RESEARCH_FILE
Intergenerational Trauma Transmission
Intergenerational trauma transmission is the process by which the psychological and biological effects of a parent's or grandparent's trauma reshape the stress-response systems of their children and grandchildren — without those descendants having direct exposure to the original trauma. In Holocaust survivor families, this has been documented through elevated PTSD rates in offspring (Yehuda, 1998) and, at the biological level, through coordinated but opposite epigenetic changes at a stress-regulating gene in survivors and their adult children (Yehuda et al., 2016). Both parental care behavior shaped by PTSD and, potentially, preconception changes to the germline are identified as transmission pathways.
How it sounds in your head
The inner script: 'My grandmother survived the camps. I've never experienced anything like that, yet I can't shake the feeling that catastrophe is always one step away — that I need to have a plan.' That background vigilance is not irrational; it is the physiological and psychological inheritance of her experience, running in your body as an altered baseline stress response.