How EMDR Therapy Can Help Heal Attachment Trauma, Generational Trauma, and Collective Trauma

Trauma patterns can be passed down through families across generations.

Many of the painful patterns we experience in our lives — especially in relationships and in how we see ourselves — are shaped by trauma that is far older than the present moment. Some of this may come from attachment experiences in childhood, some from patterns passed down through families, and some from collective or cultural trauma affecting the communities we belong to. In this article I explore how these different layers of trauma can shape our beliefs and behaviour, and how EMDR therapy online or in-person can help process and transform them.

Dear client,

I want you to know that you don’t have to keep repeating the same cycles that keep you stuck.

Maybe they are behavioural patterns you have been repeating for most of your adult life.
Or relationship patterns.
Or beliefs about yourself.

Likely these are behaviours you witnessed in your parents too, or at least one of them.

Perhaps your parent struggled with finding a fulfilling relationship — like you do.

Perhaps your parent struggled with addiction or OCD — like you do.

Perhaps your parent struggled to connect with their power — like you do.

And because you witnessed them behaving in this way, it can start to feel familiar and almost “fated” that this is simply your normal.

You may fear that you just have to accept it.
Resign yourself.

It can feel even more fixed if your parent re-enacted their own trauma on you.

But understanding how trauma is passed down can help us begin to interrupt these cycles.

Trauma vs Attachment Trauma

Before going further, it is helpful to distinguish between two different types of trauma.

One-off trauma refers to a specific overwhelming event.

Examples might include:

• an accident

• a violent incident

• a sudden loss

• a natural disaster

In these situations the nervous system becomes overwhelmed by an event that exceeds its ability to cope.

Attachment trauma, on the other hand, develops through repeated relational experiences in childhood.

These experiences shape our beliefs about:

• safety

• trust

• worth

• connection

Attachment trauma may develop when caregivers are:

• emotionally unavailable

• inconsistent

• unpredictable

• critical or shaming

• unable to repair ruptures in the relationship

Attachment trauma is often less dramatic than a single shocking event. Yet it can be extremely powerful because it shapes the template through which we experience relationships for the rest of our lives.

Of course, these two types of trauma can overlap.

For example, if a parent experiences a devastating loss or traumatic event, their capacity to emotionally connect with their child may be affected afterwards. In that way a one-off trauma can contribute to attachment trauma within the family system.

How Is Generational Trauma Passed Down?

Our nervous systems see familiarity as safety

What do I mean by this?

Let me give a concrete example.

Let’s say we witnessed one of our primary caregivers in a relationship dynamic where they seemed disempowered.

For example, perhaps we saw our mother repeatedly with someone who was unfaithful.
Or perhaps she was often in the position of being the mistress rather than the partner who was chosen publicly.

Firstly, the work is never about judging or demonising our parents.

Doing that can actually move us away from taking responsibility for our own patterns.

Our parent may have been happy with their choices.

What matters is this:

If you find yourself repeating the same pattern and you do not want to, then it is worth exploring where it came from.

Simply spending our first twelve years — the most formative years for attachment — witnessing a particular relationship dynamic can embed deep in the nervous system the sense that this is normal.

Familiarity becomes coded as safety.

Our nervous system will tend to default to what feels familiar, even if it is not actually safe or fulfilling.

Modern neuroscience describes the brain as a prediction machine. It constantly tries to anticipate what will happen next based on past experience.

This means that the nervous system often recreates situations that resemble what it already understands.

This is why we can find ourselves gravitating towards partners who, at some level, remind us of our parents.

Even if on the surface they appear completely different.

People sometimes describe this as being an “energetic match.” In psychological language, this can be understood as the nervous system recognising familiar relational cues and unconsciously orienting towards them.

Beliefs Get Passed Through Parenting Styles

At another level, our parents’ patterns influence the beliefs we develop about ourselves and the world.

If a parent carries a core belief of being powerless, this may show up in how they parent.

For example:

They may struggle to set clear boundaries.

Perhaps chores were inconsistently enforced.
Perhaps they struggled to protect us or advocate for us if we were treated unfairly.

When boundaries are unclear, children miss an important developmental experience.

Children naturally push against boundaries.

Through this process they learn to negotiate, assert themselves, and feel their own power.

Without that experience, a child may grow up without developing a strong sense of agency.

The belief “I am powerless” can quietly become their own.

Similarly, if a caregiver believes the world is unsafe or untrustworthy, this belief may be communicated through everyday messages.

For example:

“You can’t trust people.”
“Life is hard.”
“You must struggle for everything.”

Over time we become primed to notice experiences that confirm these beliefs.

Psychologists call this confirmation bias.

Our brains begin filtering the world in ways that reinforce the beliefs we absorbed growing up.

Attachment Trauma Passed On Explicitly

Sometimes attachment trauma is passed on more directly.

This is rarely intentional.

Most parents, if they could go back in time, would undo the pain they caused.

But if a caregiver physically, emotionally, or sexually abuses a child — often repeating what was done to them — the trauma becomes explicit.

The child may develop beliefs such as:

• I am powerless

• I am not worthy of care

• I am unsafe in relationships

These beliefs often shape adult behaviour long after childhood has ended.

Trauma Passed On Implicitly

Sometimes the beliefs we carry were never explicitly spoken or modelled.

Instead, they develop unconsciously as the child tries to maintain connection with caregivers.

This often happens before language develops, which is why the beliefs can feel irrational yet powerful.

Early childhood development research shows that the right hemisphere of the brain — which processes emotion and relational experience — develops earlier than the language-based left hemisphere. As a result, many of these beliefs are stored as emotional memory rather than conscious thought.

Examples include:

I need to struggle to prove my worth.

Perhaps we saw our parent constantly struggling. At a child’s unconscious level we may believe that by struggling too we remain loyal to them.

This is sometimes referred to as a hidden loyalty.

I cannot trust myself or the world.

This can develop when there is inconsistency or dishonesty in the family system.

For example, when a parent says “you’re fine” to stop a child crying when the child clearly is not fine.

Or when there are major conflicts that are never talked about or repaired.

The child learns not to trust their own perception.

What I want will always be just out of reach.

This belief can form when a caregiver is emotionally unavailable due to depression, work addiction, or other pressures.

The child longs for connection but cannot reach it.

Over time the nervous system begins to expect that desire will remain unfulfilled.

Hidden Intergenerational Loyalties

Trauma can also travel through families in more subtle ways.

Mark Wolynn writes about this in his book It Didn’t Start With You.

He suggests that we can sometimes carry the unresolved pain of earlier generations.

This idea overlaps with the systemic perspective developed by Bert Hellinger, who described how family systems often contain unconscious loyalties.

When a traumatic event in a family was never acknowledged or processed, later generations may unconsciously identify with the person who suffered.

Modern research in epigenetics is also beginning to suggest that severe trauma can influence stress regulation systems across generations. Studies of the descendants of Holocaust survivors, for example, have found differences in stress-response patterns linked to trauma exposure in previous generations.

While this research is still evolving, it offers one possible biological pathway through which trauma may echo through family systems.

Trauma That Happened to Our People

Trauma does not only exist within individual families.

It can also exist at the level of entire communities and cultures.

Jennifer Mullan discusses this in her book Decolonising Therapy.

She invites therapists to ask an additional question:

What happened to your people?

“Our people” can mean any group we identify with:

• people affected by colonisation

• racialised communities

• religious minorities

• queer communities

• disabled communities

• women living within patriarchal systems

These groups may carry collective experiences of oppression, displacement, violence, or systemic marginalisation.

These experiences can shape identity, safety, and belief systems across generations.

This does not mean attachment theory is wrong.

Rather, it means that understanding trauma sometimes requires a wider lens.

In a recent podcast conversation with Dr Yemi Penn, who writes about decolonising trauma, we explored how both personal attachment experiences and collective historical trauma can shape the beliefs people carry today.

How EMDR Can Help

The good news is that these patterns are not permanent.

EMDR therapy can help process the experiences that originally created these beliefs.

In other parts of my website I explain how I work with attachment trauma using EMDR.

In relation to intergenerational trauma, I draw on the work of Mark Brayne, a respected practitioner in attachment-informed EMDR.

He developed a protocol where we can process the internal image of a caregiver.

Clients sometimes worry that this means their parent must attend therapy.

That is not necessary.

The work focuses on the internalised representation of the parent.

In Gestalt therapy this is called an introject.

Introjects are beliefs or messages we absorbed early in life without fully processing them.

Using EMDR we can work with the internalised image of the parent and process the beliefs connected to it.

Clients sometimes say:

“But I don’t actually know what my parent experienced.”

In that case I invite them to imagine what might have shaped their parent.

We are not trying to reconstruct historical truth.

We are working with the internal image that lives within the client’s nervous system.

Working With Collective Trauma

More recently I have also been exploring ways of working with trauma that relates to our wider cultural or ancestral experience.

One approach involves identifying a collective memory or story that carries emotional weight.

The client brings to mind:

• the image connected to that history

• the emotions it evokes

• the belief attached to it

We then use EMDR processing to help the nervous system integrate the experience differently.

The aim is not to erase history.

The aim is to free the individual from carrying the emotional burden of unresolved trauma.

Conclusion

Understanding how trauma is passed down can be confronting.

But it is also profoundly hopeful.

Because once we recognise these patterns, they are no longer unconscious.

Through therapies such as EMDR it becomes possible to process the experiences that originally shaped our beliefs.

And when those beliefs change, the patterns in our lives often begin to change too.

Cycles that once seemed inevitable can finally start to loosen their grip.