![]() ![]() Traditional healing, along with conventional therapeutic methods, have been effective tools in addressing intergenerational trauma. People reaching out for help may seek the support of traditional healers to assist them on their healing journey. The goals of the therapeutic relationship are to acknowledge the negative behaviour help the individual and their family make the connection between the behaviour and the historical trauma introduce healthy alternatives and coping mechanisms and provide support and feedback to the individual and family as they carry on with their lives. Family therapy may also be required to prevent behaviours continuing among the younger generation. Talking with a mental-health therapist can help break the cycle of trauma. In most cases, the self-destructive behaviour exists because the client is having a difficult time dealing with the pain of remembering the past, or trying to survive an abusive situation now. Depression, anxiety, family violence, suicidal and homicidal thoughts and addictions are some of the behaviours our mental health therapists see when working with clients who have experienced direct or intergenerational trauma. Many self-destructive behaviours can result from unresolved trauma. Over the course of time these behaviours, often destructive, become normalized within the family and their community, leading to the next generation suffering the same problems. And parents and communities were traumatized when their children were taken away from them with little or no idea if or when they would return.ĭirect survivors of these experiences often transmit the trauma they experienced to later generations when they don't recognize or have the opportunity to address their issues. Many children suffered horrific abuse while in these homes and institutions. Children were traumatized when they were taken from their parents and placed into either government-funded, church-controlled, residential learning institutions or into foster homes. What makes the intergenerational trauma in the case of First Nations people different is that it wasn't the result of a targeted event against an individual – it was a set of government policies that targeted and affected a whole generation. In these cases the source can usually be traced back to a devastating event, and the trauma is unique to that family. Intergenerational trauma is usually seen within one family in which the parents or grandparents were traumatized, and each generation of that family continues to experience trauma in some form. The trauma inflicted by residential schools and the Sixties Scoop was significant, and the scope of the damage these events wrought wouldn't be truly understood until years later. Intergenerational trauma, or transgenerational trauma, is what happens when untreated trauma-related stress experienced by survivors is passed on to second and subsequent generations. Many years after the last residential school closed its doors and most of the First Nations children taken from their homes through child welfare removal were returned, these events continue to have an impact on individuals, families and communities. This sounds like something that happened long ago, somewhere far away, but this was the reality only a half-century ago with the residential-school education project across Canada and the Sixties Scoop – the "scooping up" of First Nations children by the planeload for adoption, under the guise of protection, unbeknownst to their family and community across North America and Europe.Ĭan communities simply learn to move on, or will these two remarkable events in Canadian history reverberate through future generations – and for how long? How does an event like this affect the child? The parents? The community? You have no idea what is happening as you helplessly watch this nightmare unfold before your eyes. You're not sure where your children are going or if you will ever see them again. Any resistance is met with the threat of arrest by the police. There is some time given to pack clothes and say goodbye. Eventually, you come to the surreal realization that they've come for your children. ![]() These people are speaking a different language so you don't understand what they're saying. You open it and are met by strangers accompanied by a police officer.
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