Historical Trauma: what is it and how does it occur?

Surely you have heard about psychological trauma, the one that occurs when an event occurs that puts the well-being and even the life of an individual at risk. Some people who have experienced traumatic events may develop what is known as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), a mental health problem in which the person continues to experience fear, intrusive thoughts, and escape and avoidance behaviors even though the danger has passed .

Traumatic episodes can be of a very different type: car accidents, sexual assaults, armed conflicts... these are just a few examples. Sometimes, events that are part of one's life and that do not pose a danger can also be experienced as traumatic, such as the death of a loved one.

Although fear is an adaptive response in dangerous situations, traumatic experiences can leave sequels that prevent a person from moving forward and living their life in a healthy way. It is for this reason that in recent years there has been a lot of talk about post-traumatic stress and the need to treat it correctly when it happens.

Emotional wounds across generations

However, there is a phenomenon related to trauma that has not enjoyed so much prominence: we speak of historical trauma (HT). Psychologists, social workers, and other professionals who see people's suffering up close are the first to become familiar with this concept.

This is defined as a cumulative emotional and psychological wound throughout life and across generations, stemming from massive experiences of group trauma. Many groups of people, especially those who have been subjected to prolonged discrimination and abuse, suffer this type of trauma that permeates an entire group.the behavior of its members, the relationships between them, etc., which severely conditions their mental health.

The TH term was first used in the 1980s, thanks to the work of social work professor Maria Yellow Horse Brave Heart. She all started with her article, titled “Responding to Historical Trauma Among Native Americans and Its Relationship to Substance Abuse: An Illustration of Lakota.”, in which she discusses this phenomenon applied to Lakota communities in the United States. .

The author relied on previous research that had been done with Holocaust survivors. and noted that indigenous groups in North America had suffered experiences of violence, humiliation, and nullification comparable to those experienced by the Jewish community. In addition to the Lakota, the author has also conducted studies with New Mexico tribes and various Latino populations in Denver and New York.

Thanks to his tireless work, it has been possible to understand how genocide, the suppression of goods and properties, forced transfer, the sending of children to boarding schools against the will of their families, the suppression of religious and linguistic freedom, among other atrocities, they leave a mark not only on the direct victims but on the entire affected group and subsequent generations. In this article we are going to learn what historical trauma is, what implications it has and who can suffer from it.

What is historical trauma?

HT is defined as a cumulative emotional and psychological wound throughout life and across generations, resulting from massive experiences of group trauma. Throughout history, many groups have suffered long-term discrimination and abuse. Many of these groups have experienced problems of all kinds and poorer quality mental health than the rest of the population (even in those cases in which several decades have passed since the traumatic event), something that has only begun to be understood by Plug this term into the equation.

The concept of HT was created due to the difficulties that the diagnostic category of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) posed when explaining the collective traumas produced by political and social violence. In this way, TH is understood as an extension of the PTSD construct that tries to address those issues that PTSD cannot cover.

Thus, the individual approach to PTSD does not allow analysis of the consequences of trauma at a collective and generational level and ignores the historical and cultural context in which it occurs. Furthermore, HT, unlike PTSD, takes into account accumulated traumatic experiences and recognizes their transmission through generations. Thus, the TH construct assesses the repercussion of trauma not only at the individual level, but also at the family and community level.

• at the individual levelthe HT collects more symptoms in addition to those typically collected in PTSD, since it takes into account depressive and anxiety symptoms, as well as the abuse of psychoactive substances, suicide and bereavement.

• at the family levelHT affects communication and generates inappropriate and stressful parenting styles.

• On a social levelproduces a break with cultural traditions, increases the prevalence of chronic diseases and breaks social ties.

In short, the TH establishes an explanatory model that highlights the oppression of previous generations as a perpetuating factor that favors the current appearance of psychological, medical or social problems in the affected communities.

All the experiences that can originate a TH have a series of essential characteristics: affect the majority of the community, produce high levels of collective stress, often lead to massive mourning for the loss of individuals and community traditions and are perpetuated by people outside the community with a destructive purpose.

How does historical trauma occur?

As we have been commenting, the historical trauma not only takes into account the pain and repercussion on the direct victims, but also on the following generations. In this way, the intergenerational transmission of trauma can occur through two pathways.

1. Interpersonal route

On the one hand, it can be given through the interpersonal route. This refers to how those who suffered the traumatic event in the first person have been able to narrate to their children and grandchildren the painful experiences they experienced in the past. The fact that a story is produced in the families of everything that happened already generates in the following generations an awareness of the horror that their ancestors have experienced by belonging to their community.

In this way, the children and grandchildren of the victims are not only exposed to a very crude narrative from their childhood, but also go through a process of identification through which they assume that they too could have suffered the same fate as their relatives. Acquiring that awareness and feeling of belonging to a group that in other times was harassed and humiliated provokes in the individual a vision of the world as a hostile and threatening environment.

Added to this, we cannot forget that traumatic events that affect entire communities tend to break the chain of transmission of knowledge between generations, eliminating the cultural richness of the community and leaving subsequent generations stripped of that baggage of knowledge.

2. Indirect transmission

On the other hand, indirect transmission can also occur. The direct victims of the traumatic event are inevitably affected by their experiences, with psychological consequences that in most cases have not been properly treated. Experiencing violence, humiliation, deprivation of rights and freedoms, forced relocation, dispossession of property and goods, etc., leaves a mark that can prevent victims from continuing their lives as balanced people capable of relating to others. in a healthy way.

It is expected that the offspring will grow up in an environment with dynamics clearly conditioned by what happened, since their parents and grandparents are adults full of pain and anger, who often end up becoming maladjusted, violent individuals, incapable of providing affection and with numerous mental health problems, addictions of all kinds being especially common.

Once these patterns are passed down from one generation to the next, it is easy for the aftermath to perpetuate itself repeatedly, dooming an entire collective left to die. always marked by trauma.

Who can suffer historical trauma?

The people affected by this tragic phenomenon usually belong to vulnerable groups and minorities.. They include Native Americans, immigrants, the black community, poor families… among many others. These individuals have been exposed to atrocities such as violent colonization, segregation, cultural assimilation, discrimination, racism, genocide, etc.

As we have been commenting, all this pain to which these groups have been subjected is manifested through all kinds of psychological discomfort, such as depression, self-destructive behavior, suicidal ideation, anxiety, anger attacks, difficulty expressing emotions...

Combating the impact of historical trauma is by no means an easy task. The communities that suffer it need to repair the aftermath and find their meaning and identity again.. Individual therapy can be of great help so that each person can reconnect with their group and thus recover their self-image.

Encouraging community activities can also be a very interesting strategy to repair this damage. In any case, it is essential that resources are allocated to work on behalf of the most marginalized groups in society who have experienced this type of trauma. Only with collaboration is it possible to heal these wounds and build a better society.