JUST CAWS # 7 A Theory of Everything 3 'Intergenerational Trauma'

The continued formulation of my 'theory of everything' in an effort to understand what happened to me while under the therapeutic supervision of CAMHS art therapist, Sally Mungall between September and December, 2021.

In my post to JUST CAWS,  # 6 A Theory of Everything 2 'Feeling violated', I addressed Sally Mungall’s statement, ‘Strong countertransference of feeling violated by the intrusiveness within the room’, written in her ‘progress notes’ immediately after meeting me for the first time.

‘Countertransference’ is a psychological phenomenon that occurs when a clinician lets their own feelings shape the way they interact with or react to their client in therapy. It doesn’t necessarily mean an opposition to a client’s transference. Countertransference can precede transference. Our first meeting was a negotiation around potential art therapy but Sally Mungall was already acknowledging her extreme feelings towards me. Those feelings have always seemed inappropriate and disproportionate to me. I distinctly remember my own feelings towards her at the time and there was absolutely no hostility or aggression on my part. While it is true that I expressed a deep reluctance to trust another healthcare professional, there was nothing disrespectful or hostile in my words or behaviour towards Sally Mungall. I did harbour a low grade contempt at the invitation to engage in art therapy but kept my thoughts to myself.

My own transference came later.

Before I write about my own transference I need to say something about intergenerational trauma.

‘Intergenerational trauma refers to the apparent transmission of trauma between generations of a family. People who experienced adverse childhood experiences growing up, or who survived historical disasters or traumas, may pass the effects of those traumas on to their children or grandchildren, through their genes, their behavior, or both, leaving the next generation susceptible to anxiety, depression, hypervigilance, and other emotional and mental health concerns.’ - https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/intergenerational-trauma

‘Intergenerational trauma’ has been passed down through at least two generations on my side of Meg’s family. It can be traced to my own mother and father. My mother was ‘violated’ when she was a young girl and my father was tortured as a young boy. The violation and the torture were never ‘processed’ in any sense of the word. My parents were both born in 1939, on the eve of World War Two and their generation grew up in the stoic English culture of the 1940’s and 1950’s, still under the influence of suffocating and repressive Victorian attitudes. No one, especially those that belonged to the working classes, ever would have considered, or been able to afford psychotherapy. My mother and father were both broken long before they ever met each other. When they did find each other and traded their trauma stories, they conspired and made a pact. They agreed that they would leave their respective traumas in the past and never speak about them again. I’m sure they believed that they could just forget.

Forgetting would be easy if trauma was just a memory, but it isn’t.

‘Memories can be vivid, emotional, and even intrusive because they are designed to help us recognize danger and be better prepared. That doesn’t make them either “wounding” or “a trauma.” A memory is a record. Trauma is an ongoing condition.

You can remember something clearly and feel at peace with it. You can also have a memory that remains emotionally charged because the meaning attached to it makes it very relevant for how you deal with life.’ -  Antonieta Contreras, Gestalt-trained, trauma-focused psychotherapist and author of the book, ‘Traumatization and Its Aftermath’.

There are ghosts and there are monsters. I have come to understand that ghosts are really metaphors for memories. They live in attics which are metaphors for our heads. The repressed fears of monsters live in our subconscious, under carpets, floorboards and the shadowy confines of metaphorical basements. Monsters come in many forms, manifestations of the fears of a powerful, hostile, vengeful physical world.

The traumas of both my parents were handed down to me like toxic heirlooms. It was my inheritance. While some children inherit money, I inherited a haunted house with ghosts in the belfry and monsters in the basement.

The ‘violation’ suffered by my mother trapped her in the pre-traumatic personality of a very young girl. Developmentally she was somewhere between 8 and 12 years old. My mother’s maternal instincts were subsumed into a maladaptive personality disorder while her emotional and cognitive range remained profoundly immature.

‘Results of many analyses, both within circumscribed developmental stages and across development, indicated that sexually abused females (on average) showed deleterious sequelae across a host of biopsychosocial domains including: earlier onsets of puberty, cognitive deficits, depression, dissociative symptoms, maladaptive sexual development, hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal attenuation, asymmetrical stress responses, high rates of obesity, more major illnesses and healthcare utilization, dropping out of high school, persistent posttraumatic stress disorder, self-mutilation, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders diagnoses, physical and sexual revictimization, premature deliveries, teen motherhood, drug and alcohol abuse, and domestic violence. Offspring born to abused mothers were at increased risk for child maltreatment and overall maldevelopment.’ – Extract from The impact of sexual abuse on female development: Lessons from a multigenerational, longitudinal research study  https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3693773/ 

The abstract summary of the above study states, ‘Offspring born to abused mothers were at increased risk for child maltreatment and overall maldevelopment.’