Cultural Complicity and Complex Trauma

I recently heard a colleague say, "The real sign of personal growth is when spending time with your parents no longer triggers you." I remember curling my lip and bristling in disagreement.

Our culture resists reckoning with the collective shadow of complex trauma from childhood and, in doing so, makes us complicit in perpetuating it.

Society teaches us to dismiss and minimize the impacts of complex trauma, insisting we “Grow up and get over it,” instead of turning towards it with understanding so it heals.

Our widespread unwillingness to confront the issues rooted in family dynamics perpetuates the cycle of intergenerational pain.

Addressing complex trauma from childhood naturally involves a reckoning with our parents – something modern culture is woefully unprepared for.

According to modern society, these wounds are best tended in private. It’s unseemly to bring them up in public, as if the mention of traumatic pain infects the air we share. What no one wants to admit is how much unresolved trauma already influences our relationships — even if we never talk about it. 

Denying that so many of us carry childhood wounding into adult relationships and into our new families doesn’t make those wounds go away. What we refuse to see, we can't heal. And when we don't heal, we pick up the patterns that harmed us and pass them — despite the best of intentions — to the next generation.

The Shame and Silence of Complex Trauma (CPTSD)

Complex trauma is a topic most people would rather avoid because talking about how our parents hurt us is uncomfortable territory.

It feels disloyal to be sharing about pain that we’ve carried from our earliest years. Deep down, it’s hard not to feel ashamed of ourselves and our family for being this way.

We rarely speak up because of the character judgement that gets boomeranged onto us. We might be speaking about a parent’s alcoholism only to be met with the reply that, “They did the best they could.” Or we might talk about how we never told our parents we were sick because it never occurred to us that they would care, to be met with, "It can't have been that bad because you turned out okay."

These kinds of minimizing and dismissing statements stop us in our tracks, punishing us for sharing. We go silent and smother the painful truths that long to be seen, so we can finally let them go.

There’s also the strong Biblical imperative to “Honor your father and mother,” interpreted as a blanket no-criticism rule. When speaking the truth is seen as critical, we are condemned to an entitled and unquestioning silence. Both trapped and invisible, we play the game of family loyalty but lose our self-esteem.

Long-held and burdensome beliefs like “I don’t matter” are reinforced by this cultural prohibition against familial reckoning.

For those of us who grew up around active addictions or coercive control, or even incest, being told we should only view our parents in a positive light is a double betrayal.

We already experienced the terrifying betrayal of parental neglect or abuse. To be told that no one wants to hear it, so we shouldn’t talk about it, is another betrayal.

We can’t put it all behind us and bask in the warm glow of forgiveness without first confronting what's real.

We need people we trust to understand what we’ve been through and grieve with us.

Being asked to pretend that things are okay when they’re not bypasses any opportunity for real healing.

Denying our voice robs us of the dignity of honoring our lived experience. We miss out on the personal power we gain when we heal the shame we’ve carried for our families 

When we don't talk about the past impact and ongoing dynamics of trauma in our families, we carry those impacts into our most precious relationships. Out of misplaced loyalty, we limp into new marriages and families hoping they will give us sanctuary and then we unintentionally spill our unhealed trauma all over the ones we love.

We need to do so much better.

We need to call on our strength and power to heal so we can build the marriages and families we’re truly capable of, without the burdens and baggage of the past. But first, we must confront how culture wants to keep us complicit in turning away from complex trauma.

The Imperative of Healing Intergenerational Trauma

Family trauma feeds on silence. It replicates when we prioritize other people’s comfort over our own ability to share our experience and receive support.

Listening to the horrors so many of us endured in childhood makes people uncomfortable because it’s sad. It requires recognizing what was lost and grieving it.

This direct confrontation with the truth requires those around us to be willing to venture into the territory of pain with us and risk contamination. If we fear grief, we’re likely to shrink back and feign fragility, unwilling to make the journey.

The unwilling might question our character or even the veracity of our experiences to deflect from their own discomfort with difficult truths.

Culture asks us to protect our parents from the reality of their behavior and their choices. But there is nothing more honoring than being honest about what is real.

Time doesn’t heal all wounds.

We do.

We heal by choosing to turn towards our pain rather than away from it. When we honor what’s real, we can meet in the territory of repair and forge real reconciliation.

It’s not our job to protect our parents from the truth of how their actions impacted us. It’s not our role to pretend that our lingering wounds don't need care and attention.

This doesn’t help us heal.

When culture demands that we deny the impact of parental abuse and neglect, it makes us participants in perpetuating the intergenerational trauma cycle. We repeat the patterns that we've learned, distorting and damaging our adult relationships.

When we can't speak the truth about the past, it's harder to trust that our needs and values matter in the present.

It's disempowering to lie and pretend.

With no one to witness our experience and affirm that we matter, we don't receive the soothing we so deeply need.

When we don’t get our perspectives validated, it’s easy to think "I don't matter," and harder to negotiate our needs, preferences, and boundaries in relationships.

But telling the truth is scary.

Some people would rather we didn't because it makes them uncomfortable.

But when we speak for our experience with warmth and positive self-regard, we lift ourselves up from the disempowerment of childhood abuse and heal.

When we take the risk to speak about our experience, we make space to receive support. We create an opportunity for things to be different.

It's scary, but it's also brave.

It's risky, but authentic relationships are worth the risk.

Staying silent about the past doesn't honor our parents. It dishonors our potential to thrive and experience the joy and fulfillment of healthy relationships.

I know it's not comfortable to talk about how our parents hurt us. But until we do, we can't take the steps we need to let go of the past and reorient towards a brighter future.

We owe it to ourselves and our families to heal.

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Elie Losleben supports individuals and couples internationally through trauma resolution and embodied healing. She brings extensive training in somatic approaches and a deep understanding of how the nervous system shapes our capacity for connection. To learn more about working together, you're welcome to reach out.