempowering Narrative
Here’s where the narrative becomes harmful:

If the emotionally mature child is told “your pain is because your parent was abusive,” they are robbed of the chance to understand the full truth.

The pain they feel is real. But it isn’t always because of “abuse.”
It’s often because of emotional incompatibility.
Because their parent is developmentally stuck.
Because they were never modeled a healthy relationship with self.
This doesn’t mean the parent should be given a pass. But it does mean that cutting the parent off entirely may create new wounds — especially since, prior to individuation, the child’s identity was fused with that parent.

To sever that bond without understanding can cause unnecessary emotional fallout and create patterns of rejection, blame, and misdirected pain that may pass on to future generations.
 
What’s Needed Instead?
We don’t need more blame.

We need language and frameworks that can:

Help emotionally mature children understand what’s actually happening with their parent
Acknowledge the real harm caused by undeveloped parenting without labeling it abuse
Empower boundaries without total estrangement
Guide emotionally underdeveloped parents to grow — not collapse under shame
Break the cycle of emotional misattribution once and for all
Because trauma isn’t about what happened.
It’s about what couldn’t be processed.

And if we want to stop repeating these generational loops, we must shift the focus from what was done to what was missing — and how we can start building it now.
 
Read Part Two: The Real Root of Trauma Is Emotional Disconnection →
Philosophy
Psychology
Generational Trauma
Self Help
Self-awareness
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
Written by The School of Emotional Lite