Understanding Transgenerational Trauma & the Power of Healing Through the Body with IoPT
As a parent, there’s often a quiet moment when you wonder:
Why is my child so anxious… angry… shut down… so sensitive?
And why does it all feel so familiar?
Maybe you’ve done the work. You’ve promised yourself that your child would have a different experience than you did. You’ve read the books, changed your parenting style, maybe even gone to therapy. And yet — something still plays out. Not just in your child, but between you.
You’re not failing.
You’re not imagining it.
And — most importantly — you’re not alone.
What If It Didn’t Start With You?
This is the question at the heart of Mark Wolynn’s work in It Didn’t Start With You, and it’s echoed in the teachings of Thomas Hübl, who speaks to the impact of collective and ancestral trauma — the kind that gets passed down, not just in our stories, but in our nervous systems.
This kind of trauma doesn’t need words to be transmitted. It moves through relational fields. Through silence. Through what wasn’t felt, what wasn’t safe to express. Sometimes, it’s the grief a grandparent never processed, or the fear your mother had to suppress to survive. That pain, left unhealed, can quietly take root in the next generation.
Often, it’s our children who carry what’s been left unspoken.
When Our Child Mirrors Our Unconscious Wounds
In my work with parents, I often hear things like:
- “My child is so angry — just like my father was.”
- “She’s scared of being alone, like I was growing up.”
- “He shuts down when I raise my voice — even gently. It’s like he’s carrying something older than his own experience.”
And the truth is, he might be.
When we haven’t had the chance to fully process the trauma stored in our own bodies — whether from our childhoods or generations before — our children often unconsciously pick it up. Not to hurt us. But because they’re deeply attuned to us, and thats what is needed in order to survive as a way to grasp onto a family system to belong. Its like it IS us and it can be separated from throughgentle self enquiry coming from an intention of wanting to heal pain, family patterns in physical or mental health. Because, as Thomas Hübl says, trauma creates a kind of resonant field. And our children, being naturally sensitive and relational, are in constant dialogue with that field.
A Way Forward: Healing From the Inside Out
This is where IoPT (Identity-Oriented Psychotrauma Therapy) offers a powerful invitation.
Unlike traditional talk therapy, IoPT works at the level of identity and the body. It recognises that trauma causes parts of us to split off, to survive. And these parts — often carrying deep fear, grief, or shame — can unconsciously drive how we show up in relationship, especially with our children.
Through a gentle, body-aware process of self enquiry and exploration IoPT helps us:
- Identify what we’re unconsciously carrying from our family system
- Make space for the parts of us that were pushed away or silenced
- Reclaim our capacity to parent from a place of integration, not reactivity
- Understand what belongs to us and what does not so we can make healthy choices for ourselves and our children.
- We can make healthy boundaries so we are no longer seeing our way forward away from family deeply engrained patterns
What This Means for You — and Your Child
When you begin to heal the layers you’ve inherited, your child feels that.
Not because you say the right thing — but because your nervous system shifts.
You become a safer place. Not just externally, but energetically.
In a relational, body-oriented approach, we work with this felt sense. We slow down. We get curious about what your child’s behavior might be pointing to in you — not from a place of blame, but from a place of deep compassion. Because your child is not broken. And neither are you.
You are simply both responding to the same field — and it can be healed.
The Invitation with IoPT
If you’ve found yourself wondering, Why does my child act just like I did? Or like my mother? — you’re touching something profound. You’re noticing the echo of generational pain, and in that noticing, a door opens.
Through relational, body-based therapy, you can begin to step out of those inherited patterns.
You can give your child something truly different — not just a better life, but a freer nervous system.
And perhaps most beautifully, you can begin to feel more at home in your own body, too.
You are the pivot point.
The healing may not have started with you — but it can begin with you.
If this resonates, and you’re curious about exploring this deeper through a somatic, trauma-informed, and relational lens, I invite you to connect. This work is gentle, profound, and often life-changing — not just for you, but for your children, and their children after them.