Healing the Legacy of Historical and Intergenerational Trauma: Addressing the Ambiguous Losses of Forced Displacement

This event will be recorded and the link will be sent to all registrants afterwards. It will be available for three weeks only.

The historical trauma of forced displacement has intergenerational and transgenerational impact.

Linda Thai will weave together stories and research to bring to light the intergenerational impact of forced migration, by bringing together the research around Adult Children of Holocaust Survivors, Adult Children of Alcoholics, Adult Children of Veterans with PTSD, and Historical Collective Trauma of Indigenous Americans.

Forty to fifty per cent of displaced populations are children.

The decontextualization of historical trauma over the course of time can lead to challenges in adulthood that are often easily overlooked - or even pathologized - by many mental health professionals.

This larger landscape of traumatic grief, traumatic loss, traumatic homesickness and the ambiguity of these unnameable, unmetabolized experiences has a transgenerational impact that needs to be named in order to be healed.

Objectives: 

• Lateralize the conceptualization of refugees beyond the UNHCR definition to encompass multiple trajectories of displacement.
• Differentiate between refugees and immigrants.
• Identify the main stages of a refugee journey.
• Explain intergenerational trauma to encompass the impact of forced migration, combined with acculturation and enculturation pressures, upon the next generation.
• Identify expressions of ambiguous grief, traumatic grief and traumatic homesickness.
• Identify how the decontextualization of historical trauma can result in the pathologizing and stereotyping of cultures, families and individuals.
• Identify the various expressions - emotionally, psychologically, and behaviorally - of unmetabolized grief, at the individual, family, cultural and societal levels  

References: 

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Bloch, A. (2018). Talking about the past, locating it in the present: The second generation from refugee backgrounds making sense of their parents’ narratives, narrative gaps and silences. Journal of Refugee Studies, 31(4), 647–663.

Caldji, C., Tannenbaum, B., Sharma, S., Francis, D., Plotsky, P. M., & Meaney, M. J. (1998). Maternal Care during Infancy Regulates the Development of Neural Systems Mediating the Expression of Fearfulness in the Rat. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 95(9), 5335–5340.

Dawson, G., Klinger, L. G., Panagiotides, H., Hill, D., & Spieker, S. (1992). Frontal Lobe Activity and Affective Behavior of Infants of Mothers with Depressive Symptoms. Child Development, 63(3), 725–737. https://doi.org/10.2307/1131357

Dayton, T. (2012). The Adult Child of Alcoholics trauma syndrome: The impact of childhood pain on adult relationships. Health Communications Inc.

Dekel, R., & Goldblatt, H. (2008). Is there intergenerational transmission of trauma? The case of combat veterans’ children. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 78, 281–289

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Flanagan, N., Travers, A., Vallières, F., Hansen, M., Halpin, R., Sheaf, G., Rottmann, N., & Johnsen, A. T. (2020). Crossing borders: A systematic review identifying potential mechanisms of intergenerational trauma transmission in asylum-seeking and refugee families. European Journal of Psychotraumatology, 11(1), 1–11.

Hall, C. W., & Webster, R. E. (2007). Risk factors among adult children of alcoholics. International Journal of Behavioral Consultation & Therapy, 3(4), 494–511.

Hardy, K. V. (2023). Racial trauma: Clinical strategies and techniques for healing invisible wounds. W.W. Norton & Co.

Harkness L. Transgenerational transmission of war‐related trauma. In: Wilson JP, Raphael B (eds). International handbook of traumatic stress syndromes. Boston: Springer, 1993:635‐43.

Higley, J. D., & Linnoila, M. (1997). Low central nervous system serotonergic activity is traitlike and correlates with impulsive behavior: A nonhuman primate model investigating genetic and environmental influences on neurotransmission. In D. M. Stoff & J. J. Mann (Eds.), The neurobiology of suicide: From the bench to the clinic. (Vol. 836, pp. 39–56). New York Academy of Sciences.

Kellerman NP. Psychopathology in children of Holocaust survivors: a review of the research literature. Isr J Psychiatry Relat Sci 2001;38:36.

Kim, I., Keovisai, M., Kim, W., Richards-Desai, S., & Yalim, A. C. (2019). Trauma, discrimination, and psychological distress across Vietnamese refugees and immigrants: A life course perspective. Community Mental Health Journal, 55(3), 385–393.

Napoleon, H. (1996). The way of the human being. Alaska Native Knowledge Network.Main, M & Hesse, E. (1990) Parents' unresolved traumatic experiences are related to infant disorganized attachment status: Is frightened and/or frightening parental behavior the linking mechanism? ). In M. T. Greenberg, D. Cicchetti, & E. M. Cummings (Eds.) Attachment in the preschool years: Theory, research and intervention. 161-182. The University of Chicago Press.

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Video: Healing the Historical Trauma Response by Maria Yellow Horse Brave Heart, PhD. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycQJ8ckwYaU)

Video: It Didn’t Start with You author, Mark Wolynn https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YqBhAgqZGSU   

Presenter: LINDA THAI, LMSW ERYT-200 is a trauma therapist and educator who specializes in brain and body-based modalities for addressing complex developmental trauma.

As an educator and consultant, she is gifted with the capacity to contextualize, synthesize and communicate complex and nuanced issues pertaining to trauma, attachment and the nervous system, including the impact of oppressive systems upon identity, mental health and wellbeing. 

Linda has studied Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, Somatic Experiencing, Brainspotting, Internal Family Systems, Trauma-Informed Stabilization Treatment, Havening Touch, Flash Technique, psychodrama, and structural dissociation of the personality, and offers the Safe and Sound Protocol, yoga, and meditation within her practice. She has assisted internationally renowned psychiatrist and trauma expert, Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, with his private small group psychotherapy workshops aimed at healing attachment trauma.

Linda works on the traditional lands of the Tanana Athabascan people (Fairbanks, Alaska) with those recovering from addiction, trauma, and mental illness. She is passionate about breaking the cycle of historical and intergenerational trauma at the individual and community levels.

More about Linda here: https://www.linda-thai.com/about/biography.