By Sara Stanizai, LMFT.
If you've been in therapy, or just read a lot about it online, and then started trying to make some changes with your family — saying no to things, questioning expectations, even putting yourself first — you know it's not just a clean sweep and you feel better immediately. It doesn't work like that. It doesn't feel like that.
Guilt and grief show up the second you do something for yourself. That swooping, heavy feeling right when you finally make some space, right when you finally say no to something you used to automatically say yes to.
It makes sense, you did a mean thing, and now you feel bad. Except, no, it doesn't.
You probably expect your therapist to tell you not to feel bad, that you're not actually doing a mean thing. But especially for certain cultures, that doesn't really apply. Saying "don't feel bad" isn't really therapeutic.
What I actually want to tell you is: that guilt is not yours. It's your parent's.
And hopefully after you read this, that heavy, too-fast guilt is going to make a lot more sense, along with what to actually do about it.
What Is Intergenerational Trauma?
Relational Life Therapy (RLT), the approach I use most often with couples and individuals, describes intergenerational trauma as carried feelings: emotions like shame, anxiety, fear, rage, or guilt that started with a parent or caregiver, were never addressed or healed by them, and got handed down to you instead. It's related to, but not the same as, simply modeling a parent's behavior. This is about absorbing an entire feeling state as if it were your own.
What you're feeling in real time are the delayed effects of trauma that happened to your family before you. They probably came to your parents from their parents. Most likely not maliciously. We don't blame them for it. But these feelings are just continually passed down because there was nowhere else for them to go.
You became the perfect recipient.
And you absorbed it so young, and in so many ways, that it just feels like your personality, or a part of you. It feels like your guilt. Your sensitivity. Your problem.
What if it's not yours, though?
How Do You Know If a Feeling Is Inherited, Not Just Yours?
One way you can tell: when the feeling is out of proportion to what actually happened. You don't respond to a text for one evening, and the guilt feels like you abandoned someone. That's not a proportionate response to what you did. That's generational energy. That's a feeling with a longer history than tonight.
That guilt is very old, and it likely traces back to a feeling you had as a young kid. I don't want to burden them. I don't want to add to their plate, they're working so hard. I don't want to create a problem for them, so I'll just take it.
And you probably learned that from a parent who also, at one point, felt that same pressure.
You're Not Creating a Problem. You're Returning One.
So when you push back, when you say "I can't do that for you," and what you're really saying is "you need to take care of yourself," "that's not my job anymore," and the guilt comes flooding in: That's not a sign you did something wrong. That's the feeling of handing something back that was never supposed to be yours. You're not giving them anything extra. You're just handing back what was already theirs.
If it helps, ask what the other feelings underneath the guilt are actually pointed at. Underneath the guilt, you might find anger, resentment, or sadness, not at yourself, but at the fact that your parent never got support for this. That's not the same as being angry at them for being human. It's grief that nobody ever helped them carry it before it became yours to carry too.
They should have had support for this feeling a long time ago, and they didn't. That doesn't make it your job to carry it for them now. The guilt is often doing double duty, covering for anger you haven't let yourself feel yet, because it's easier to be hard on yourself than to be angry at someone who "did so much for you."
Your body usually knows before your thoughts catch up. The tight chest, the stomach drop, the urge to immediately fix it, that shows up before you've even consciously registered what happened. One somatic way to work with this in the moment: Instead of trying to think your way out of the guilt, try talking to yourself the way you'd talk to a scared kid. Not "stop feeling this," but something closer to "I've got this, you're safe, I can handle this conversation." That's a form of reparenting yourself in real time, giving yourself the steadiness that maybe wasn't there to receive as a kid, instead of waiting for the thought to pass on its own.
It Might Get Worse Before It Gets Better, and That's Not Proof You're Doing It Wrong
I'll tell you this the way I'd tell a client: This may actually feel worse in the short term before it feels better in the long term. And it relies heavily on your family being able to adjust along with you. If they can't, don't feel bad. That's not proof you're doing something wrong. It just means there's more grief, because you can't take them with you into your adult life the way you'd hoped.
So it may feel messy. And it might not even be worth it to you. It might be more important to you to honor your family's system as it is, and that's okay, as long as you're clear on what it's costing you.
People only change when the cost outweighs the benefit. That includes you. If the cost doesn't outweigh the benefit for you right now, you're also allowed to continue exactly as you are. I would probably tell you that as your therapist, not just as someone writing a blog post.
There's another layer to this, especially if you grew up between two cultures, or if you're realizing this pattern didn't stay in your family of origin. That’s for my next blog post about this.
If this resonates, part two continues with culture, dysfunction, and what this looks like when you partner with someone.
Frequently Asked Questions
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No. Sometimes it's proportionate to something real happening right now, and sometimes it comes from your own present-day or childhood experiences rather than a generational pattern. The test is whether the feeling matches the size of what actually happened.
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Yes, often. Change usually feels worse before it feels better, especially if your family can't adjust along with you right away. That's not proof you're doing it wrong. It's often just grief, the loss of bringing them with you the way you'd hoped.
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Start by noticing when a feeling doesn't match what actually happened, that's usually the sign it's inherited, not earned. From there, it helps to name it directly, even just to yourself, and to practice a kind of real-time reparenting: telling yourself you're safe and capable, the way you'd reassure a scared kid, instead of trying to think your way out of it. If it feels weird, it might be because it’s unfamiliar.
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That's common, and it doesn't mean you did something wrong. Real change often relies on your family being able to adjust with you, and sometimes they can't or won't. If that happens, it usually brings more grief, not because you failed, but because you can't take them with you into your adult life the way you'd hoped. You still get to decide whether the cost of staying in the old pattern is worth it to you, or not, and either choice is valid.
Read more about therapy with Sara here.