How Trauma Travels Through Generations: Epigenetics, Inherited Stress, & Healing
This article looks at how trauma passes through generations, the science of epigenetics, & approaches to transmuting pain through compassion. Therapy for queer individuals and couples in San Francisco.
TRAUMA
The Legacy We Carry
What if your body still remembers what your grandparents feared? For many people, this question resonates on a bone-deep level. You may come to therapy feeling broken — anxious, ashamed, stuck in patterns you can’t name. But what if some of this pain isn’t just yours? What if it’s a survival story written into your cells?
Dr. Gabor Maté, renowned physician and trauma expert, puts it simply:
“Trauma is not what happens to you, but what happens inside you as a result.”
In other words, we inherit not only family stories and traditions — but also adaptations to the wounds they carried. And here’s the hopeful truth: what was once transmitted unconsciously can be transmuted with care, knowledge, and connection.
What Is Intergenerational Trauma?
Intergenerational trauma is the invisible thread linking our struggles with the struggles of those who came before us. Sometimes this looks like obvious family pain — violence, addiction, exile. Other times it’s quieter: a parent’s chronic anxiety, shame around sexuality, or a deep-seated fear of the world.
In his conversation on the Transforming Trauma Podcast, Dr. Maté reminds us that trauma isn’t always a dramatic event — it’s often the chronic misattunement in childhood. When caregivers are unable to see, soothe, or accept us fully, we adapt. We split parts of ourselves off to stay attached, to stay loved. We learn to hide our needs, our anger, anything that might threaten connection.
For queer and LGBTQIA+ people, this can sound familiar. Generations of secrecy, scapegoating, and rejection can shape how we relate to ourselves and others. It can show up as social anxiety, relationship conflict, or a constant hum of “something’s wrong with me.”
How Trauma Travels: The Science of Epigenetics
Science is catching up to what survivors have always known: trauma lives in the body. Recent research in transgenerational epigenetic inheritance shows that traumatic experiences can change how genes express themselves — not by altering DNA, but through chemical signals that turn genes on or off.
A 2023 review in Genes (Švorcová, 2023) explains how stress, famine, or fear can shape the stress-response system (the HPA axis) for generations. One example: during the Dutch Hunger Winter of 1944–45, pregnant people exposed to famine gave birth to babies more prone to heart disease and anxiety. Decades later, those patterns still appeared in grandchildren. The Holocaust studies show similar threads: children and even grandchildren of survivors often carry heightened stress markers.
In animals, it’s even clearer. Mice exposed to stress develop DNA methylation patterns that change their behavior — and those patterns pass to offspring who’ve never experienced the original stress.
This isn’t destiny. Epigenetic patterns are plastic — they can change. Trauma may be written into our cells, but so is our capacity for adaptation and repair. This is where healing begins.
Gabor Maté: Transmitting vs. Transmuting Trauma
So, if we can pass trauma on, can we choose to break the cycle? Dr. Maté’s answer is yes — through curiosity and compassion.
In his podcast with Dr. Laurence Heller, Maté explains how children adapt to misattunement by turning on themselves. Self-hatred, he says, is an adaptive response: it keeps the hope alive that “if I fix myself, I’ll be loved.” This survival strategy protects the child’s attachment to caregivers who may be emotionally absent, neglectful, or abusive.
Yet that same strategy becomes the burden we carry into adulthood. We keep seeing ourselves as “bad,” “wrong,” or “not enough” — the seeds of depression, anxiety, or addictions. Maté’s work, including his approach called Compassionate Inquiry, shows that when we meet this internalized self-hatred with genuine compassion, we create the safety we didn’t have then. And safety is the soil where healing grows.
Therapy as a Space for Transmutation
This is where therapy comes in — and why I believe so deeply in in-person therapy in San Francisco and beyond.
In my practice, I see queer men, LGBTQIA+ folks, couples, and individuals who feel like the “black sheep” in their families. Many struggle with social anxiety, isolation, or a chronic sense of “never getting it right.” These patterns often trace back to family legacies shaped by shame, secrecy, and survival.
When we sit together in therapy — queer-to-queer, human-to-human — we start to co-regulate what once felt unmanageable alone. We make sense of adaptations that once kept you safe but now keep you stuck. We notice how your body still braces for threats that aren’t there. We rewrite old relational blueprints.
For example:
Social anxiety often reflects a nervous system shaped by chronic vigilance or relational trauma — not a personal failing. In therapy, we work to soften these protective patterns. For queer clients, that might include unlearning the internalized fear that visibility once put them at risk.
Queer couple therapy in the Bay Area can be a place to notice how intergenerational trauma shapes conflict, trust, and the longing for chosen family.
In-person therapy San Francisco offers an embodied sense of safety that the nervous system needs to learn a new map.
Hope: You’re Not Stuck With the Old Map
If there’s one thing I want you to take away, it’s this:
Your struggles make sense. They are not moral failings — they’re the echoes of survival strategies passed down and adapted to your life today. You may be carrying more than your share — but you don’t have to carry it alone.
Research shows that compassionate connection — with ourselves, with trusted others — can turn off genes for chronic stress and turn on genes for resilience. This is transmutation: turning a legacy of pain into a new possibility.
Resources and Next Steps
If this resonates, you might find it helpful to listen to the full conversation: Transforming Trauma Podcast: Dr. Gabor Maté & Dr. Laurence Heller.
You can also explore the science behind this in Švorcová, J. (2023). Transgenerational Epigenetic Inheritance of Traumatic Experience in Mammals. Read the full paper.
And if you feel ready to explore your own story — to notice what you’re carrying and what you might finally lay down — I’d be honored to sit with you.
Whether you’re looking for gay therapy in San Francisco, therapy for men in San Francisco, queer couple therapy in the Bay Area, or social anxiety treatment, you don’t have to do this alone.
If you're interested in learning more about therapy, click here now for a free consultation.
Closing
Trauma may echo across generations, but so does healing. When we heal, we give the next generation — and ourselves — a new map.
