Beatha Coaching

This is a post on generational trauma. It isn’t the article I had planned to write next, and that one is still coming. But as I put together this series on common topics that come up in my coaching practice I realised that there is one that underlies almost all of the conversations I have with clients. And it affects me too. I carry it in my anxiety, my depression, my questioning of myself, my over competence and under confidence. I carry it in the extended time it takes me to write and publish anything. And in the exhaustion I experience after every workshop and class that I have dramatically over prepared for. It is the wound of generational trauma affecting so many, possibly the majority of women, of the denial of their right to follow a path and choose a vocation without reference to the needs of others.

I came to this realisation in a roundabout way. I was writing something for a journal about trauma in historical practice (and if you are interested in that, I have a webinar here) with a focus on generational trauma and how it might affect us when we encounter threads from the past that link to our own stories. I was thinking about the epigenetic and behavioural wounds that affect subsequent generations in the aftermaths of trauma. Survivors, whether of war, genocide, enslavement, migration, poverty, rape, abuse, or the myriad other ways that human life is marked by violence and violation, carry the memory of their experiences in their nervous system. The hippocampus and amygdala remember the fear and powerlessness, and enact measures to ensure that survival can take place if these are ever encountered again. This makes survivors tough, resilient, resourceful; and also marked by trauma in ways that can be distressing and dysregulating when everything is calm and safe. Trauma even triggers changes at a genetic level to ensure our survival, activating genes in a different sequence to that which might have happened without the violence, and these changes are passed down to subsequent generations. Family stories, behaviours, customs, and patterns are also passed down. We all carry our family’s history with us, even as we strike out on our own.

I come from a family of talented, intelligent, sensitive women, whose ambitions, gifts, and desires were regularly sacrificed on the altar of responsibility and caring. It honestly pains me to write that, thinking about the wounds of previous generations including my direct predecessors. I have often thought about what the traumas in my family history were, but I have only seen the obvious ones – alcoholism, poverty, children denied secure attachment or actively abused. What strikes me now as I look at that list, is that these are the stories of the men in my family; these were the stories that dominated our family histories when I was growing up. My grandfather’s wretched childhood as a rejected and unwanted child experiencing constant emotional abuse. My grandmother’s father, being sent away from his family in Italy at the age of eight to an english boarding school and not being allowed to return home for ten years. My other grandfather’s sacrifice of a university education his family couldn’t afford to instead take an apprenticeship and keep his parents and two sisters fed and housed in a Glasgow tenement.

There is a deafening silence in all these stories; an ellipses around the shadowy figures who are pushed into the background by the dominance of such obvious pain. Where are the women? As a cultural historian I am practiced at seeing and asking questions about these gaps, and yet until recently I never looked closely enough at the silences in my own story to make the connection with the traumas that really shape my life as I live it today. And of course, I need to acknowledge the sacrifices and commitments of these previous generations: I don’t live with the poverty and trauma of my grandparents and great grandparents. I have three degrees, a home, a car, a career, things that they won for me through their choices and persistence.

But. And it is a big, lingering but… Those traumas haven’t really gone, haven’t really been solved in my security and education. Because the anxiety and the cost still remain, passed on from one generation of women to the next, in the sacrifices they made and were told, again and again, to make.

Those aren’t my stories to tell. And it would hurt others to be explicit here about those costs. But the costs are those that women everywhere are told or tell themselves they need to pay. To give up on education, on dreams for a career, or on work that is inspirational and creative over practical and financial. To put personal talents aside and serve the needs of the family, or at least, what culture dictates those needs to be.

Women put their talents and their inherent callings last, again and again, to do the practical thing. To be responsible. To carry the burdens for everyone else. And ignore their own pain as somehow less valid, less justifiable, simply a sacrifice to be made in the way of a life that is less than ideal. I grew up with these archetypes, and despite my training as a coach, my practice as an historian, my years working with women and helping them to decode the voice of their inner critic, I only recently realised how loudly that voice still speaks in my own head and deters me from taking creative risks.

I have frequently wondered what drew me into academia, given that the rewards and values of an institutional career have never held the slightest attraction for me. Frankly, it was a shock to start working as a lecturer, rather than a jobbing teaching fellow, and realise that, based the questions my new colleagues were asking me, there was an assumption about the path I was going to follow and what my professional plans must look like. Somehow, through the previous years of PhD, RA and tutor, I had entirely missed the unspoken yet unsubtle messages embedded in doctoral culture about where this would take me and how that would look. I honestly never envisioned or planned an ‘academic career’ for myself, with its attendant commitments and opportunities. I did my PhD because I was fascinated by my subject and I wanted to write about it. And I started and then continued teaching because I was good at it.

So why the PhD, really? And then why academia for several more years, even once I noticed the terrible emotional and mental costs I could see written over the lives and bodies of everyone around me? Because…it made research and writing legitimate for me. The self-indulgence of hours spent reading, researching, exploring, and writing about the human past (and human present), hours that were not often financially rewarded, on the contrary that often took me away from paid work, and which were not practical, not labour in the sense of a competent and responsible life. I used the title ‘academic’ to justify my deep inner desire to write, by wrapping it up in a professional career so that I could say, when those internalised voices of generations of traumatised women questioned my choice, that this was legitimate work.

I only noticed this when I left academia and moved into full-time coaching. Because now the choice between ‘financially productive’ and ‘creative’, even if that dichotomy is entirely false, and yes, I can make all the arguments too, is very real. I could choose to write. Or, I could choose to use those two hours to work on my public profile to attract more clients, design and advertise a workshop, or overwork another blog post… And everytime, I can feel my heart beating more rapidly in my chest, hear the ringing in my ears, and feel the sick lurch of anxiety about all the things I would be leaving undone if I chose to take that time to write a book that might never even be published. And I can hear the voices of generations of women, just as I can feel their trauma igniting in my body, questioning my choices and whether I am truly being responsible.

There is more to come on this topic I know, and more conversations to be had. Why is creativity still a privilege? Why are women still taught that our worth truly lies in labour for the benefit of others? How is this affecting the new cohorts of academics coming from first generation homes, and how is the academy (is the academy) adjusting to take these cultural shifts into account? For now, let me know how this post landed for you. Did it resonate? I wrote this in a different way, more spontaneously and freely, in response to my personal reflections and inner work. If my previous posts have been journalistic efforts to provide reassuring psychoeducation to ease the trauma (that word again) of feeling anxious in academia, this post is a window into my inner world and the process that goes on behind the screen. If you would like more of this, let me know.

I have a workshop coming up on Tuesday 27th June 7.30pm UK time on Imposter Syndrome and Rejection Sensitivity. If you struggle with some of the themes raised in my post today, or more generally feel overwhelmed and under-supported in academia, questioning your place there and compensating with constant work and hyper-professionalism, or if your own inner critic/s are simply really loud all the time, do join us. You can book here:

If you would like personalised support, head over to my Work with Me page for details of the packages I offer, or get in contact using the form below.